Please help me optimize my offline rust server.  I don't know why it is so laggy.  Is it because I am connected to a VPN?  Maybe by connecting to localhost I am sending all of my data abroad and back?

My system specs are 16GB DDR4 RAM, AMD RTX580, etc.  I feel like I should be able to host an offline server and connect to it pretty much lag-free, but the server is locked at 244 FPS, and the client takes over an hour to do the asset warmup.  It's so laggy that I literally cannot even cancel it: I need to use alt-ctrl-del and restart Rust. 

In fact, when I run my batch file, I see: "Missing Shader in Main Camera (TOD_Scattering)" three times followed by a 7-minute wait to do the asset warmup in the server's cmd window....  I went through a long process of adding various lines to reduce shadow quality, graphics quality, draw distance, fps, etc. etc. etc., but I'm still getting really long load times.  The option to skip the warmup doesn't work, and honestly I don't even know if I will ever load into a solo offline game because the load time is so long.

I just installed the latest version of Oxide and rustserver, and this is actually my first run.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

I'm timing the load time... Basically, it's been 16 minutes, and I'm at 475/8750.  I'm kind of approximating because the client itself lags out when I try to tab into it.  About my hardware load: my GPU is only being utilized 26%, my CPU is only being utilized 32%, and 15/16 GB of ram is being utilized.  Is there a way to reduce how much ram is being used and maybe shift some of the performance requirements towards the GPU and CPU?  Also more than 7GB of my 8GB of vram is being utilized.... 

Graphics card doesn't matter what is your CPU Speed?

And 15 meg used of 16 meg.. without players thats not good at all

What size map are you trying to run ?

To connect to a server hosted on your own PC start rust press F1 and enter

client.connect localhost:28015

To connect to a server hosted on your home network start rust press F1 and enter

client.connect 192.168.1.??:28015 (whatever the IP is)

On a HDD the warmup will be painfully slow. On a SSD it should take around 5 minutes.

As for the VRAM, that has nothing to do with your server. Turn the in-game graphics setting down to #4 (or #5 if you're careful) and you should be OK.

In-game graphics are at a minimum.  The rust client is on one SSD, and the rust server is on another SSD.

uMod - Server startup taking too long - Rust - Community

According to this post, an HDD on a PC with similar specs to my own loads a server in 5 minutes.  It takes more than 45 minutes to do the asset warmup on this PC for a map size 1000 using this command: RustDedicated.exe -batchmode +server.port 28015 +server.level "Procedural Map" +server.seed 3400 +server.worldsize 1500 +server.maxplayers 1 +server.hostname "JimsLocal" +server.description "Welcome to the Beam Inn." +server.url "https://rightdem.com" +server.identity "Server2" +rcon.port 28016 +rcon.password jimsPass +rcon.web 1 +fps.limit 10 +graphics.fov 90 +global.warmup True +graphics.drawdistance 1000 +server.globalchat False +server.npctickrate 20 +server.itemdespawn 500 +server.pve True +server.planttick 20 -gc.buffer 2048 -nolog -high -maxMem=4000 -malloc=system -cpuCount=2 -exThreads=4 -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded +server.eac 0 +server.encryption 0 +server.secure false

I have tested the drives, and they are running properly at high-speed.  My resource monitors show that the CPU is barely being used, which doesn't make sense, so I went through a long process of trying to increase the number of cores used by the server in various ways.  The rust client application hangs (minimum graphics settings, no sound--minimum everything) up until the game loads.  Removing EAC seems to resolve a lot of the client hang issues.  In-game, the server and the client are both snappy (I can turn the graphics up and get to 90 FPS despite telling the server to limit it to 10 fps so don't know what's going on there, but anyway the point is that the game runs flawlessly AFTER loading).

I checked just to verify my game files, again, and they're good.  I also repaired EAC, and I have extremely long load times (45 minutes to as long as 2 hours) getting into other peoples servers now, as well.  Not sure what to do, I reinstalled, and that didn't help: I shifted the game folder to various other drives, no help, and I did all kinds of system optimizations.  At this point, I'm trying to find the right log files to give me a clue.

I didn't read everything completely so not sure if you have a problem with the client or the server but Rust uses to load like this slowly. The client should be on an SSD drive and I load for 5-10minutes MAX (most of the time around 5)... The server probably should be on an SSD drive too but because I do not have a huge SSD for now keep it on HDD. Nothing optimized in terms of gfx quality or whatever else. Never used to think about shadders and other shit server output in yellow while loading. My test server on HDD drive starts for like max 10-20 minutes (most of the time 15) and my main paid server on rented VPS with SDD starts around 10-15minutes (most of the time 10 as I noticed)

1. Not sure what's actually related to loading but one guy with a good PC where he /paste massive HQM fortress in-game and I have under 30fps he has no lags or something but loads in the server for 20minutes+ so yeah. One other friend used to try rust and he used to load like 1hour cuz not on an SSD drive that's for the client issues. 

2. About server will do the same like you do when loading into the game but also generate the map first and then other stuff so always will load slower. Not sure why its so slow for you if you are on SSD maybe others can help.

You mentioned you are running through a VPN and you've also said that disabling EAC resolves the problem, so it may be due to your client/server having trouble connecting to EAC through the VPN. Try switching the VPN off and see what happens.