Rustbound is very much a work in progress, being developed for use on a Wilderlands community server. It is an ambitious overhaul of drifter-cannon related entities, and also aims to add a number of challenging new foes and other elements. Uploading it to the modDatabase to make updates easier for the server community, and to share with others looking for a more challenging experience. The mod is intended to create a dangeous and challenging world. Prepare to die often. Rustbound makes the world a much more dangerous place, right from the very start. Base and village defenses are a must, and good gear a great reward.

Some key elements of the drifter overhaul include:

• New shape and texture assets. Shape assets hold close to vanilla style, but with some notable differences in the arms and some other features.
• Drifter type/strength is a bit harder to determine, as various tiers of drifters share shape assets. This means a player cannot always be sure of an enemy's strength, hp, or behavior just on sight. The player can discern to some extent however, with keen observation and experience.
• "Enraged" attack behaviors once a drifter has been hurt enough.
• New attacks with varying damage types, specific to certain drifter variants.
• Drifters no longer throw stones. Instead they spawn "skulkers" (more on those in a second), that can climb any surface and will seek the player out, chasing the player off of pillars and ledges, and out of hiding places.
• All loot has been removed from drifters, so as to remove "farming" drifters for rusty gears and such. Temporal gears have been added to some other entities that cannot be farmed. Entities that now drop temporal gears include bells, and a new entity called Shepherds (details below).
• Temporal gears can be sold to various traders for a decent profit.

In addition to adjustments to drifters themselves, some new Rust-related entities have been added:

• Skulkers. Skulkers are a new "rust-bug" entity that have a significant place in the Rustbound experience. Skulkers are a rust entity that live in a symbiotic relationship with drifters. Skulkers will drop off of drifters to a small degree and help attack a player. Skulkers are not very strong and are fairly easy to kill even bare handed, but they do serve to distract a drifter's prey, and harry them out of hiding and from off of secure positions.
• Baneflies. Baneflies are a flying entity that lives on the shore of lakes and oceans, when appropriate cane like vegitation is available in which to build their nests. Baneflies are not very dangerous alone, but can be a problem in large numbers.
• Blightworms. Blightworms live in more tropical zones, and spawn from their nests. Blightworms are more dangerous than skulkers, so have care around them.
• Bugnests. Each rust-bug spawns from a nest. Nests themselves are entities that spawn in the world on world-gen only, and they do not de-spawn. Bug nest varieites include Skulkernests, Blightwormnests, and Baneflynests. Skulker and Blightworm nests will develop into Riftspires, given enough time. More on Riftspires in a bit.
• Caretakers. Caretakers are a new entity that take care of and guard Skulker and Blightworm nests, especialy once they have matured into riftspires.
• Shepherds. Shepherds are a new drifter cannon mini-boss entity. They are thick skinned, and have the ability to summon other drifters to join them in attacking a player. Very dangerous, and meant to be a challenge.

Riftspires.

Intended as a sort of physical replacement for rifts. Rustbound does not disable vanilla rifts, and it is recommended that the player disables rifts when using Rustbound. However, there is no problem with leaving rifts enabled. Keeping vanilla rifts active will just add to the world's danger.

Rifstpires develop from skulker and blightworm nests and "grow" over time, evolving into more dangerous hazards. Riftspires themselves are entities without any attack or movement AI behavior. Instead, they serve as gateways through which drifters, bowtorns, shivers, and other added entities will enter the world. Their seeking and spawning range increases as they grow, so it is in the player's favor to scout and seek them out while they are young so as to dispatch them before they become more dangerous.

Riftspires grow from skulker and blightworm nests, and nests are established by skulker and blightworm "queens". Once a queen spawns in the world, it will flee the playre and wander off into the world to establish a new nest. Over time nests will grow into a young riftspire, and with the passage of more time riftspires will grow into more dangerous variants.This process is slow, taking about a full in game month for a riftspire to grow from a nest to full maturity as an "aged riftspire".

Compatibility Issues:

Rustbound does not patch vanilla entities, it overrides their vanilla files. As a result, any mods that aim to patch drifters, shivers, bowtorns, locusts, or bells may have issues or simply not load.

Rustbound is compatible with Combat Overhaul. At least, so far as I can tell to this point. I'm keeping my eyes out for compat issues, and could use some help making sure everything is working smoothly with CO.

Future goals:

I am looking for help with a few features:

• Adding the vanilla rift visual to Riftspires, at which piont I'll remove the glowing light element that slowly rotates above the riftspire base.
• Adding area instability to Riftspires. I have some code that was written to help accomplish this, but I need some help implimenting and possibly tweaking it for performance purposes.
• Possible other "boss" level entities may make an appearance once everything currently in the mod is working properly and optimized.