Rust (alpha)

"The only aim in Rust is to survive. To do this you will need to overcome struggles such as hunger, thirst and cold. Build a fire. Build a shelter. Kill animals for meat. Protect yourself from other players. Create alliances with other players and together form a town. Whatever it takes to survive."  Release Date: Dec 11, 2013


Release Date: Dec 11, 2013


When I decided to try this game out, all I heard about it was it was “a survival game like Minecraft with more realistic graphics.” I never read any reviews or saw any screenshots of it, soooo, here is my first day’s experience/diary with this game. What I was in for was... let’s just say I wasn't prepared!

I launched the game and joined a non-PVP server. (I didn't want to get trampled the first time playing and end up rage quitting then "shelving" the game because I hear PVP is BRUTAL.) With FPS games I tend to go into harder matches, but with survival type games I stay on the sidelines to learn the game first and thankfully Rust game me this option. When I logged in the screen was barely visible; it was totally black. I thought maybe my graphics card was acting up or the game had a bug since something similar happened to us in Gone Home. I saw text on the side of the screen which clearly was other players chatting so I hit a few of the average chat buttons and started asking them why my screen was so dark. A few of them didn't know because they were new to the game too. Turns out I hit my inventory button and used a torch and noticed it was just night time and yes, it seriously goes pitch black mid of night -- by game design!

I felt so noob that I decided not to ask any more questions and wanted to figure the game out from then on by myself. I was wondering these dark wooded areas as my torch burnt away until I found a tree. I thought maybe if it's like Minecraft I can whack it and it'll give me wood. It took my rock, started banging away and lo and behold it worked and now I was stuck with wood in my inventory thinking - now this is the part where I need to learn how to craft.

I kept wandering off into the darkness (which was getting a little more visible) just barely enough to see a few feet in front of me... until I finally saw someone in the distance and was like wassup! I ran towards him and at the last second I noticed that it wasn't another player it was in fact a very hungry zombie charging at me. Survival instinct kicked in and I turned around and ran… after it took half my damage. No one mentioned there were ZOMBIES in this game?! (Now the zombies have been taken out of the game because the developers didn't want their game to be placed into that genre of titles, aka didn’t want to be seen as a “Day Z” clone.)

Once I felt I was safe when I found a small abandoned hut I could stand in. There were boxes in which carried nothing but the urge of me checking in them anyway. I alt-tabbed out of the game to check the social feed while the sunset hit. Once the sun was up I was on my journey to learn the game some more.

I headed towards the sun looking for Cliff who was too in my server. On my way to him... wherever he spawned... the sun was shining pretty and I ran across my first real life player. I was starting to think I would never have this happen. He came up to me and said over his mic "need a room for the night? I just opened up a hotel" and behind him was this raggedy looking shack with a few doors all around the sides of it. My first thought is that's cool you can do that? Then I typed in chat (which everyone in the server can see because there is no DMing system) how do I chat in-game? The default was "v". (I like to use mouse4 for chatting.) Anyways, I asked him in-game “Well, how does your hotel work?” Turns out it isn't a real hotel, it's a player made one in which you can set the doors with passcodes. He was trading wood for the codes for a safe shelter with a furnace and fireplace for the night. Kinda nifty!

He could tell I was new because later on I found out noobs basically spawn with no clothes and you can turn off nudity sensor and really be naked lol. He then asked me if I was a girl which is a typical question after I speak in games. *rolls eyes* (They also assume I’m a child.) If there was an option for a female character I would totally use her and streak like a boss. (I don't know if they will have them in the future of their game development, but it is in an alpha stage after all.) I like the voice chatting in this game as it's like DayZ where you can't hear the person until they are in range of you – proximity based. Your voice gradually gets louder the closer they get in your vicinity. Probably comes in handy in PVP servers.

Anyway, it took about 30 minutes for us to find each other when we found a road and hoped that it was the same one. He went left on it I went right. We yelled over the mic hoping to hear each other for what felt like forever until BOOM it worked and Clifford heard me. He ran towards my direction and yay! We were together. I tossed him an extra sleeping bag the hotel manager dude had gave me which is Rust's way of planting save points in the world.

It's crucial that you get your planning and gathering skills in order in this title.

