Starter Bases

Starter Bases are meant to be built on wipe day with the material that you farmed with your rock. Thus, they do not assume any blueprint initially, and they are designed to get your loot safe quickly. That means, they often sacrifice long-term efficiency or expandability. That's not a problem though, as you can just build a second base as main base. It's always useful to have more than one base.

The Mini Fort

The Mini Fort is a 2x1 starter base with a shooting floor, which I personally use all the time. The shooting floor allows you to check the surroundings before leaving the base, fight off door campers, and allow to place more items, such as sleeping bags, the research table, or the repair bench -- things a normal 2x1 cannot do.

The THrifty Scot

The Thrifty Scot is my go to starter if the Mini Fort is too small. Since it splits the TC from the main loot room, we can apply an efficient loot room design, providing as much storage space as you would normally find in a 2x2. Like the Mini Fort, the Thrifty Scot can be built with a wooden shooting floor.

2x1 With Triangle Airlock

The 2x1 with a triangle airlock is the probably the most common starter base in Rust. This is my take on how to design it in a very efficient way.

Patch Notes: thanks to the April 2019 update, you will only be able to place the research bench once you place a garage doors in front of the loot room. This video explains the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhXu7iuXFNI

2x2 Starter Base

The 2x2 is the other most common starter-base configuration in Rust. This 2020 video shows how to go from spawning naked on the beach to building this 2x2, and turn it into a 15-rocket raid.

UPKEEP: 2k Stone, 1k Metal Fragments

2019 Version of this base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3he2dIopG1o

Stability-Sealed Clan Starter Base

Not only small groups need starter bases, clans need them as well. This clan starter base that uses a stability exploit to seal of the entrance, turning the base into a 12 rocket raid without requiring any BPs. It re-introduced a rarely-used stability exploit, which is an advance of my roof seal offline raid protection to prevent cheap door raiding.

The base doubles well as small group main base.

UPKEEP: 3k Stone, 1.2k Metal Fragments, 9 HQM

The Phoenix

The Phoenix introduced a novel stability seal bunker technique that uses roofs on twig half walls. The base is one of the larger starter bases. It provides protection from 33-60 satchels without requiring any blueprints. This makes the base ideal for the early game just after a blueprint wipe.

Upkeep: 2.3k stone, 938 frags, 5 HQM

PATCH NOTES: the roof stability seal no longer works in Building 4.0