Guide to Getting Started in RUST
This RUST new player guide video, Getting Started Guide, is brought to you today by our partner Jfarr.
The game of RUST is in constant development. With each new week, players can monitor the flowing updates and progress in a few areas, including Discord, Twitter, and Facepunch’s website itself. While many of these areas are the official channels that offer practical information and details, what they don’t provide are short summaries and explanations behind the changes.
For newer RUST players, YouTube is one of the prime areas to go to find information on such updates. But even better, it’s one of the best locations on the web for finding guides and information, such as Jfarr’s updated beginner guide. Every few months, RUST will evolve to such a point that previous videos may become outdated and offer obsolete information.
Jfarr brings us up to speed with the latest information, tips, and tricks for getting started while providing some crucial evergreen content that is core to the game of RUST. Old and new RUST players can benefit from watching his videos for their in-depth knowledge and information sharing.
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Video Transcript
Hey guys, Jfarr here. Rust has changed a lot throughout the past three years since my first tutorial video on getting started on Rust. So this is going to be an updated video on how to get started on the new world of Rust in 2019.
The Beginning
Once you’ve entered the world of Rust, you want to first build a spear. This will allow you to better protect yourself against people around you, and to protect the gear and resources you’re going to get. A wooden spear can be crafted from 300 wood. This will require you to go up to a tree and hit it for a bit. When doing so, you’re also going to notice there’s an X on the tree. This is like a little mini-game the developers have added to make farming a bit more interesting.
So what you’ll want to do is hit that X every time when you’re hitting the tree. This will allow you to get more wood per hit, and eventually make the farm quicker. And sometimes the X can get a bit glitched and you might try hitting it, and it might not work. So just remember if that happens, you either have to move onto another tree or just keep hitting that tree. But you won’t be getting the benefits of hitting that X.
Once you have 300 wood, now you should be able to press tab, and in the quick craft section, you should be able to see the spear. Click that, and it will start crafting. For more information on the craft, you can press Q. This will show you a timer down the bottom on all your crafts currently going on. For right now it should only be just the spear. Within the Q menu, you can see blueprints and other items that you can craft which might not show up in the quick craft menu in your inventory.
You might also need to know that there are three rock types in Rust: sulfur, a stone, and a metal rock. They will look different from each other, and give different resources. You’ll also need to know that you need to finish the metal rock completely to get the high-quality metal from it.
This will be later used for more advanced weapons and buildings. If you also really can’t find stone, there are little rocks on the ground which you can pick up that will give you 50 stone or a bit of metal or sulfur. They’re all different just like the big rocks, but these little rocks give you tiny amounts, and it can be picked up just like hemp or mushrooms on the floor.
Once you have the spear to protect yourself, you want to make some stone tools. This will greatly improve the resource gathering rate from your rock. So stone tools are a must in the early game. You will now want to find a stone node. These will look like white medium-sized rocks on the ground.
And when you go up to them they should have a glowing light on them. If not, rotate around the rock to see if you can find the glowing light. If it does, get your rock and hit the glowing light. It’s kind of the same concept as the tree mini-game, but for the rocks.
You’ll want to keep hitting the glowing lights and it will allow you to gather the rocks much faster. Once you’ve mined the stone rocks, you should have enough stones to make a stone hatchet and stone pickaxe. Altogether rock mining 400 wood and 200 stone.
Now that you’ve got a spear in your hand and two stone tools, you’ll want to try and find some hemp on the ground. Gathering hemp is vital for the early stage since it is required to make so many tools, armor, weapons, and also a sleeping bag that will allow you to spawn back upon if you do die.
Once you’ve found a hemp bush, press E on it and it will give you 10 cloth per bush. You want to gather as much as you can because a lot of items are going to chew through that cloth pretty quickly.
With the cloth you have now collected, it is recommended to make some bandages to later heal yourself if caught in a fight. Bandages cost four cloth to craft, and each bandage heals 5HP. You can also stack up to three bandages in one slot, which is recommended when roaming the world of Rust.
