I painted landscapes in the horribly violent world of Rust

Emma's Adventures was a monthly column created for Eurogamer Supporters that ran throughout 2023. In it, Emma Kent explored online virtual worlds in a way that's become uniquely her own - usually involving an obscure pursuit in a very hostile environment. She's performed horse dressage in Red Dead Online, delivered crab to people in Elden Ring, whether they asked for it or not, and created a fashion boutique in the irradiated warzone of Fallout 76, to name a few. And there are always unexpected twists in her tales. Some of these articles are now a year old, so rather than have them gather dust in an archive, we thought we'd open them up, and it's all thanks to those lovely Supporters.

Today, Emma settles down for a spot of landscape painting. How relaxing, you and nature, your drawing tablet in hand, your virtual palette of paints poised. Oh, and the infamously hostile world of Rust around you - didn't I mention that? Of all the places you can sit still and untroubled while you recreate a landscape in front of you, Rust is certainly not one of them, as Emma is about to find out...

Ah Rust, the perfect game for relaxing and enjoying the scenery, right? Wrong. It's a nightmare zone full of death, paranoia and the most irritating players you'll find in a multiplayer game. It's been made that way by design, of course - the driving idea behind Rust is survival, and having to watch your back for other players is a key part of this. Base-building becomes a matter of outwitting other players with solutions such as fake walls, impenetrable cave bases, and chests hidden under bear rugs. Journeys into the wilderness, meanwhile, require careful planning: just how much are you prepared to lose, and what backup resources do you have on standby for when you inevitably die?

It's a brutal, anarchic environment. Moments where players deviate from the cycle of violence are rare - and perhaps all the more precious when they do happen. That being said, developer Facepunch has left opportunities for creativity within Rust's world, one example being the game's collection of musical instruments. As I discovered in a previous article, you can even connect an actual MIDI keyboard to these should you want to go Christmas carolling. If you haven't read that piece yet, bookmark it for when you're feeling festive. We're not far off that time of year again.

For this month's column, however, I wanted to focus my attention on a different creative outlet. Art! Or more specifically, sign art, which has been popular in the Rust community for as long as I can remember. The game allows you to paint wooden signs which can be attached to your base, adding a touch of 'personalisation' to your home. Admittedly, most of the artwork I've encountered in-game has taken the form of graffiti, memes, or crudely-drawn genitalia. Some people, however, have taken sign art more seriously, figuring out that it's possible to connect a drawing tablet to the game in order to create more detailed paintings. Which got me thinking: what if I did that, and connected a drawing tablet to the game so that I could go painting en plein air to create landscape art of Rust's world? Surely this would be a nice relaxing thing to do in my spare time.

I began my fledgling art career by diving into an official server, and felt a little nervous about what I would find - it had been some time since I'd last played. Within minutes of joining, I saw someone light up the night sky with a drone formation in the shape of a penis. It was reassuring to know that the community's sense of humour had not changed. This was the highlight of my time within that server, however, as the high population meant I was dying every few minutes. Rust servers are typically 'wiped' every few weeks in order to level the playing field and give everyone a fair chance when they join, but as I was entering mid-way through the month, everyone around me was already tooled up with guns and armour. I would need to find a more sparsely-populated server if I was to stand a chance of becoming Rust's leading landscape artist.

So I found a fairly barren community server, and set about establishing a little artist's hut from which to conduct my operations. Tucked into a cliff edge on the beach, I hoped that this would go unnoticed by anyone passing by. And it was from my new home that I was inspired to produce my first painting. In those first few nights when I was crouched on the beach in the rain, without a fire, I was entranced by the multicoloured lights of an oil rig sparkling in the distance. So I built myself a little jetty, plonked down a sign, and got to work.

At this point I learned just how difficult it is to paint in Rust. The in-game tools are like Microsoft Paint, except that even Microsoft Paint has layers now (yes, really). Without an option to draw in layers, it's very difficult to go back and edit previous work. On top of this, Rust's collection of brush styles is pretty limited, and so is its colour palette. This makes creating detailed shading very difficult. Using translucent paint to create nice gradients seemed like one way around the problem, until I realised it would be hard to recreate these colours at a later point. The translucent paint also just ended up looking like some really naff 90s street graffiti.

Making matters more difficult, I was committed to treating this as an actual en plein air session, so I didn't use screenshots for reference. I had to memorise the landscape in front of me, click on the sign to edit my drawing, and then update my changes just so I could see the world around me again. This meant I couldn't quickly glance up and down to see what I was drawing. Annoyingly, the graphics tablet would sometimes create artefacts at the corner of my painting - perhaps from where my hand had accidentally touched the screen - and I often wouldn't notice these ugly splodges until it was too late. So considering all of the above, I did my best on the first attempt. But I wasn't totally satisfied, and I realised I would have to rethink my painting approach.

Finding new subject matter, of course, meant that I would have to venture out into the wilderness again - and this presented many challenges. Due to the survival elements of Rust's world, each painting session became a full-blown expedition. This meant collecting wood to build basic shelters, stocking up on food and drink, and crafting weapons to keep bears away (normally pinging an arrow at them would be enough). I became a literal starving artist.

Another unexpected problem was that it was actually rather difficult to get close to any of Rust's landmarks. These vast features - such as the power station, the dome and arctic research station - make ideal subjects for landscape painting, but Rust's building restrictions prevent you from placing a sign anywhere near them. This meant I was forced to paint these monuments from miles away, with trees and hills often blocking my view.

For this reason I decided to have a go at painting player-made bases. This was a total disaster. Not only were they complicated to draw, but sitting outside another player's base for several hours is really asking for trouble. After straying too close to one building, I was instantly vaporised by an auto turret. On another walk through a highly populated valley, I heard several bullets whizz past my ear - which I suppose is the average Rust player's way of saying "hello".

