GETTING STARTED IN RUST

The basics

Gather wood by hitting trees with your rock, hatchets, ax or chainsaw. Gather stone, sulfur, or metal nodes with your rock, pickaxes or jackhammer. While on the hunt for wood and stone, you will encounter other resources on the way, such as cloth or animals. Cloth is essential early game as it is used to craft your first weapon, the bow. After crafting some arrows you can use your bow to hunt down animals to gather more cloth, leather, raw meat, and animal fat. Animal fat can be turned into low grade fuel and low grade fuel is needed to craft your first furnace. Now that you’ve gathered enough wood, stone and other resources you are ready to build a base. You’re probably also craving to get all that loot to a safe spot, but before we get into actually building your first base, here’s a few quick tips that will help you survive in the harsh world of RUST.

Early game objectives

A few key objectives in the early game:

Find an area to build

A good strategy is to check the map immediately after spawning (press G) and run away from the beach so you don’t get harassed by other nakeds. Head inland away from monuments. Part of the fun of Rust is learning the different characteristics of each area so don’t be too fussed where you end up. However, initially the snow is challenging because you will die of cold overnight unless you have clothes and a fire.

Get a sleeping bag and stash down

Once you’ve found an area you’ll want to get a sleeping bag down. Find some tall grass or bushes and plonk it down. This allows you to respawn at your bag rather than on a random beach after you inevitably die. Next up craft a small stash and pop it down somewhere distinct that you will be able to remember. It’s worth taking a screenshot of where you’ve dumped it for future reference. You’ll need to be able to find it to add and remove loot. The reason this is important is that you’re going to bury your stash underground where no one can see it (including yourself). To access your stash again you need to look down at the ground where it’s buried for a couple of seconds.

Build a starter base

Don’t get too carried away building your first base. Your main priority here is safely securing your loot so you can build up your gear and start causing mayhem for other players. The cheapest and most common starter base is a single square foundation with an adjoining triangle foundation (commonly referred to as a 1×1). The square foundation has one door leading to the triangle foundation, which in turn has one door leading to the outside world. The triangle creates an airlock allowing you to “safely” leave your base without other players jumping in and grabbing your main loot.