The Hatchet is a gathering tool in Rust used by players to harvest wood from trees or logs. Players may unlock the blueprint at a workbench level 1 or find the item as loot. It requires no fuel to operate but takes consistent durability loss while being used to hit trees or any other entity.
Unlike Chainsaws, the hatchet requires players to strike trees manually to bring them down.
There’s a chance of finding hatchets in almost every type of crate or as loot from most scientists. However, if you have 40 Scrap, you can purchase one from the Outpost monument.
Players can use a hatchet as a melee weapon when needed, like when a player sneaks up behind you while farming or a wolf jumps out of nowhere to say hey! Hatchets can even be useful for use as a soft-side raiding tool.
There are several steps you can take to improve your hatchet-wielding gameplay when farming. When preparing to farm for wood, consider drinking a wood-gathering tea of any strength and bring along your hatchet for extra yield. Doing this just once with a Pure Wood Tea will likely net you enough wood to last until the end of the wipe.