Typically solo rust players are unable to gather resources at rates equivalent to groups or clans because they are unable to hold down monuments and farm discreetly to get established, however the fishing village and open ocean boast a plethora of opportunities to progress in less conventional manners.
Introduction
Rust is a game of many possibilities. The goal of every wipe is to accumulate the most resources through brutal player to player combat and by looting contentious points of interest. But what if there was a different way to progress. Out of the line of fire of the try hard zergs, a peaceful safe haven that from the moment you wake up on the beach, offers you opportunity and riches with little risk and high reward. This is a comprehensive guide on how to embrace the fishing village and become a sea faring grub.
The Fishing Village
The Rust map is home to a great variety of eye catching monuments, but none are as humble and as frequently overlooked as the Fishing Village. Home to a number of shops and quest giving NPC’s the Fishing Village has utility that often goes unused.
There are typically 3 Fishing Villages on the average rust map, 2 small and one large. While rust maps are randomly generated with the exception of a few limitations, there is a high chance of a Fishing Village being extremely close if not directly next to a spawn beach.
The Fishing Village also is home to 2 NPC’s. Every fishing village has them, and they are extremely underutilized, and a great way to get a footing in a grub/solo wipe. They are as follow…
The Fisherman
The first NPC to greet you upon entrance will be the Fisherman. He offers 3 quests, which each offer rewards that can be a boon to a fast start.
1. Tackle the Day-
The Fisherman will give you a fishing rod and 15 grubs if you go to a nearby beach and claim his bait and tackle from a box, similar to the the Lumberjack and his vodka. This feeds into the next mission.
2. Go Fish-
Go Fish offers a Kayak and a Paddle, which can serve as a valuable mode of transport early in wipe. All you have to do is collect 3 fish using the fishing rod and 15 bait you claimed from the earlier.
3. Oiled Up-
The Fisherman will offer you a 3rd and final quest. He offers 100 scrap in exchange for 100 crude oil. At first, it is easy to get taken aback by this offer, as 100 crude oil is 300 low grade, a hefty price for a mere 100 scrap, however, this is an excellent deal especially when starting a wipe. The bandit camp offers crude oil for scrap at a 6:1 Ratio, making it among the worst exchange rates in the game, especially compared to the 1:1 Ratio offered by the Fisherman. The ocean nearby the Fishing Village also is home to junk piles, which on average hold between 1-2 oil barrels. The oil barrel loot table consists of approximately 15 crude oil and 5 low grade fuel. This would require a player on average to hit 7 barrels in the ocean in exchange for 100 scrap. This values each red barrel at 15 scrap + 5 low grade fuel, which essential makes these barrels the second most scrap yielding loot-able in the game.
The Dive Master
The Dive master offers a series of quests that offer much higher tier rewards for a little more involved tasks than the Fisherman. The Dive Master offers quests that unlike the Fisherman, are not procedurally unlocked. They offer two quests…
1. Shark Hunt-
Go to a sunken ship (“dive site”) and kill a shark, in return for a jackhammer, 3 Medsticks, and 25 scrap. The sharks are very hard to kill, due to their exceptional speed, and hit hard especially when wearing low protection scuba gear. I usually skip this quest unless I feel exceptionally confident or have lucked into a speargun, but I typically run straight to Fishing Village and start progressing from spawn. This mission offers excellent rewards but is quite difficult to execute.
2. Underwater Bounty-
In my opinion, this is the best and most lucrative mission in the game. It is safe and easy, as you can scope out shipwrecks for sharks and players from the surface and each wreck offers an excellent quarry of components. The reward for diving for and releasing 10 crates is a pump shot gun, the powerful tier 2 close-range weapon. This offers a number of opportunities and gives you the upper hand in many primitive and early game engagements, and can be an excellent play-making tool to begin your solo-snowball.
Shops and Ocean Progression
The fishing village shops are among the most useless in the game. The one useful set of items in these stores is the diving tank, flippers, wetsuit, and goggles. In order to fulfill the Underwater bounty and Shark Hunt missions, players should purchase at least the diving tank and flippers, with costs of 35 and 25 scrap respectively to reach the shipwrecks quickly and safely. As a solo, these are also valuable escape tools if caught out by groups or better armed players in the open ocean. I firmly believe these two items, and a melee weapon are the greatest play-making tools in Rust with the exception of the Eoka.
Ocean Contents and Scrap Yields
The purpose of this section is primarily to discuss the loot tables and monuments that inhabit the ocean and seafloor, a lot of the information on the monuments is very rudimentary and most players with 500+ hours will definitely know this information.
Junk Piles
The most common way to get scrap on the open ocean. These are nothing new, key facets of the ocean landscape that have been around since the ocean was reworked, but they are often overlooked.
