Starting out in Rust can feel overwhelming. You spawn on a beach with nothing but a rock and a torch, staring down a brutal world filled with hostile players, deadly wildlife, and the constant threat of decay. But fear not—this guide is built to walk you through every key aspect of the early game, from server selection all the way to setting up your first base and crafting your first weapons. If you’re brand new to Rust, this is where your journey begins.
Choosing the Right Server: Where Your Journey Begins
Before you can get started, you need to choose the right server. Rust offers three categories:
- Official Servers: These give you the pure, unmodified Rust experience. They’re often heavily populated, especially after a wipe.
- Community Servers: Managed by players or groups, these often include active moderation but generally have fewer players.
- Modded Servers: Featuring custom rules, kits, and boosted rates, these are great for a faster-paced or more casual experience.
As a beginner, it’s recommended that you start on a low-population official server. It’ll reduce early PvP encounters and give you time to learn the ropes without constantly dying.
Your First Steps: From Beach to Survival
You spawn in with just a rock and a torch. The rock is your only tool at first—use it to gather essential resources like:
- Wood from trees (aim for the red “X” to speed things up)
- Stone, Metal, and Sulfur from resource nodes (aim for the sparkle!)
Each material has a purpose:
- Stone: Upgrading your base
- Metal: Crafting weapons and tools
- Sulfur: Used for crafting gunpowder and explosives
Once you have enough materials, your next goal is to craft a stone hatchet and stone pickaxe. These will drastically improve your efficiency when farming.
Don’t forget cloth, which comes from hemp plants. It’s crucial for:
- Sleeping bags (set your respawn point)
- Bows (a reliable early-game weapon)
- Basic armor
When crafting armor, keep an eye on two stats:
- Projectile Protection: Reduces damage from bullets and arrows
- Radiation Protection: Lets you explore more dangerous areas of the map
Managing Vital Stats: Health, Food, and Water
Your survival depends on managing your health, food, and water. If food or water hit zero, your health will start to drop.
Quick ways to recover:
- Go to a river: Pumpkins and corn spawn along riversides
- Craft bandages using cloth to heal and stop bleeding
Navigating the World: Maps and Monuments
Hold G to bring up your map. You’ll find rivers and monuments, which are key locations filled with loot and utilities.
There are over 30 different monuments in Rust, including:
- Safe zones: Areas where PvP is disabled. Here, you can:
- Accept missions
- Use shops
- Purchase vehicles (boats at Fishing Village, horses at Ranch, helicopters at Bandit Camp)
- Puzzle monuments: Offer higher-tier loot if you can complete access puzzles
- Utility monuments: Contain recyclers, oil refineries, and repair benches
Finding a Build Spot: Location Strategy
When selecting your build location, consider proximity to:
- Multiple monuments
- The ocean (safer farming using ocean crates and barrels)
A solid beginner strategy is to build between the ocean and a couple of monuments. You’ll have loot options while minimizing PvP risk.
Important: Don’t farm heavily until you’ve reached your intended build location—getting killed mid-farm means losing everything.
On your way there, collect cloth and place sleeping bags frequently. That way, if you die, you can respawn closer to your destination.
Wildlife: Friend and Foe
Rust’s five animals include:
- Chickens: Easy kills but offer minimal resources
- Deer: Skittish and annoying to hunt
- Wolves, Boars, and Bears: Aggressive and dangerous
Killing animals gives you access to:
- Animal Fat: Used for low-grade fuel, necessary for furnaces
- Leather: Craft armor
- Bone Fragments: For bone tools like the bone knife
Building Your First Base
Once you reach your spot, it’s time to build:
- Craft a Building Plan and a Hammer
- Use the Plan to place foundations, walls, doorframes, and ceilings
- Use the Hammer to upgrade your structure to wood, stone, metal, or armored
- Add a door and a lock
Pro Tip: Double-check your wall orientation. If you build them backward, other players can easily break in.
Finally, place a Tool Cupboard (TC). This is critical:
- Without it, your base will decay
- The TC must have enough materials to cover the upkeep cost
Add an airlock by placing two doors with a triangle foundation—this prevents players from entering even if they kill you at the front door.
Advancing Through Workbenches
Workbenches unlock advanced crafting:
- Tier 1: Requires 500 wood, 100 metal fragments, 50 scrap
- Tier 2 and 3: Unlock higher-tier gear and require more resources
You can find scrap and components in barrels and boxes along roads and monuments. Components can be used directly or recycled for scrap and other resources.
Once you’ve placed a workbench, craft essential gear:
- Crossbow + Nail Gun: A deadly early-game combo
- Armor Set: Burlap clothes, wooden pants, poncho, and bone helmet (enough to enter all monuments and survive moderate PvP)
Unlocking Blueprints and Researching Items
Press E on your workbench to open the tech tree. Spend scrap to unlock blueprints in a linear path—but this can get expensive.
A cheaper alternative: find an item in the wild, then use a Research Table with some scrap to learn its blueprint.
Once researched, you can craft the item indefinitely, as long as you meet the required workbench tier and material cost.
Final Thoughts
You now have everything you need to get started in Rust. From understanding the server types to setting up your first base and beyond, this foundation will carry you into mid-game and more.
Once you’re comfortable, check out advanced techniques, deeper PvP mechanics, and building optimization guides to fully master the game.
Want to step up your game? Check out the next guide covering 101 advanced tips and tricks to take your Rust experience to the next level.
Good luck out there, survivor. Welcome to Rust.
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