(Very Outdated)
Created by and for the community. Contributions of the editors and the talk is the bottom of the page.
This guide is to help newbies and create a basic guideline. Sharing this guide would be very helpful to new players.
What is Rust?
Rust is made by Devs Pat and Helk. It is a Unity engine based game downloaded through Steam. The current state of the game is in very early alpha.
The official website is located at: http://playrust.com/
This game was released on Steam officially on the 11/12/13.
Beginners Guide Video
Basic Game Mechanics
At your bottom right corner of your screen is three different bars, you should see something like this:
- Health: 100
- Calories: 1500
- Rads: 0
Health is how many hits you can take without dying. You can reduce the amount of damage you receive by wearing armor. Health can be restored by eating cooked food.
A bottle of water
Calories are your intake of Food/Water. The more calories you have, the more actions you can perform. If you are starving you will lose HP.
Rads displays the amount of radiation you have absorbed. Radiation can be noticed by a geiger counter sound (rapid clicking). Radiation will make your hunger go down faster. If you have too much of a high dosage of radiation (+500 rads), you will gain an effect of radiation poisoning. You will start to lose health until you reach 1 HP. You can deplete your radiation level by staying out of the radiated zone or by taking anti-radiation pills or food with anti-radiation properties.
When it turns night, and you do not have any type of clothing, you will have a cold effect. If you have the cold effect, you will lose calories faster than normal. To get rid of the cold there are two ways:
1) Go near a Camp Fire and warm up. This will give you a 'Comfort' effect. While in this effect, your Hunger will deplete slower, but you will still need food eventually.
2) Get Clothing. Clothing can be either created or looted from enemies.
The goal of the game is to SURVIVE. How you survive is up to you, the choices you make, the paths you take, and the friends you may or may not meet.
Gathering materials
Gathering materials is as easy as one two three. The reason for that is because to get most of your stuff (i.e. Wood, Metal Fragment, Chicken Breasts) you can use the rock you currently spawn with.
Wood
Wood is one of the vital resources for your survival. It is used to make Camp Fires, houses, storage containers, and much more.
A pile of wood
To gather Wood, there are two basic ways and one bandit way:
1) Go to the nearest Tree, and hit it with your Rock, the new starting item. You will receive message on the right-hand side of the game window telling you how much wood you've gained. Once the tree is depleted of wood, move to another one. Getting wood this way is easy however not recommended, wood piles provide much more wood for less calories burned and less work.
2) Search for a pile of wood. They are scattered throughout the map. To collect from the pile of wood, run up to it and keep hitting it with your hatchet (to craft a hatchet you will need wood and stone, see crafting below - just use your rock if that is all you have) until it disappears. Piles of wood give many more pieces of wood per hit than trees.
3) Play the bandit way and kill and loot players or steal it from a container.
Stone, Metal_Ore, Sulfur & Metal Fragments
Stone is a basic material in Rust. Sulfur and metal fragments are key components to making gunpowder and weapons.
To gather metal fragments and sulfur, you need to get the ore which are titled:
A small mineral rock
Metal Ore
and
Sulfur Ore
To harvest these minerals, you need to go up to a mineral rock and keep hitting it with your hatchet until it disappears.
Once you've got your ores, find or make a furnace and place the ores in the furnace along with wood (Campfires no longer smelt ores). Over time you will get metal fragments and sulfur from the ores.
Charcoal
Charcoal can be found in campfires when burning logs. Charcoal is a key element in making gunpowder. Mixing charcoal with sulfur will make gunpowder.
A camp fire
Food
Food is used to fill up your calories bar, remove rads, and give you health. There are currently two ways to get food:
1) Scavenging for canned food or rations which can be found in crates, loot bags, red animals and from dead players
2) Hunting animals
A pig
To hunt for fresh meat, you need to find an animal and kill it. How you kill it is up to you, but once you do just run up to its dead body and swing your hatchet like a crazed murderer. You can gain Cloth (which is useful for medkits, blood withdrawal kits, beds, etc.), Leather (From a bear, not from any other animal. You can also make it by smelting cloth in a furnace), Blood (From a wolf or bear. Medkit Material!), and chicken breasts depending on what type of animal you kill. Chicken breasts are the only kind of meat you can currently get from animals. They are the most prominent type of food in the game and contain the most calories next to small rations.