At one point I found a particularly distinctive base in the arctic region, and decided to build a platform there from which I could sit and paint (the contrast of the orange base was simply gorgeous against the snow). I forgot, however, that it would get exceptionally cold at night - and even my winter coat would not be enough to prevent me freezing to death. My only chance at survival was building myself a campfire. With no walls on my platform, this turned me into a giant glowing beacon that could be seen from miles around. As I huddled near the fire, I eventually heard a shuffling noise near me. No, this wasn't a bear - this was a player. Already slightly terrified, I peered over the parapet, hoping to talk them down over voice comms.

My gaze met two green glowing eyes. We both froze for a second. I was shot in the head.

After this incident, I was curious to see what had happened to my work-in-progress painting. Was it still intact? Or had it been blown to pieces? Maybe the player had 'contributed' to my painting in some way. Even if they had drawn something rude, that action itself would turn the piece into another form of art: a collaborative work! How exciting! I scurried back to have a look. What I found was actually far crueller: they had not added to the painting, they had simply locked it so I could no longer edit the sign. Perhaps it was for the best, as if I'm being honest, attempting to paint that highly-detailed base was far too ambitious. So I abandoned the project and went roaming once more.

The no-build zones around the game's monuments meant I was forced to return, once again, to the shoreline. As the monuments at sea were surrounded by water, I had a clear line of sight and could actually draw them from a distance. This time I found a lighthouse, which was right around the corner from the oil rig. I built myself a nice little shack (with proper walls this time) and set about painting the scene. Abandoning any attempts at realism, I began to think about what sort of style I could achieve with the tools available. I started to experiment with the square brush, using it to create a wave effect with deepening hues of blue, and made a lighthouse silhouette that merged into the water. Kind of funky, I think!

My soul was still yearning to do something with the dramatic lighting in the snowy wastes, however, so I grabbed my winter coat and walked back into the arctic biome. I'll admit that the first mishap on this journey was entirely my fault. I got distracted by a mysterious cave and went inside to investigate. There was a hole in the ground there so, naturally, I poked my head down into it and promptly fell head-first to my death.

"Hello hello what's in hereaaaaAAAARGH!"

On the second attempt at this journey, I discovered that the northern end of the island had some beautiful icebergs floating around. One of these had a partially-sunken wreck next to it: a wonderfully moody and haunting vista. So I once again set up a little hut. It was late in my (real) evening, however, so I was forced to leave my in-game character in my temporary shed for the night. I felt a little nervous about this, but I reasoned that nobody would find me when I was that far north. I logged off and went to bed.

The next day, I rejoined the game and found myself still in the shack. I had survived the night, what a relief! Now I could return to my art. In the corner of my vision, however, I spotted that I was cold. Very cold. Minus 11 degrees, in fact. What was going on? That's when looked down at my feet and saw, well, my feet - my naked feet. Panicking, I checked my inventory and discovered that all my clothes were missing. Someone must have found me in the night and in an act of supreme trolling, stolen every item I owned, leaving me stark naked in the middle of the snow as a result.

They had even taken my rock! The most basic tool in the game, without which it's impossible to harvest resources. Realising I wouldn't even be able to chop down a tree to build an emergency campfire, I bolted out of the door and started running as fast as I could towards the forests further south. What a sight that must have been - a naked, frazzled artist running through the arctic snow! What must the polar bears have thought?

Amazingly, I survived the experience. I even managed to collect some useful resources on my way. But I wasn't quite out of danger yet. As I climbed an electricity pylon (yes, yes, I know) I heard the distinctive hum of the attack helicopter nearby - an NPC that spawns every few hours to fire at players and make their lives hell. This was bad. I was totally exposed, in more ways than one, and I didn't have any time to react. I tried crouching, as if that would somehow work, and for a brief moment the helicopter seemed to turn away. And then it spun right around and headed straight for me.

I threw myself down the tower as bullets pinged off metal around me, and figured I was mere seconds away from being turned into a real-life Jackson Pollock. Then I heard gunfire from a base I'd been vapourised at before, to discover another player had intervened on my behalf. Well, intervened - I have no idea if they knew I was there. But it was all the distraction I needed to escape.

I was starting to feel more like a war artist than a landscape painter, but after this ordeal, I was finally able to return to my art. This time, I built myself a boat to travel to my northern base - far safer than going over land, it turns out - and the little dinghy made a brilliant prop for the foreground of my painting. And emboldened, perhaps, by the exhilaration of my earlier adventures, I threw caution to the wind and went for a more dramatic, abstract, cubist look. It was time for hard lines, geometric shapes and a flat 2D vibe. The triangles perfectly represented the jagged edges of the ice, while the sharp lines and dangerous red-pink colours definitely made the environment feel inhospitable.

Out of all the paintings on this adventure, it's this final piece I'm most attached to, perhaps because it's a culmination of all I had learned about Rust's peculiar in-game rules. My style as an artist had actually been shaped by these conditions: I was prompted to paint seascapes due to the building restrictions on-land, while the quirks of the painting tools had pushed me towards a semi cubist-abstract style. These are techniques that I never would have normally attempted, so it was strangely satisfying to realise Rust had organically pushed me towards trying them. I just can't believe I had an enlightening art experience through Rust.

I can't say, however, that painting en plein air in Rust was a particularly relaxing experience. As I was under constant threat of death, I became supremely jumpy - often getting spooked by noises in the game's ambient soundtrack. These are great conditions to produce some anxiety-laden artwork, perhaps. But if you want a chill place to paint? I would probably recommend just going outside. I'm heading out there now to lie in the grass and calm down.