The best ways to get Blueprints in RUST
Blueprints are one of RUST’s most essential tools, as they are needed to craft just about all mid to high-tier items, such as armor, weapons, and explosives. There are many different ways to get blueprints in RUST, but each method carries some level of difficulty, risk, and time requirements.
In RUST, most weapons, explosives, and building objects require research. While many blueprints are immediately available on many modded servers, they are not craftable by default on vanilla servers.
There are 3 primary ways to get blueprints in RUST:
- Finding them in Crates & Barrels
- Researching the Item
- Experimenting at workbenches
Finding Blueprints in Crates & Barrels
Many blueprints require you to run the roads and monuments to find them in crates and other lootable objects. Searching crates is the easiest way to find lower-tier blueprints, including Small Water Catchers, Wooden Barricades, and Watch Towers.
You can also get blueprints from barrels and sunken chests if you would prefer to find a boat and diving kit, and take to the floating garbage piles and underwater monuments in the sea. Different lootable objects generally give different types of blueprints.
- Tool Boxes will appear randomly near junk piles on roads and as floating debris in the ocean.
- Basic Crates spawn along with the roadside trash piles, at monuments, and out on the ocean.
- Military Crates appear at monuments, with a greater chance of spawning at more advanced monuments.
- Elite Crates appear at the more dangerous and highly irradiated monuments such as the Launch Site, protected by APC Bradley, and the scientist stronghold Military Tunnels.
Researching Blueprints from Obtained Items
Regardless of whether or not you got the blueprints you were looking for in the crates and barrels, the other items you brought back with you can be researched using the research table so that you don’t have to find them again.
Once you have placed a research bench, most items can be broken down into a researchable blueprint. The research bench will then show the research cost. The blueprint’s scrap cost is divided roughly into tiers.
- 20-50 Scrap For beginner blueprints: cloth clothing, wooden furniture, and basic weapons.
- 50-75 Scrap for low-tier blueprints: electrical components, roadsign armor, metal tools, weapons, medicines, and guns, such as the revolver and waterpipe shotgun.
- 75-125 Scrap for mid-tier blueprints: metal doors, simple explosives, better guns, gun components, different ammunition types, hazmat suits, and superior tools. The mid-tier also unlocks essential base components such as the refinery and large furnace.
- 500 Scrap for high tier blueprints: armored doors, rockets, timed explosives, metal armor, the automatic rifle, bolt-action rifle. This tier includes advanced base defense components, such as high stone walls and gates.
The scrap cost determines each item’s value and represents an investment of time required to acquire each blueprint. Once the item undergoes research, it will change into a learnable blueprint, which you can learn yourself, give to teammates, or sell through vending machines.
Getting Blueprints through Experiments
One way to get blueprints is to run experiments on the different leveled workbenches, with the cost and the quality of items differing for each workbench. Other pieces of equipment have different tiers and have additional costs because of that. Being able to craft a Revolver is less useful, a majority of the time, than the ability to craft an Assault Rifle. Prices generally go up with the workbench level needed to experiment/craft the items, but there are exceptions.
Level 1 Workbench
It costs 75 Scrap to experiment in a Level 1 Workbench, and you will receive tier 1 items and weapons such as Revolvers, Water Pipe Shotguns, and Pistol Ammunition. You can get both Bean Can Grenades and Satchel Charges from it as the first tier of explosives.
Level 2 Workbenches
It costs 300 Scrap per experiment, but the blueprints you can get are better than the level 1 workbench, as it produces tier 2 items. You can get blueprints such as advanced ammunition, Ladder Hatches, Medical Syringes, and Rocket Launchers.
Level 3 Workbenches
At 1000 Scrap per experiment, it allows for the highest tier 3 items to be returned. From the level 3 workbench, you get blueprints such as Rockets, Explosive 5.56 Rifle Ammo, C4, Metal Armor, Explosives, Assault Rifle, and other high-end items.
Non-Craftable Items
Not all items are researchable. Some items in RUST are both non-craftable and impossible to research. A few examples are M249, L96, M92, M39, and a few other miscellaneous items. Most of these items are found in Airdrops, Locked Crates, Military Crates, and other vendor-purchasable items. Some of these items are only obtainable by looting the crates that the Patrol Helicopter or the Bradley APC dropped on destruction.
Blueprint wipes
Blueprint wipes, also known as BP wipes, will depend on the server you’re playing. Some servers reset blueprints each wipe cycle, while others do every second wipe, and some do not at all. Usually, the server will state their policy in the server’s title or description if you’re playing on community servers, but not always, and even though you shouldn’t trust strangers, you might have to rely on the information they give you.
Your Blueprint Portfolio
The more you play, the more you develop a natural affinity for getting your hands on blueprints in RUST. Usually, the first day of a wipe will be set aside to establish a base and find the essential starting blueprints, such as metal tools and primary weapons.
From there, it’s up to you how far you want to go. If you’re going to take part in the endgame raiding, you’ll need rockets, explosives, high-tier weapons, and armor. If you’re happy sticking to budget raiding, you can stop around Workbench 2. But, the more blueprints you get, the more you can establish your position on the map through better raiding tools, weapons, and defenses.