With our first house we built on, we actually found an abandoned house in the middle of this huge wide open valley looking place between 2 mountains. I was too afraid of camping out when I logged off inside our place because I heard that's where people get looted the most so I placed a couple decoy huts next to the mountain across the valley and crouched behind it and logged off. This worked for a long time for me - Cliff would stay inside and he got killed and looted twice. (In non PVP servers the only time you can hurt someone is when they’re sleeping which encourages you to make an impenetrable fort.) Cliff almost gave up until he took my spot hiding out! We realized it would be a bad idea to camp out in the same spot because if someone found us, we both would be left empty handed. So I climbed the mountain and found another spot that kinda worked until out hours was more secure to sleep in. About a week into building on this place we then realized why it was abandoned! It was impossible to plant foundations (which is needed to put on pillars, windows, door, and/or walls up on) in the proper locations with this house. It ended up being a total mess and looked like it was built by a 5 year old. I've had other players run by and laugh in the mic when they saw how messy it was. Stubborn, I just refused to give up on it so easily since I already put too many materials into it. I honestly think the ground was bugged in locations where things spawned in that area, like bears, deer, rock nodes, wood piles... which I hope the developers fix if they haven’t fixed it already. After having my friend Kyle come in the game and gave his two cents on how to fix up the place, we knew what we had to do. MOVE ON. Next to a mountainside like everyone else!

Shout out to “Vodka” who was my first neighbor who helped us with questions and whatnot!

Cliff, Kyle and I found our new location for our house. It was in a resource area next to a small radiation town. Cliff loved raiding the towns the most. While he did that, Kyle and I got to work gathering more wood and plotting our house plans. We built it along a mountain this time so no one would build stair entry ways at least on 1 side of our place. This place was about 2x6 foundations and around 8 stories high! Each level with multiple metal doors for security. On the top we build a few windows to look out. This poor guy next to us build such a small spot and put spikes around his house thinking it would keep looters out... nope. He was raided multiple times and we could hear him complaining everyday about it! Not going to lie, Kyle raided him once and never admitted to it lol. I enjoyed having that neighbor around because it kept raiders occupied with his place instead of trying to get into ours. It’s like the old saying, you don’t need to be faster than the bear, you merely need to be faster than your friend. Anyways, one time Kyle climbed the mountain behind us and found 2 people logged out behind their house behind a few wooden crates as if THAT would keep them hidden. They were our first motherload loot - guns, ammo, metal more, armor, blueprints! I always felt a tiny bit bad when I killed someone who is obviously not playing at that time, but I know they would have done the same to me.

After putting so much effort into this new place and multiple raiders failing to loot us and give up and moving onto the next place (always felt good knowing we had a cool place), we finally had a group who really didn't want to give up on getting in. One of their players said "let me in or I will knock your door down. He was claiming he just wanted a spot to stay the night. We weren't stupid; we saw he was wearing nice clothes and holding a good gun - he was a raider. Eventually he did blow up our door but we quickly placed another door before his other friends could enter! He kept yelling to let him out after he realized we didn't have any loot in that level, but it turned into a Mexican stand-off. I wanted to place a second door in the doorway near the front door that he was standing in (can't place a door when someone is standing in the framed area) to lock him into like one of those air tight containment areas. More of his friends showed up outside the house asking us to let him out of there or they would use their c4 and raid the whole place; they claimed to have had like over 20 explosives. I refused to move. I stood there looking at that guy for 20 minutes real time... no joke! Eventually they were placing the C4 so I ran upstairs with Kyle and Cliff and we started taking all the loot we could hold on ourselves and destroying all the crate with everything left in them so at least they would be left wasting their C4 on our beautiful house!

These French speaking players forced their way in, finally destroying our first story staircase, doors, and stuff. We jumped out of our house and made a run for the shoreline to start a new metal house and never looked back. (Since then I’ve always wondered if they got up to the top floor or not? Or took over the place to use for themselves? Oh well.)

We proceeded to make our first metal house and kinda honestly just haven't logged on since then since we got distracted playing other games and we got our fix in for the time being for Rust. Just going against those other people like that was thrilling and one of the most unique experiences I've ever had in a survival game!


This is probably the most important thing to keep track of in this game. Your health (like most games!) If you get attacked and start to bleed, you will bleed out if you don't use a bandage, so, always keep a few on you. You also need to eat food or you will get "hungry" and your health bar will start to fade until you die, which is never fun. When you first start this game you feel like you will never see any animals or food sources – keep looking! My first kill was a pig and I killed it by whacking it with my rock a few times. Later when you learn that you can bare more than just a rock, you will feel badass and obtaining food will be a walk in the park experience. My favorite weapon is the bow and arrow for this because it is silent and won't attract enemy players. As for now, every animal drops chicken meat - I guess everything really does taste like chicken in this world har de har har! Side note - you don't want to eat uncooked chicken or it will make you sick for a short period of time and take some of your health. Find a furnace or make one yourself, throw the chicken in there with some wood or fuel and boom, cooked chicken breast that will last forever until it's consumed.

In this game you start off with no clothes, a rock, a torch, and a few bandages. Over time you will be able to make a hatchet to start with then other ... more legit weapons like pickaxes, rifles, pistols, grenades, etc, when you find or are given blueprints on how to make them. Armor is very important. You can find these by the radiation towns from the enemies you kill there or like before learn the blueprints later on to make them yourself. There is Cloth armor (basic you can make right off the bat with materials you get from killing animals), Leather armor (better than cloth obviously), Kevlar armor (best for HP and survival in PVP in my opinion), and Radiation resistant armor (best used for raiding towns in).