Cloth
Cloth is a type of resource used in making Sleeping Bags, cloth armor, bows, medkits, and other items. It can be obtained from either killing animals or looting dead players.
PvE and PvP
This section will cover hostile bots on PvE and PvP.
Currently PvPing in this game is tense and clunky, because of the limited animations, the laggy servers, and the harsh
Difficulty seeing a player's weapon
conditions to fight in. When approaching players, use caution, because as of now it is hard to tell whether a player is holding a melee weapon or a gun of some sort.
Types of players
Friendly
A player who won't kill you on sight. They may try to help you out or offer you food/shelter. Just make sure it's not a trap from a bandit. There are usually very few of this type of players.
Thief
Thieves usually aren't out to kill unless they feel threatened. They will still likely approach newer players or players with lower tier gear with weapons drawn and demand any ammunition, guns, armor, or resources you may have. Once again, the easiest way to prevent yourself from being robbed or possibly being killed is to keep an eye on your back and just avoid strangers, especially those with guns.
Griefer
This person who isn't a bandit, but there to piss you off. They glitch through walls, spam doors to block your entrances at bases, and spawn kill you over and over. These people are absolute kill on sight, no questions asked. The best way to avoid a griefer is the same as how to avoid a troll, don't get mad and maybe ask an admin if he could have him stop.
Hacker
This is a person who uses a kind of hack or scripts. Speedhackers move extremely fast and can chop their axes very rapidly. These people play to ruin your experience much like a griefer, however they have an advantage over you with their hacks. If you see a hacker, try to get a recording of them, and send it off. Please, do NOT join this group. If you or someone else uses hacks you WILL be permanently banned.
Duper
This is a person who uses a certain method of disabling their internet or killing their client and reconnecting to duplicate their stackable items. They can ruin the server due to the economy being extremely inflated; don't join this group.
Crafting
The crafting menu as seen in-game.
Crafting is what you do to make your items, house, ammo, guns, and everything to help you survive in this wasteland.
To craft, go to your inventory and at the top of your screen you will see a tab called "Crafting". Click on it and it will bring a window next to your inventory. You can make the current items you have learned if you have the resources. Once you do, select the amount you want to craft, then select the craft button.
Note that the more amount of something you want to craft, the more time it will take. Your movement speed is greatly reduced while crafting along with the inability to run.
To find other items to craft, you will need blueprints.
Blueprints & Research Kits
Blueprints
Blueprints are the essential to learn new crafting recipes. They can be found in crates, off of players, or mutant red animals. They mostly range of weapon blueprints. Once you have learned from that blue print, it's permanent. Even if you die, you still know it.
Research Kit 1
Research Kits
Research kits are extremely useful and extremely rare. Researching with these kits is basically showing you the BP to build the object.
Basing/Housing
The wooden walls are glitchy because players can go through them, people can grief your entire base with doors. It is very hard to build a base that is impenetrable.
Besides that, to build a simple 1 x 1 house you need 1 foundations, 4 pillars, 3 wooden walls, and a doorway (optional door). Once you have your basic building complete, you can place things such as storage containers and beds to keep them safe. Players can hatchet down wooden doors, but it takes a great deal of time if using an axe or a pickaxe. It's highly advised to place Metal Doors, as they can only be destroyed with an Explosive Charge or Grenades.
Scrolling over the crafting recipe will tell you the requirements to place it first. Please note this when building and placing.
Example:
- Wooden Wall: Requires 2 pillars and a foundation
Conclusion
You should know the basics to surviving now with this handy guide.
Good luck, and if you need any more info check the wikia.