Starting out a wipe it is common to break barrels around monuments and your base, as they are a great way to get scrap, cloth, and other resources in small amounts early game. However, roads receive far more foot traffic than a swathe of open ocean removed from any oil rigs or underwater labs. In a small, 4 seater boat approximately 1 Low Grade Fuel is used per square on the map. Each square can host a plethora of floating junk piles, which depending on the layout can hold anywhere from 1-4 oil barrels. Each oil barrel contains 5 Low Grade as well as crude oil, essentially allowing players to farm around the map for as long as they want, because it is extremely improbable that there will be no red barrels. Aside from that, regular barrels, toolboxes, and crates can spawn on these junk piles. Each can hold valuable components and scrap. The loot tables for each is attached, and can be found at https://rustlabs.com/ – [rustlabs.com]
Shipwrecks
Shripwrecks are excellent ways to gather scrap and components as well as complete the quests for the Dive Master. These, however, have a percent chance of being protected by sharks. These loot boxes require interaction to untie and then become loot-able once they float to the surface.
Underwater Labs
The labs are potentially one of the best ways to get scrap in the game during this current meta. They are protected by a few weaker scientists who do not clump up like the oil rig, so a determined solo with a bow a cloth could realistically clear it quickly. It has a great deal of custom crate and military crate spawns, as well as card and fuse puzzles. If you are the first to board the lab you can also run it with just a green card, as cards will spawn in the rooms similar to the single elite crate and green card that spawns on smoil. With the rewards claimed from the quest I usually like to recycle all my components at a lighthouse and try to get a green card, then take my pump shotgun and bow set down to try to clear labs and hold them for a while. This strategy works better with larger groups as waiting and looking for all crate respawns can take a while and require a lot of inventory space, but this is great for gun components if you have blueprints or just straight up scrap. Be careful if you are playing solo however, as these are extremely easy to control in a group of 3+ as there are only a select few entrances to the lab.
Oil Rigs
The most contested and loot rich environment in the ocean if not all of Rust. The favorite PvP location of many players holds a great deal of NPC scientists as well as a heavy scientist event triggered by beginning to unlock a highly desirable Chinook crate held in a room that requires keycard swipes. There is both a small and large oil rig.
Ocean Grubs Playbook
Who doesn’t love a little bit of grubbing?
Nobody, except the unfortunate victims of every rags to riches heist affectionately dubbed grubbing. The ocean is an extremely unique PvP environment as players swimming in water cannot discharge any weapons. This allows for easy escape from armed players using scuba suits as bullets do not travel effectively underwater. The possibilities for playmaking are endless in the open seas, so here are some common and effective strategies for solo goobers looking to up their loot intake.
Tips for grubbing oil rigs
A new strategy has been popularized on various platforms by creator Griff The Grub and it is one of the best and most efficient ways to steal Large Oil Rig for yourself. It revolves around using the vent system to lay in wait for more geared players to begin clearing the numerous heavy scientists from the large crane adjacent to the red card room and then killing them while they reload. The video is below.
Credits: Griff The Grub
When grubbing oil rigs I also like to preform some less efficient but equally diabolical plays. The dock area of each oil rig is slightly raised from the water, and thus breathable without a tank. If you approach low enough and stay within a certain line of sight the lower deck scientist will not aggro you. Then, wait until a team comes to counter. Sometimes you may need to hide under the water but the scuba tank will make noise so be sure to stagger the audio. There is about a 3 second timer before the sound prompt goes off so try to bob up and down just barely if u are worried about being seen. Then wait until the team starts to clear the rig and break their boat with a tool while they are shooting. Then wait. This usually takes a while because of the chinook timer and the clearing of the rig overall, but if you play your cards right you should be able to kill them with a melee tool as they try to swim away because they have no boat.
Oil rig and its waters have infinite potential to cheese a helpless full kit with a bone knife because they have nowhere to go. Flippers are necessary as it makes it much easier to chase and outmaneuver them. Make sure you have the highest damage melee weapon possible as to no let the fights drag out, as they have more time to get back on the rig. However with spears you can poke them through the grates of the rig dock.
Grubbing Labs
Frequently when I go to do a labs take I am often met with a foreign boat above the labs. Now instead of being disappointed by trying to go through a moon pool and getting killed, I would drive your boat about a square away to mimic leaving, then swim back and mount their boat. If these players came in a boat it is likely they are going down in scuba tanks, and thus will mount the boat from underneath. This way you can sit or crouch in the boat by the helm with the stash and attempt to shotgun/eoka them, and then pursue them with a tool underwater.
I hope you enjoy the Becoming A Pirate – Rust guide. This is all for now! If you have something to add to this guide or forget to add some information, please let us know via comment! We check each comment manually!
