New Player Guide

1. How to Connect
2. What is PVE Rust?
3. 10x Rates — What Changes
4. Your First Hour
5. Skill Tree
6. Raidable Bases
7. Events: Heli, Bradley, Cargo, Oil Rig
8. Wipe Day
9. Rules Summary
10. Getting Help

Easiest way: click the Connect via Steam button on the home page or below. Steam will open and drop you straight into the server.

Manual: In Rust, open the in-game console with F1 and type:

Or search for Rust Nation in the in-game community servers list.

PVE stands for Player versus Environment. On Rust Nation, you cannot attack or raid other players' bases. Your loot is safe inside your walls. The enemies you'll fight are NPCs — the guards at raidable bases, the crew on the Cargo Ship, Bradley, Patrol Helicopter, and the scientists at Oil Rigs and monuments.

This changes the feel of the game significantly. You can leave your base and know it'll be there when you get back. You can build wherever you want without worrying about being offline-raided overnight. Collaboration happens naturally because there's no incentive to compete against other players for resources.

You can still compete — the leaderboard tracks kills, loot containers, headshots, and points. But winning doesn't require taking from anyone else.

10x gather rates mean every rock hit, every tree chopped, and every hemp plant gathered gives ten times the vanilla yield. A full stone wall that takes an hour to farm on a vanilla server takes six minutes here.

In practice this means:

• You can build a real base on day one. Wood and stone are plentiful within the first thirty minutes of playing.
• Blueprints matter more than materials. Getting the research table up early and starting to unlock BPs is the real progression.
• The economy is generous. Don't hoard resources — spend them. Build bigger, experiment, try things. You can always farm more.
• Craft time is normal. Gather rates are boosted but craft time stays vanilla unless you invest in Skill Tree nodes that reduce it.

Here's a straightforward path to getting established quickly:

1. Spawn and gather immediately. Hit trees and rocks while you run — you'll fill your inventory fast. Aim for 3,000 wood and 2,000 stone before you stop.
2. Find a flat spot away from monuments to place your first foundation. Monuments attract NPC traffic — useful later, but a bad neighbor when you're first setting up.
3. Build a 2×2 or 2×1 starter base with a lock. Code locks require metal fragments (craft a hatchet first, hit some metal ore nodes). Get a door with a code lock on it before you log out.
4. Craft a research table and workbench level 1 as soon as you have the resources. Start researching anything useful you find — the tech tree opens up fast at 10x.
5. Open the Skill Tree menu (type /st in chat or check the keybind in settings). Spend your first few points in gathering efficiency — it compounds everything else.
6. Find an Easy Raidable Base once you have a weapon. They're marked on your map. Clear the NPCs inside and grab the loot — it usually has components, materials, and scrap to accelerate your research.

The Skill Tree plugin lets you earn XP through normal gameplay and spend it on permanent passive upgrades. XP comes from gathering resources, crafting items, killing NPCs, opening loot crates, and more.

How to open it: type /st in chat.

Recommended early nodes:

• Woodcutter / Miner — increases wood and ore yields. Already farming at 10x, these push it even further.
• Instant Craft — removes crafting time on many items. A significant quality of life improvement mid-game.
• Combat nodes — if you're planning on running raidable bases regularly, investing here makes the NPC fights faster and cheaper on ammo.

Your Skill Tree progress is tracked per player. When the server wipes, your points reset and you start fresh — but the wipe is a feature, not a bug. Early wipe is when the economy is freshest and the most loot is available.

Raidable Bases are pre-built NPC-guarded structures scattered across the map. They replace raiding other players as the primary PVE challenge and loot source. There are four difficulty tiers:

Raidable bases appear on your map as markers. They despawn after a set time if unclaimed. Once you start a raid, it's yours until it's cleared — no one can steal your raid mid-progress.

These are the endgame PVE challenges. Each one requires preparation and decent gear, but the loot is worth it.

• Patrol Helicopter — spawns on a timer and patrols the island. Bring high-velocity rifle ammo and take it down while keeping moving. Drops a locked crate with high-tier gear.
• Bradley APC — patrols Launch Site. Rockets or explosive ammo are required. High loot density, but the site is also populated with scientists.
• Cargo Ship — spawns at sea and circles the island for roughly an hour. Board it, clear the scientist crew, and claim the crates before it despawns. Bring a boat or dive off shore to reach it.
• Small Oil Rig — accessible by boat. Three floors of NPC guards culminating in a locked crate on top. Doable solo mid-game.
• Large Oil Rig — harder version with heavier NPC resistance and better rewards. Easier with two or more players.

Watch the in-game notifications for event spawns. The server announces when major events start.

The server wipes on the first Thursday of every month at 2:00 PM EST (7:00 PM UTC). Wipe day resets the map, all player inventories, all buildings, and all Skill Tree progress. Blueprint wipes happen less frequently.

What to do before wipe: spend your resources. Craft items, gift things to new players, run as many raidable bases as you can. Anything in your inventory or base disappears at wipe time.

What to do on wipe day: the server is at its most active. Pop on early, farm aggressively, and race to get your base up before the server fills up. Early wipe loot — unclaimed barrels, boxes, and monuments — is at its richest.

Wipe announcements go out on Discord ahead of time, including a link to the new map so you can scout locations before you even connect. Join the Discord to get notified.

See the full schedule on the Wipe Calendar.

The short version: don't cheat, don't harass, don't raid other players, and don't make your Steam profile private. The full rules are on the Rules page.

Bans are issued by Tux and are not negotiable for cheating. For everything else, if you think you were banned unfairly, reach out on Discord.

The best place to ask questions is the Discord server. Other players are generally helpful, and Tux checks in regularly.

If something is broken on the server — a plugin isn't working, an event didn't spawn, a raidable base is bugged — report it in Discord so it can be fixed before it affects more players.