The RUST Prototype Hatchet is a skin available for the Hatchet, released as part of Facepunch’s General Permanent Store items with the Lumberjack DLC in the October 2022 The Lumberjack update. It’s original bundled sale price is listed at $12.99 USD and, like all other permanent item store items, isn’t available for resale on the steam marketplace.
While possessing the exact same collections rates and function as the hatchet, the prototype hatchet brings a rather unique, almost brutal futuristic aesthetic to the tree striking experience. The appearance is two-fold, looking to be a standard single-hand hatchet with a rather large, full tang blade and saw feature attached to the front.
As its base item is not a default blueprint, the prototype hatchet would not be available until players with the DLC were to unlock it, either via the research system or the tier 1 workbench tech tree. Its primary use is to gather Wood in RUST. It requires no fuel to operate but takes consistent durability loss while being used to hit trees or any other entity.
The prototype hatchet requires players to manually strike trees to harvest the wood. It is quite normal to use a hatchet as a melee weapon, sometimes going so far as to use it as a soft-side raiding tool. It would be acceptable for use with a Wood Gathering Tea due to its resource gathering capacity as a mid-tier tool.
In addition to being an in game Skin, it is also directly spawnable as its own entity type by server administrators from the F1 Console.
