Scrap makes the world go round, but the gears in RUST keep it turning.
Perhaps the most common building component in RUST after the four primary building materials, RUST’s gears, find their way into many critical base components. If the component has any moving parts, it’s a good bet it requires gears to craft.
You’ll need RUST gears for:
- Armored Doors
- Garage Doors
- Various Electrical Components
- Flame Turrets
- Shotgun Traps
- High External Wooden Gates
- High External Stone Gates
- Elevators
- Modular Car Lifts
- Vending Machines
- Snap Traps
- Chainsaws
They aren’t the rarest component to find by any means but are required more often than you’ll naturally come across them while doing other things. You’ll have to take a little time each wipe to accumulate at least a small cache of gears.
Fortunately, there are a handful of ways to get your hands on them, catering to various playstyles and wipe progression.
Looting RUST gears on the road or sea
The most common place to find gears is in the basic crates that litter the roadside and many monuments. If you would prefer to take to the ocean, sunken chests have the same 14% probability of containing two gears.
The barrels that you find while hunting for these chests also have a low probability of containing gears, but that caps at a 1% drop rate.
Oil-rig scientists also have a small chance of dropping them, and both Large Oil Rig and Small Oil Rig locations contain many basic crates and barrels, making Oil Rig runs quite lucrative for RUST gears if you prefer the ocean to the roads.
Recycling RUST gears from components
All the items in the list above will recycle back down into gears, which is handy if you end up with components you don’t need. If you’re not planning to build a compound, there’s no need for high external gates. You also won’t need vending machines if you have no plans to run a shop.
High external gates and armored doors will net you between 3 and 5 gears per item. Other items, such as electrical components, will only yield one gear each. But if you’re not planning on making electrical circuits, the Gears are more valuable than an excess of RAND Switches taking up space in your storage.
You can take your items for recycling to most monuments, or if you prefer a safer environment, you can take your items to an outpost or the bandit camp and use the recyclers there. Toss your unwanted materials in, press the recycle button, and listen to the gentle hum of the machine as it grinds your straw into gold.
Just make sure you don’t exit the recycler interface while other players are nearby, as the recyclers’ contents are considered fair game.
Crafting and researching RUST gears
You can purchase gears directly from the outpost for 125 scraps per piece if you wish. Alternatively, you can research gears for the same price and craft gears for 100 scrap and 25 metal fragments at a tier 3 workbench.
Note that neither crafting nor researching is a cost-effective use of scrap in terms of acquiring gears.
Combined shopping and recycling for RUST gears
While crafting and purchasing gears are viable options, and if you find yourself with bulk scrap, you might indulge in these methods to save a little time, there is a workaround that will net you extra gears and resources.
For a similar price as buying a gear outright, there are a few components that you can buy, either from the outpost or bandit camp, that will recycle down into gears + resources you might need.
For 150 scrap, you can purchase a shotgun trap that will recycle down into wood, metal frags, a gear, and some rope. A 125 scrap chainsaw will recycle down into a gear, high-quality metal, and metal blades.
It’s a small gamble, but for 150 scrap, you can purchase the Modular Car Lift from bandit camp and recycle it down to metal fragments, high-quality metal, and a 50% chance of gears.
Now you know how to find RUST gears
Ultimately, gears in RUST aren’t challenging to get your hands on, but they are in high demand, especially for the advanced base builds that will need multiple gears per door frame. They’re easy enough to farm, but if you have piles of scrap to burn, then you might as well cook that down into gears when you need them. No matter how far you are through a wipe, there’s a method for getting gears in RUST that’s right for you.
