Enable Creative Mode on Your Rust Server

Creative mode is a set of building tools built into Rust itself, so you need no plugin for it. Facepunch's convars let players build blocks for free, repair without the cooldown, and bypass placement checks, which suits build servers, practice bases and testing a design before a wipe. You control it with convars, and you can give it to everyone or to named players only.

Checked against Facepunch's Creative Mode wiki page and its Road Renegades update post, October 2026.

Pick who gets creative mode

There are two switches:

• creative.allusers true turns creative mode on for the whole server.
• creative.togglecreativemodeuser <name or SteamID64> true turns it on for one player, even when they are not an admin, as long as creative.allusers is off. Use false to take it away again.

Facepunch's wiki describes creative mode as a built-in system that lets players on the server build with no restrictions or resource requirements.

Try it from the Console first

Open the Console tab and run a command to see the effect straight away, for example:

1. Type users to list who is connected with their SteamID64.
2. Type creative.togglecreativemodeuser 76561198123456789 true, using your own SteamID64.
3. Join the server and try placing a building block.

To keep the settings, put the convars in server.cfg, as below.

Put it in server.cfg

A new Rust server has no server.cfg yet, so create one first. Rust server.cfg and admin commands shows where the file lives (server/rust/cfg/server.cfg) and how to upload it.

1. Stop the server.
2. Open server/rust/cfg/server.cfg in the File Manager.
3. Add one convar per line, without a leading +:

creative.allusers true
creative.freeplacement true

4. Save the file and Start the server.

Rust only reads server.cfg at boot, so a running server needs the restart before it notices. On our test server a convar placed in server.cfg was read at boot, but we have not tested the creative ones, so after the restart type creative.allusers in the Console to see its value.

The creative convars

Facepunch's wiki lists these server variables. Each takes true or false.

The "always on" commands keep things such as furnaces and lights running indefinitely, according to Facepunch's wiki. They only work while creative.alwaysonenabled is true, and switching it back to false turns off anything already toggled.

Build anywhere

The setting people mean by "build anywhere" is creative.freeplacement true. In Facepunch's words it removes most placement restrictions when deploying objects. That includes building in building blocked zones, inside other players' tool cupboard areas, and through other objects.

Facepunch lists it with the other creative convars, so give the players who need it creative mode as above.

Common problems

1. Nothing changed after editing server.cfg. The file was edited while the server ran. Restart it.
2. Players still need resources. The player is not in creative mode. Run creative.togglecreativemodeuser for them or set creative.allusers true.
3. The convar is not recognised. Check the spelling, and make sure you removed any + from the line.