Deep Sea Merchant
Detects the off-map shop bundle that always precedes the merchant by ~5 minutes and announces direction.
The Deep Sea Merchant is a 2024 addition to Rust that surfaces from a random map edge, stays open ~3 hours, then submerges. Detecting it via map markers is unreliable because the merchant marker only appears after it's surfaced.
Rust Pulse detects it earlier:
The precursor trick
About 5 minutes before the merchant surfaces, Rust spawns an off-map shop bundle — a vendor-machine-style marker placed near the map edge in the bearing the merchant is approaching from. Rust+ exposes this marker.
We:
- Detect the off-map shop marker.
- Compute its bearing relative to map centre → derive cardinal direction (N / NE / E / SE / S / SW / W / NW).
- Fire
Deep Sea Merchant inbound from the east — ETA ~5 min.
When the merchant actually surfaces, a second event fires with the open-for-3h timer.
On the timeline
Both events land on the dashboard timeline. Subsequent !deep commands return the merchant's current state until it submerges.