VIP

VIP is a membership CerebRUST keeps track of for you. You decide what it’s worth: CerebRUST keeps a Rust permission group in step with your VIP list, and you attach your own rewards to that group.

Giving VIP, not selling it

Today you can give VIP to players. Selling it — players buying VIP from you directly — is being built and is not available yet.

Who can give VIP

Your server’s owner and anyone you’ve made an admin on it. Moderators can’t.

The rule across CerebRUST is that admins hand out perks and owners handle money — so when selling VIP arrives, setting the price will be the owner’s alone.

Giving someone VIP

Go to your server in the dashboard and open the VIP page.

1. Search for the player by name, or paste their SteamID64.
2. Choose how long: 30 days, 90 days, 1 year, or Lifetime.
3. Add a note if you want to remember why later (e.g. “build contest winner”).
4. Give VIP.

They don’t need to be online, and they don’t need to have played on your server before.

Lifetime VIP

Lifetime VIP never expires. It shows as Lifetime in the members list rather than as a date, and nothing will ever take it away automatically. You can still remove it by hand.

Extending someone

Giving VIP to a player who already has it adds the time on top of what they have left, rather than resetting it. If their VIP has already run out, it starts fresh from today.

Giving days to someone who has lifetime VIP changes nothing — lifetime always wins.

Taking it away

Remove on their row ends the membership immediately. Their permission group and Discord role go within a minute.

What VIPs get

Set this on the same page. It applies to everyone with VIP on that server.

The permission group

CerebRUST keeps a Rust permission group — cerebrust.vip by default — matching your VIP list exactly. It adds players when they get VIP and removes them when it ends, including while they’re offline.

This is the bit that makes VIP worth having. Grant your own plugins’ permissions to that group and every VIP gets them, with nothing to do when someone joins or leaves:

oxide.grant group cerebrust.vip kits.use
oxide.grant group cerebrust.vip nteleportation.tphome

CerebRUST doesn’t provide kits, homes or queue priority itself — you keep using whatever plugins you already run. If you’d rather use a group you already have, change the name and CerebRUST will keep that one in step instead. The old group is left alone rather than deleted, in case you’d granted permissions to it.

The chat tag and name colour

Two separate settings, so you can use either on its own:

Setting	Does
Chat tag	Puts [VIP] before a VIP’s name in chat. You choose the text, up to 16 characters.
Name colour	Colours a VIP’s whole name in chat — the tag too, if you’ve turned it on.

The tag is off by default, and the name colour starts on the same blue everyone else’s name uses, so nothing changes on your server until you decide it should. Both change what everyone sees, not just your VIPs.

Turn on the tag and set the colour to red and a VIP shows up as [VIP] Barry in red — in global chat, in team chat, and in the Rust+ app.

Why the colour covers the whole name

The tag used to have its own colour, separate from the name. The Rust+ app can’t show text styling at all, so a separately-coloured tag was something the game could display and the app couldn’t — your VIPs would have looked one way in game and another in Rust+. One colour over the whole name is the version that looks the same everywhere.

The Discord role

Optional. Pick a role from the dropdown and VIPs who have linked their Discord account get it automatically, losing it when their VIP ends.

The list only shows roles CerebRUST can actually assign, which saves picking one that then silently never works. A role is missing from it if:

• it’s @everyone, or a role Discord manages itself (bot, integration or booster roles) — nobody can grant those to a member;
• it sits at or above the CerebRUST bot’s own role in your role list. Discord won’t let a bot manage a role above its own.

Empty dropdown? This is almost always why

Discord adds a new bot’s role at the bottom of your role list, so out of the box CerebRUST usually sits below everything and can assign nothing.

Go to Server Settings → Roles in Discord and drag CerebRUST above the role you want it to hand out. Your roles appear here within the hour.

If you added the CerebRUST bot before August 2026, also check the CerebRUST role has the Manage Roles permission — early invites didn’t ask for it. Re-inviting the bot from Listing & Discord → Discord grants it, or you can tick it on that role by hand.

If you haven’t connected your Discord yet (Listing & Discord → Discord), or the bot has only just joined, you’ll get a plain text box instead — paste a role ID there, or come back in a minute once the bot has sent your role list.

A VIP who hasn’t linked Discord still gets everything else. If they link later, they’ll pick the role up within the hour.

VIP-only alerts

CerebRUST sends players three kinds of Discord alert, and you can make each one a VIP perk independently. All three are off by default, meaning everyone gets them.

Alert	Fires when
Turret and SAM	Your defences lock onto someone
Upkeep	A base you’re authorised on is running low
Raid	A base you’re authorised on is being raided

Caution

These are free for everyone on your server today. Ticking one takes it away from players who aren’t VIPs — they simply stop arriving, with nothing to tell the player why.

Think hardest about raid alerts. It’s the one players rely on most, and making it VIP-only means everyone else finds out their base was raided after the fact.

How players check

Any player can type /vip in chat to see whether they’re a VIP on your server.

When changes take effect

Change	When it applies
Giving or removing VIP	Within a minute
Changing the group, tag or name colour	Within a minute
Discord role	Within a minute
A dated membership expiring	Within the hour it runs out

CerebRUST also re-sends the full VIP list to your server every hour, so if anything ever drifts — someone edited the group by hand, or your server was down — it corrects itself without you doing anything.