Additionally, as you’re going along the ground looking for some hemp, there will be mushrooms on the ground. Don’t fear these mushrooms aren’t bad, they’re actually amazing for the early game. Go up to them and press E, and they’ll instantly go into your hotbar if you have space.
Once you’ve picked up these mushrooms you want to eat these mushrooms straight away. They’ll give you additional food and also health. Keep collecting these mushrooms along the ground, and eventually, you’ll be up to 100% health, and also won’t need to worry about eating for quite a bit.
Now you should have quite a bit of hemp, stone, and wood in your inventory. This means you can now craft a bow. A bow will greatly improve your chances of survival within the world of Rust. To craft a bow, you will need 200 wood and 50 cloth. You’ll also need the stone for wooden arrows, which cost 25 wood and 10 stone. Each craft will give you two arrows, so I recommend getting ten crafts going, which will give you 20 arrows.
The Travel
Rivers are great to find, as they provide a wealth of food and clean water to drink from. You can find rivers on the map, which makes it very easy to find one near you. Once you’ve arrived at a river, run up or down it to find pumpkins and corn. Pick these up and eat them to gain a large amount of food and health. You can also use the corn and pumpkin seeds later to start a farm. If you are also in need of a drink, you can go up to the river and press E when you see the icon ‘drink’. And you can keep drinking until your water is full. Lakes also provide the same effect of having clean water to drink from, so if there are no rivers near you, find a nice lake to get a drink from.
So by now, you should have a bow, spear, and some stone tools in your inventory. You can now move on to finding a nice location to live in. I recommend finding a nice location near the outpost. The outpost is a semi-new area within the world of Rust which allows you to go there to buy and trade resources with NPCs. But what we’re really looking forward within the outpost is buying a jackhammer. This will require quite a bit of scrap, so don’t worry about it just yet. But you will want to build a base near there so you can quickly go to the outpost and buy a jackhammer without having to travel across the whole map. You can quickly open your map by holding G on Rust. This will show you the whole map, and all the area names so you know exactly where to go. Once you’ve found the outpost, and maybe a nice area around it, start traveling towards the outpost from where you’ve spawned.
Once you’ve found where you need to go, get on or near the main road to gather barrels and crates. These will give you a lot of items, including weapons, armor, tools, and most importantly scrap. Crates will give you more valuable items including weapons and tools. Barrels will give you resources and crafting ingredients. If you prefer to stay more stealthy, I recommend following the large power lines as they also spawn crates and barrels and provide a bit more coverage with the surrounding environment.
Along this journey, you want to be on the lookout for animals and mainly bears. Bears yield the best resources. But to find a bear, you’ll also need a building plan, which allows you to place a foundation down so you can jump up on it and shoot the bear from a safe distance. Once you’ve killed an animal, in this case, a bear, you want to use a stone pickaxe to gather the bear since it will yield you the most resources out of all the tools available.
Using the stone pickaxe on a bear will give you 14 raw meat, 72 animal fat, 36 cloth, 72 leather, and 108 bones. Killing a bear will give you enough resources to instantly craft a furnace which is great for the early game. But don’t worry if you don’t find a bear, you’re just going to have to find a few smaller animals to kill to eventually get enough animal fat. What you’re mainly looking for when you’re killing these animals is animal fat. You’ll want 39 animal fat and 13 cloth to later craft yourself a furnace.
Another way of getting low-grade is from red barrels which you can find around the map next to the roads or in rad towns. These will give you low grade from hitting them. It will also give you crude oil which you can take to a rad town to cook up, and it will give you a lot more low grade. So these are faster ways of getting you low grade if you can’t find animals.
As of right now, you don’t have to worry about a furnace because you don’t even have a house yet to place your furnace in. You just want to get resources ready so you do have a house, you can quickly install your furnace within the base so you can build better tools and better protection.
