In Rust, you have the freedom to make your base just about any way you want. But there are a few things that all good bases have in common.
Locks:
While key locks are great for the beginning of the game, you’ll want to upgrade to code locks as soon as possible. Key locks no longer require a key for the player that placed the lock (which is great for a solo player), however, they’re extremely annoying to deal with if you play with anyone else. A code lock allows you to enter the code once and you can automatically open the door whenever, just make sure to never give your base codes out to strangers!
A code lock costs 100 metal fragments and a key lock costs 100 wood.
Tool cupboard:
This is the single most important item in your base. Whomever has access to your tool cupboard can build, upgrade, and demolish in your building authorized area. Make sure that only completely trusted people have access and that it’s extremely hard to get to.
A tool cupboard prevents most building and all upgrading within its building privilege zone for players not authorized. This zone extends 16 meters out from each outer building component such as a wall or foundation.
The tool cupboard can be placed anywhere in your build and covers any connected wall or foundation. You add resources to the tool cupboard, and the cupboard reports how many resources are required to avoid decay with 16 storage slots to hold building materials that are depleted over time.
Ladders can be placed within building privilege zones without tool cupboard access.
Airlock:
An airlock is where you have two or more doors between the innermost part of your base and the outside. It assures that if someone chases you to your base or door camps you, they won't immediately have access to your loot. The bigger your base, the more airlocks you’ll want/need.
Upgrades:
There are currently 4 upgrade tiers in building: Wood, Stone, Sheet metal, and Armored.
Wood is the weakest at 250 health per wall. It can be shredded by fire and hatchets, and costs 100 to 200 wood depending on the building piece to upgrade. Easy and quick to upgrade to, but just having a wood base makes you a huge target. You’ll want to upgrade as soon as you can to avoid losing everything to a single flamethrower.
Stone is second up, at 500 health per wall. It is completely immune to fire but can be picked down by pickaxes. It costs 150 to 300 stone depending on the building piece to upgrade.
Sheet Metal comes in third at 1000 health per wall. It’s immune to fire, and is also almost completely immune to melee weapons from the outside, most breaking before dealing a single point of damage. At a cost of only 100 to 200 metal fragments depending on the building piece to upgrade, it’ll make you look that much more menacing.
Armored is the strongest upgrade at a whopping 2000 health points. It’s immune to fire as well as melee weapons and tools from the outside. Not the best without reason, it costs 13 to 25 high quality metal depending on the building piece to upgrade to armored. Because of the steep high quality metal cost, these upgrades are rarely seen outside of massive groups, and usually only at the very core of bases.
Each upgrade will increase the amount of ‘extra’ resources of that upgrade needed in your Tool Cupboard (metal walls will require extra metal frags in the tool cupboard and etc.) to stop your base decaying. Make sure you have enough ‘extra’ resources when upgrading to the next level!
Soft Side vs. Hard Side
One of the most important parts to upgrading, accidentally leaving your walls with the soft side facing out can make your upgrades nearly useless.
Wood walls can be beaten down to 11 health with a single hatchet from the soft side, then easily finished off with anything else. The hard side takes 3 hatchet hits to do 1 point of damage.
Stone walls from the outside take one damage per 8 pickaxe hits, but from the soft side takes 1.2 damage every hit (7 pickaxes for one stone wall).
Sheet Metal, while being near impervious to melee from the outside, will take 1 damage every 2 pickaxe hits, as well as take damage from other tools. Armored can, albeit slower, also be picked down from the soft side with tools.
The tops of foundations will take damage as soft sides, and ceilings will be soft side from underneath and hard side from above.
While these numbers may seem ridiculous, if you have a group of 5 people all pickaxing through soft side walls and ceilings, they will make quick work of any base like annoying little termites.
Doors:
Wood doors are good for starting out with, however, you will want to switch to first sheet metal and then armored doors as quickly as possible. At 200 health, wood doors can be taken down in less than a minute with a flamethrower, and nearly as quickly with eoka pistols or shotguns using handmade shells.
Sheet Metal doors can hardly be called an upgrade. While they can’t be burned down, only going up to 250 health means they only take a single C4 or 4 satchel charges to get blasted down.
Garage doors fill a double-doorway socket. They are stronger than sheet metal doors, but weaker than armored doors.
Armored doors are difficult to find, expensive to learn as well as craft, and require a level 3 workbench to craft. It will keep you exponentially safer, as well as letting people know you’re not to be messed with. At 800 health, they can’t be beaten down from the outside and take 2 C4 to fall.
Raiding:
One of the most important, well-liked, incredibly hated and hardest things to do in Rust is raiding. Raiding mechanics are constantly being tweaked and balanced as players push this game to its limits. Just about any item that does damage can be used for raiding but that doesn’t mean it should be.
Always have an eye out for people who will try and counter your raid, because they will xD
Learn More
If you would like to see a soft sided wall vs a hard sided wall incase you may not remember what they look like then click these links:
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5420d068e4b09194f76b2af6/1480564660939-PQ0A7UWICHVLVRPF9DKT/image-asset.jpeg?format=1500w - Soft sided walls.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5420d068e4b09194f76b2af6/1480564319169-5HQ4D399LA0LOK78S3G2/image-asset.jpeg?format=1500w - Hard sided walls. (what you want on the outside of your base)
OH HEY, FOR BEST VIEWING, YOU'LL NEED TO TURN YOUR PHONE