Like everyone you wake up, naked on the beach. This is the common “spawn area” for every player, ingame. Your first goal on your journey is to get started and for that you need tools, weapons and gear. In your inventory (tab), you will find that the Rust Gods have provided you with a rock and a torch to light your path through the darkness, when night strikes.
Farming and basic crafting
Use the rock in your inventory to farm resources from trees, ore nodes and barrels. This is your first given tool. With some wood and stone you can begin crafting new tools, such as “Stone hatchet” and “Stone Pickaxe”, from your crafting menu (Q). Find ore nodes to mine, cut down trees for wood, pick up herbs for cloth, kill and skin animals/players, recycle components and smelt ore in a furnace
To get started building you need to craft a “building plan” and a “Hammer”. You find both items under construction in your crafting menu (Q). Place them in your “toolbelt” for easy access. Without the resources needed you can’t build or place structures. There are five tiers of upgrading your base; Twigg, upgraded wood, stone, metal and refined metal (Armored).
Equip the building plan in your hands, look at the ground in front of you, press and hold (right mouse button) to choose what structure to build and then (left click) to place it. Every base starts from “Fondations”. You can choose from square and triangle shaped ones. Once the fondation is placed, you can start to build walls and doorways around it. A common “starter base” for a solo player, is a 2×1 with an airlock. You’ll find everything needed in your crafting menu. You need to place down a “tool cupboard” and fill it with resources to protect your building from decaying, this will automatically repair your base should it get damaged. Make sure to place a lock on it, as this is what gives Authorised players “building privilege” in your area, e.g “who owns your turf/base”. The “Tool cupboard” can only hold resources, but works great as a storage space. To the left you have the skeleton shape of a 2×1, upgraded to stone and to the right you have a complete base setup.
Crafting in Rust is sorted by “skill trees”, and they’re divided into 3 groups. Which you can only access through craftable workbenches, tier 1-3. There is also a “No skill” tree, for basic weapons and gear. Such as “Hunting Bow”, “stone/bone arrows”, “spear”, stone tools and “Burlap cloths”.
Loot in Rust is random but accessible through different kinds of monuments and loot crates. This is the basic throwdown of the different crates that spawn in Rust and where to find them.
Barrels can be found in any and all monuments, but most common is to farm them by the side of the roads and/or on the sea, at floating trash piles. Next up is the “Brown crate”, as seen in the background, in the same picture or in the left picture.
The brown crates can spawn at trash piles along the roads/in the sea, but are most common in the monuments. Different to the barrels, these hold more items and usually contain components and/or tier 1 weapons, such as “revolver” or “double barrel shotgun”.
The wooden green crate is called a “Military crate” and can be found, deep in monuments, usually with a struggle to get to. They drop better gear and weapons.
There are 3 sets of keycards, giving the player options for the difficulty of which room to loot. To use any card you need to activate the “card reader”, by placing a fuse in a “fusebox”, belonging to the monument.
Green keycards are commonly found in low tier monuments such as Super Market, Oxums Gas station, Lighthouse and Abandoned Cabins.
Blue keycards can only be obtained from inside a “green keycard loot room” or purchased at Outpost for 100 scrap. They contain higher loot and only a few monuments give access to these rooms.
Red keycards are as rare as the monuments that provide the “red card loot rooms”. Like the blue cards, they can only be obtained from another card room, such as a “blue keycards loot room” and drop several crates with top loot. You will commonly find “military” and “elite” crates here.
Thank you for taking the time to read this guide. I hope it helps you out and if you need any help or advice please join our Discord and open a ticket. discord.gg/merric.
Guide by Dirig0