How to Wipe Your Rust Server

Wiping is how a Rust server stays alive. A fresh map resets everyone to nothing, and a predictable wipe day is what brings players back week after week. The panel's wipe page builds the whole thing for you: what gets deleted, which map loads next, when it happens, and what your players are told.

1Open the Wipe Page

• Log in to your game panel and click your Rust server.
• Click Rust Wipe in the left menu under GAME SERVER.
• The top of the page shows your next wipe and your last wipe. Use again repeats a previous wipe with the same settings, which is the fastest way to run the same cycle again.
• Set the timezone once. Every scheduled time on this page uses it.

2Start From a Preset

The Quick start panel fills in the whole form for you:

• Weekly map wipe, every Thursday at 20:00, blueprints kept.
• Biweekly map wipe, every two weeks.
• Monthly forced wipe, first Thursday at 19:00 UTC, map and blueprints, with announcements.

Pick the closest one and adjust. That is faster than building a wipe from scratch, and the presets encode what most servers actually do.

3Choose What Gets Wiped

Three tiles, and the difference between them is the difference between a weekly and a monthly cycle.

• Map deletes the world save and map files. Everyone starts fresh on a new map.
• Player data clears deaths, identities and states, but keeps blueprints.
• Blueprints clears everything players have learned. Usually only on a forced wipe.

A map only wipe is the gentle weekly reset. Map plus blueprints is the full reset that Facepunch forces monthly.

Extra files opens two more presets and a box for anything else:

• Clear plugin data deletes what your plugins remember: homes, kits, shops, balances. A map wipe leaves all of that intact, which is usually not what you want on a full wipe.
• Reset permissions clears Oxide or Carbon groups and grants, so VIP ranks start clean. Only do this if you intend to hand them out again. See how permissions work.
• The path box takes one per line, with * wildcards, for anything the presets do not cover.

Two toggles are worth turning on:

• Back up first takes a full backup and aborts the wipe if the backup fails. When you are at your backup limit, the oldest unlocked backup is replaced.
• Update plugins after pulls the newest version of every plugin you installed through the panel. Rust and Oxide or Carbon already update themselves on boot, so this covers the rest. Handy on forced wipe day.

4Choose the Map

• Change under Map lets you set a procedural map by size and seed, pick from your saved maps, rotate through them, or choose randomly.
• You can upload a .map file and the panel hosts it, or browse RustMaps and preview a map before committing to it.
• Saved maps have an order, so a rotation runs in the sequence you choose.

5Set the Name and the Timing

• Server name and description can change with the wipe, which is how a listing advertises its own freshness.
• When is either right now, once at a set time, or repeating: weekly, monthly, every N weeks, or a custom pattern. The page shows the next run so you can check you got it right.

6Tell Your Players

• Announcements send Discord reminders 24 hours and 1 hour before, mirror your in-game announcements, and post when the wipe starts and how it went.
• Connect the webhook first in Rust settings.
• A wipe with no warning reads to players as a server that lost everything.

Press Schedule wipe, or run it immediately.

7Watch It Run

• A wipe shows a full progress screen with each stage, including the backup phase and its upload.
• The server is locked against power actions while it runs, so nothing can interrupt it halfway.
• The Recent tab keeps the history with Done, Failed or Running and the result, so you can see what happened without being there.

Good to Know

• Force wipe is the first Thursday of the month. Facepunch ships an update and forces every server to wipe. The monthly preset already matches it.
• Modded servers may lag behind on force wipe day. The Rust update usually needs a matching Oxide or Carbon build first. See how to install Oxide or Carbon.
• Admin survives a wipe, and so do permissions unless you ask. Neither lives in the world save. Permissions only reset if you tick Reset permissions under Extra files. See how to make yourself admin and how permissions work.
• Back up first is worth the minute it costs. It is the difference between a mistake you can undo and one you cannot.

Finished

Your server is on a fresh map and your players knew it was coming. Make sure the listing reflects the new cycle in Rust settings.