over 1 year ago - lama - Direct link
Skipping asset warmup is a known cause of crashes so yes, you really don't want to do it.

What you can do is enable the experimental 'Optimized Loading' setting found in the options menu. This will change asset warmup to use a faster loading method AND make it start as soon as you boot into Rust (meaning it will load while picking a server and even while in the queue).

If anyone comes here who is already skipping asset warmup - be warned that it could work fine for you for weeks or months and then suddenly start causing crashes all the time. So if you're skipping asset warmup and have suddenly started crashing... it's probably that!