How to Raid in Rust [Rust Raiding Guide]

To survive in a survival game as wild and brutal as Rust, you need to eliminate your enemies and get as many resources as possible. The easiest way to do this is to raid other players' bases. There are multiple ways and methods to raid in Rust and there are many different mechanics. You will need different raid tools or amounts of explosives to blast wooden doors and metal doors, and the same goes for wall types.

While doing all this, you also need to pay attention to counter raiders. Counter raiders want to take your raid away from you, complete it on their own, and take all the loot for themselves.

Rust Raiding Tools

Semi-Automatic Rifle

Semi-Automatic Rifles are one of the best weapons in Rust because they do decent damage and can be used for many different things. For starters, you can use the Semi-Automatic Rifle for raiding, and you can do it with Satchel Charges, Rockets, or Timed Explosive Charges without making much noise. You need to craft Explosive Ammo and when you attach this ammo to your rifle, your bullets can break doors and walls. It is not very smart to break walls with just these bullets, so they are usually used to break doors. They are also the quickest way to break the bases' Tool Cupboard.

When you attach a silencer and these bullets to your Semi-Automatic Rifle, no one can hear you and your chances of being counter-raided are greatly reduced. With this method, you can easily destroy the front door of the bases and reach the loot rooms.

Satchel Charge

Satchel Chargers are one of the most used explosives in the game and the reason why they are used so often and so much is that they can be crafted from Workbench Tier 1 and are not very difficult to craft. However, even though it is effective, it comes with a few drawbacks, one of which is that it makes a lot of noise, and the second is that it is an unstable and primitive explosive, so sometimes the fuse can go out like the Beancan Granade.

Despite this, it's still one of the best early-game explosives you can choose. It takes 4 Satchel Charges to destroy the Sheet Metal Door. To craft 4 satchels, you need a total of 1,920 melted sulfur.

Timed Explosive Charge

Timed Explosive Charges are more difficult and complicated to craft, but they are more powerful and you usually spend less sulfur than Satchel Charges and Explosive Ammo. To learn the Timed Explosive Charge blueprint you need 500 Scrap, if you want to learn it from Workbench Tier 3 it will cost you 2,125 Scrap.

However, it is not right to use Timed Explosive Charge for every situation, for example, if you only want to blow up a Sheet Metal Door, you should use another explosive instead, because if you use it on the door, half of the damage will be wasted. Timed Explosive Charge deals 550 damage and Sheet Metal Doors have 250 health, so it makes more sense to break a wall with C4. You can break a stone wall with just 2 C4, which will cost you 4,400 sulfur.

One of the most important skills in the game is to be aware of the raid cost in Rust, you should enter the bases as cheaply as possible and spend fewer explosives.

Rocket Launcher

Rocket Launchers are the best way to blast multiple walls, as the rockets do splash damage and can break many walls at once. It doesn't matter what kind of wall it is if you want to raid a big base through its walls, you should definitely choose Rocket Launchers. Rockets are the best way to blast stone walls, metal walls, and even high-quality metal walls. Rockets require a lot more material than other options, but when you consider that you can break 4 walls at once, it's well worth it. If you place 4 rockets at the exact intersection of 4 different walls, you can easily break all 4 walls with splash damage.

The Rocket Launcher costs 500 Scrap if you learn it directly from the Research Bench, and 2,300 Scrap if you learn it from the Workbench Tier 2. The Rocket, on the other hand, costs 125 Scrap to learn directly from the Research Bench and 2,250 Scrap from Workbench Tier 3.

Flame Thrower

Flame Thrower is often used in the early game, especially in the early days of the Rust wipe. This is because everyone is just starting the game and some players don't yet have enough material to put Sheet Metal Door. Therefore, they use Wooden doors, or Wood Walls, which create a suitable ground for the Flame Thrower raid, and it only requires Low-Grade Fuel.

It costs 125 Scrap to learn Flame Thrower directly from the Research Bench and 1,110 Scrap to learn it from Workbench Tier 2. Flame Throwers are of little use other than to break wooden bases.

Best Rust Raiding Tips

Tip 1: Make Your Preparations

Knowing how to raid in Rust is very important to avoid frustration. In order not to experience this disappointment, you should make your raid preparations well, and the best time for this is Rust night times. Craft at least 2 armor combinations and weapons per person and plenty of Medical Syringes to spawn again if you die.

Then craft 2 doors, 3 keylocks, and a Tool Cupboard. The reason for this is to take control of the base as fast as possible. Enter the base and quickly break the Tool Cupboard and place your own, then immediately close the outer doors and place the keylocks so that the base is safe and your group is not vulnerable to outside threats. You can use Explosive Ammo or Fire Arrows to quickly break the Tool Cupboard.

Tip 2: Build a Raid Base

If the base you are raiding is far from your own base, build a small storage base near the target base. Place beds in this base and store your spare gear sets, weapons, and Medical Syringes in it so that if you die, you can quickly spawn in this base, re-gear, and return to combat immediately.

The biggest advantage of this is that if you die, you have a chance to return to the battlefield immediately and regain control before everything is over. Also, if you successfully finish the raid, you can store the items you win in this base and then move them to the main base.

Tip 3: Avoid Spending Unnecessary Explosive

Minimizing the use of explosives by exploiting the weaknesses of the enemy's base is one of the most important skills. This is not something that will happen instantly, you just have to plan where you will enter the base and consider its weaknesses before raiding. For example, if you see a soft side wall, it would be good for you to break this soft side wall with Jackhammers, not with explosives, and thus you will use fewer explosives.

Tip 4: Make Sure the Base is Active

Making sure that the base is active, means that you make sure that these base owners log in to the game regularly and bring materials to their base constantly, you don't want to raid an empty base. There are multiple ways to figure this out, a few of them is to know the nicknames of the players living in your target base and check how active they are on the server, or you can put a bed near this base and check if the enemies are active by spawning on this Sleeping Bag from time to time.

If you want to learn in more detail and other methods how you can do the most efficient raids with the least amount of explosives, you can check our article "Raid Cost in Rust and How to Reduce It?".

If you're a fan of Rust and thrill-seeker, you might want to learn more about Bandit Camp, a Rust-themed gambling site. Just remember to gamble responsibly!