Also on your journey, you want to gather more ores including stone and metal. The stone will be required to build your first base and make it protected.
Home
Now once you have the stone and wood ready, you should be able to build your first base. Once again, you’ll want to make sure you’re near the outpost so you can easily go in and trade items and progress much faster then you would if you were further away from that outpost. What I’d recommend for a quick, easy first base is to just build a 1×2 with an airlock on the front.
This won’t give you much space, but it will also be very cheap to make. Once you have a 1×2 down with the airlock, you want to get a wooden door on as soon as possible and put a lock on it. Once you have your base complete, you can now relax for just a bit knowing that you’re not going to get snuck up from behind and lose all your gear. You can now start placing small crates down and stowing your gear away so you won’t lose everything you just progressed to.
Base Essentials
Now it would be best to build a tool cupboard so your building doesn’t decay. The way tool cupboards work is that once you place it down, no one can build in that area and your building has upkeep, which means that if you don’t put the resources that it costs to build in the tool cupboard the building will decay. Next, you want to make sure you have the resources placed in your furnace within your base.
This will allow you to cook up the metal ore that you’ve gathered from metal rocks and convert them into metal fragments that can be used in crafting. You’re going to want to cook up at least more than 300 metal ore, and that’s going to take a while to cook up. During that time, you’re going to want to make sure you go ahead and gather 50 scraps so you can make a level one workbench. Also if you have some spare cloth, you want to make a sleeping bag and place that in your base. This will allow you to spawn up back into your base if you do die.
Once you have a level one workbench, you really want to make a crossbow. A crossbow can be crafted using 200 wood, 75 metal fragments, and 2 rope. So you want to make sure your metal fragments have cooked up, and also you’ve gathered some rope along your journey. If by chance you haven’t got any rope during your journey, you can try and hit some more barrels which will give you a 15% chance to get some rope.
Or you can find a recycler on your map, which will allow you to recycle items for raw resources. You can then put in a sewing kit that will grind down into some rope. Additionally, a recycler can be found in all major towns and are more commonly used in gas stations and supermarkets. If you’re still struggling with that you can also go into the outpost and buy some rope with 30 cloth.
Now you should have a crossbow, you’ve got a base set up, you’ve got a furnace constantly cooking up some metal frags which you can use to upgrade your door to a sheet metal door later on, and if you do have friends within the house, you can then make a code lock which will allow your friends to easily enter and leave the base without you having to open the door for them.
The Jackhammer
We still haven’t got to the best part yet, which is the jackhammer. Once you’ve gathered 150 scrap, head to buy the jackhammer from the store within the outpost. The jackhammer will allow you to mine ores a lot faster than you’ve previously ever been able to do. But if you’re still struggling to even find the scrap to buy a jackhammer, you can always use the materials that you’ve gathered from the barrels previously and recycle them in the recycler to get scrap.
Items that I recommend recycling are electric fuses, sheet metal, metal pipes, road signs, metal blades, and empty propane tanks. Everything I haven’t listed is probably worthy of keeping as it is somewhat rare, and you might need to keep it later. But if you’re in desperate need of scrap, don’t bother thinking of the far future. Recycle it and get the items now so you can craft what you really need.
And here you are! Now you’ve got a house set up, you’ve got a jackhammer, your next step is to gather a lot of raw materials – mainly stone and metal to stow away for your next and new and improved base. This base will be up to you to build, and I might make a future video on better bases to build so you’ll know what to build next.
But as of right now, you’ve got a secure base, you’ve got the materials, you’ve got the tools, and you’ve also got the location of the outpost near you to quickly progress and buy new things. As of right now, you’ve passed one of the hardest challenges in Rust which is getting an actual base set up, and enough gear to progress to the next stage.
I really hope I taught you a thing or two about the game, and also helped you survive past the first stage of Rust. Anyway guys, thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.
