Uploaded April 2017 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
Would you rather have an 8 C4 base or a 4 C4 base? Well, that's a no brainer, right? But then, what if the 8 C4 base gets raided every wipe and the 4 C4 base never ever gets raided?
Too often Rust base builders live in theory and don't actually build most of their designs in game to test them in real game conditions. I built my Scattered Rocks design on the Reddit server and it survived a two week wipe that saw weekend pops at 200 with queues.
I took away three lessons.
Lesson One: My Scattered Rocks design works because it makes it very clear to raiders exactly how many explosives they need to get to the loot and so raiders can realize that it's not going to be worth it for them. It's not always a good idea to hide your base's strength. If raiders start raiding your base and realize halfway through that the base is much stronger than they thought, they might just grab more explosives since they already started even if they end up regretting it.
Lesson Two: Raiders are looking for an easy raid. My sniping tower was raided three times (all I had in there was a bow and some seeds). Raiders avoided my loot rooms because they could see it was not worth it. The raiders attacked the tower because they thought they might hit a centralized loot room. They were wrong, but we can take the lesson that if a base looks like it might be weak but loaded raiders will attack it.
Lesson Three: My prison cell gate airlock really works. The outside door of my base is a prison cell gate which is flanked by windows with metal bars. Nobody can door camp you without you seeing them and if someone kills you inside the airlock, you can recover your gear.
Would you rather have an 8 C4 base or a 4 C4 base? Well, that's a no brainer, right? But then, what if the 8 C4 base gets raided every wipe and the 4 C4 base never ever gets raided?
Too often Rust base builders live in theory and don't actually build most of their designs in game to test them in real game conditions. I built my Scattered Rocks design on the Reddit server and it survived a two week wipe that saw weekend pops at 200 with queues.
I took away three lessons.
Lesson One: My Scattered Rocks design works because it makes it very clear to raiders exactly how many explosives they need to get to the loot and so raiders can realize that it's not going to be worth it for them. It's not always a good idea to hide your base's strength. If raiders start raiding your base and realize halfway through that the base is much stronger than they thought, they might just grab more explosives since they already started even if they end up regretting it.
Lesson Two: Raiders are looking for an easy raid. My sniping tower was raided three times (all I had in there was a bow and some seeds). Raiders avoided my loot rooms because they could see it was not worth it. The raiders attacked the tower because they thought they might hit a centralized loot room. They were wrong, but we can take the lesson that if a base looks like it might be weak but loaded raiders will attack it.
Lesson Three: My prison cell gate airlock really works. The outside door of my base is a prison cell gate which is flanked by windows with metal bars. Nobody can door camp you without you seeing them and if someone kills you inside the airlock, you can recover your gear.