Camping out for the night with my inventory up. I'm wearing kevlar and radiation boots I found. This it looks like to be inside a small hut for the night cooking chicken and smelting ore in my furnace. (That's Cliff in the corner.)

There are a few ways of spawning in this game. You can have up to 5 sleeping bags (or if you have the resources for it a metal bed which is harder to break down) locations so if you die you respawn at one of those. The kicker is, you want to place it in a safe location because it can be destroyed by a player with a pickax! That's when I start talking about the building aspect of the game. I used to place a sleeping bad under a foundation because they people couldn't get to me although they may take that out later though. Note that you can pick up and place your sleeping bag as many times as you like. Let's say you are new to the game and want to find a friend who's in the server. When you spawn you might as well die if you aren't in the area that he is in. Let them tell you a mountain or find something along the road for them to look at in order to find you. Since you're new, just kill yourself by giving your body up to a bear or falling off a cliff and you will respawn at another location -- hopefully closer to your friend. This worked for us and was quicker than running around the entire map for an hour. If you die, the stuff you had on your person will spawn in a bookbag on the ground where you lay dead and if you don't get back to it in time anyone in the world can loot it. I think they were or already have implemented a locked zipper for when you die so that you have like 3 minutes to get back to your body or it's free game. (Back before they added that feature I was terrified of lagging out because it saw it as you going to sleep and someone could kill you for that bag before you logged back in!)

Rust has a lot of farming for this stuff. If you hate this sort of fetch quest type thing either skip this game or find a friend who will do all this for you. The regular things you will wonder off to find is food, ore, wood, and blueprints which you can find all around the map. The resources randomly spawn and deplete once harvested to run as fast as you can to an ore or wood pile once you spot it! The blueprints are found in people's houses, on persons, or on zombies (which is something else now, haven't played after they took them out).


This is a deep section... Every day there is a supply drop by a plane. It will be a random location in the map and it can drop anywhere from 0-3 supply crates with goodies in them. Only 1 person can loot it at a time so you want to be quick, lucky, and close enough to click it but far enough so you won't get squashed to death. This happens... I know from experience. DOH! You don't always want to carry everything around with you! Store them in a hidden location in small pouches under your bed, wooden crates in your main house, or even in multiple houses!

Building is fun, and though there aren’t unlimited things you can do, it still works pretty well and it feels good when you accomplish putting a roof over your head at night. Your first place will be a wooden house. Later on in the game you will find and learn how to make a metal house and from saving up your ore you find to make that house. To build, you need to make a foundation first, then 4 pillars are needed on each corner in order to place walls, doorways, or window there. Once those 4 are up you are able to place a roof. Your roof can also be used as a foundation for another level so you want to plan ahead with your staircase! It's a must to put a metal door on your place. Wooden doors can easily be destroyed by like 100-200 whacks with a weapon. Metal doors take c4 to destroy and you have a higher chance that people aren't going to bother you because it's so hard finding c4. I never use windows on the lower levels if I know someone can build up to get to me. I once found a place where I looked through the wooden walls (there are always holes in them) and saw a guy camped out and sleeping. I wanted to get in but didn’t have c4. Then I noticed he had an open window with no metal bars so I worked quickly hoping he wouldn't log back in while I was trying to raid his house! I farmed some wood, placed a foundation and started building stairs up to it. Once up there I lucked out because he didn't have any metal doors inside either so I climbed my way down to his body. I killed him and looted all his stuff I could carry out. Yes, it sounds mean, but in this type of game you gotta get what you can, especially when you never know when you may die and lose all your stuff! I always spread out my loot in different room high up in my house with a metal door for each level. Can never be too cautious.

When you join a server you have no choice in where you will be spawned and the world has no mini maps or compasses. The best way is to look at this map via and find a landmark path to follow. Every server map is the same unless it's a user made one I don't know about.


·         Picking a location to bunker down at: near a spot that spawns lots of rock nodes and has trees. Wide open areas are technically safer but annoying when trying to go out for harvesting runs.

·         Maintaining your house: we learned the hard way when it came to keeping your walls up. Over a few real time days they will start to fall apart. Just have wood in your inventory and walk up to the wall to use it and it will "fix" it to full health.

·         Turn off their defaulted grass. I heard chickens for the first few days and never could find chickens. So I thought it was a joke at first and there was no chickens and that's why everything I killed dropped chickens. I learned to turn off the grass via the console and vwa-la. Chickens do exist and it's easier to spot nodes/wood now! Command: grass.on true/false

·         Always shut doors behind you as fast as you can! If not, someone can sneak inside and steal from you.

There it is! My musing on Rust. I covered a lot, but not everything. So now it's your turn to jump into the game and experience it for yourself. I definitely recommend it. Especially with a friend or 2! :0)