Rust Wipe Week Plan: What to Do Each Day from Base to Raids

Introduction

A wipe in Rust is a sprint with a clear schedule. The server starts from zero, and within seven days it's obvious who's established themselves on the map and who spent the whole week running naked past other people's turrets. The difference between these two scenarios is almost never aim — it's planning. Strong teams have an answer to "what are we doing Wednesday evening," weak ones don't.

In fall 2025, Facepunch reworked progression: tier 2 and tier 3 workbenches now require blueprint fragments that spawn at monuments. This radically changed the wipe week. Before, you could hole up in your base and grind scrap for the tech tree; now you're forced to hit monuments and fight over them — otherwise no workbench 2 and no proper weapons.

Below is a working week plan: what to do on day one, where to get fragments and components on days two and three, when to transition to raiding, and how to properly close out the wipe without gifting your stockpile to neighbors. The plan is built for solo-duo but scales to a team — just faster.

Wipe Schedule: When It All Starts

Force wipe on official servers happens on the first Thursday of the month at 19:00 UK time — that's 18:00 UTC from late March to late October and 19:00 UTC the rest of the year. At that moment the map resets and, on modern official servers, learned blueprints. Community servers wipe more often: weekly, biweekly, or on the owner's own schedule.

For the exact countdown to the next wipe, check the wipe timer. Planning the week without this date is pointless: the difference between logging in during the first hour and logging in the next morning is the difference between a free base spot and a solid field of someone else's foundations.

Pick your server in advance: vanilla with 150-250 online gives a decent pace for solo, while on servers with 400+ players, base spots run out within twenty minutes.

Day 1: Base, TC, and First Workbench

Day one decides more than the rest of the week combined. The goal isn't "to farm" — it's to establish yourself.

Order of operations:

1. Tools and starting farm. Stone hatchet and pickaxe, then 3000-5000 wood and 2000-3000 stone.
2. Base location. Not on the beach and not right next to a major monument. Aim for 200-400 meters from a road, near ore nodes and water.
3. Workbench 1 — 500 wood + 100 metal fragments. Without it, almost nothing crafts.
4. Tool Cupboard and starter base, immediately upgraded to stone with a second airlock door.
5. Sleeping bag, ideally two: one in base, one near your farm zone.
6. Furnace and the first metal and sulfur smelt.

By the end of day one you should have: a stone base with TC and upkeep reserves, a sleeping bag, a sheet metal door, a bow or simple weapon, and a few hundred scrap. If there's no base — nothing else matters. And don't take a spot with a single approach: escape routes will matter more over the week than a nice view.

Days 2-3: Components, Monuments, and Blueprint Fragments

This is the most content-heavy part of the wipe. The goal — workbench 2, proper weapons, and a steady flow of components.

Blueprint fragments. Workbench 2 costs 500 metal fragments + 20 HQM + 5 basic blueprint fragments. Basic fragments are guaranteed at monuments: underwater labs give the most per run, major surface monuments like Power Plant, Train Yard, and Water Treatment give several each, smaller ones give one. They also drop from airdrops and with a small chance from crates, from scientists, and from metal detector searches along roads and rails.

This leads to the main feature of the new meta: a monument route matters more than a scrap farm. Build a loop of three to four monuments you can run without hazmat or in a cheap kit, and cycle it.

What to collect in parallel:

• Components — gears, pipes, springs, sheets, tech trash. They're in barrels, crates, and on roads and are needed for all weapons.
• Scrap — research, Outpost purchases, tech tree.
• HQM — 20 units for workbench 2, and the cost only grows from there.
• Sulfur — start stockpiling immediately, even if you don't plan a raid this week. Gunpowder is made in advance.

What to research first: sheet metal door, medical syringe, key tools, then weapons for your playstyle. Don't spread thin: a researched item you never use is wasted scrap.

By the end of day three, the goal: workbench 2, automatic or semi-automatic weapon, armor set, expanded base with honeycomb, and enough resources for at least a couple days of upkeep.

Mid-Week: Workbench 3, Raids, and Defense

Days 4-5 are the server's peak activity. Everyone who survived is armed, and the map shifts from "survival" mode to "conflict" mode.

Workbench 3 costs 1000 metal fragments + 100 HQM + 5 advanced blueprint fragments. Advanced fragments drop at heavy monuments: Launch Site, Military Tunnels, missile silo, oil rigs, underwater labs, plus Cargo Ship crates, CH47 drops, and hackable crates. There's also a workaround — 20 basic fragments convert into 1 advanced, meaning 100 basics replace a heavy monument run. For solo, that's often more honest than trying to clear Launch Site.

Raids. Mid-week is the optimal window: targets already have loot but don't yet have full defenses of turrets and multi-layer stone.

• Scouting is mandatory. Watch activity: lights, crafting sounds, fresh nodes around the base. An empty base with a big TC is the best target.
• Count the entry cost. A raid that costs more than the loot is not a raid — it's charity.
• Go in at night. Explosions are heard, but no one sees where raiders came from or went.
• Don't raid a clan as a duo. The counter-raid comes faster than you can haul the loot.

Defense. In parallel with raiding, fortify: turrets, external walls, a second TC airlock, loot spread across the base. The mid-week rule — never keep your entire progress in one box and one base. A second stash house in another map grid costs pennies and saves the wipe.

End of Wipe: Dumping, Stashes, and Preparation

Days 6-7 are when the logic flips to the opposite. There's nothing left to stockpile: everything left in boxes by force wipe disappears.

What to do:

• Spend the sulfur. Gunpowder, rockets, satchels. Late-wipe raids are cheaper in consequences: they can only revenge you until the wipe.
• Put loot into fights. The best kit is the one you're wearing. Use good weapons, don't "save them for later."
• Finish the tech tree. Scrap has no value at wipe end; on official servers learned blueprints reset anyway, but on community servers with blueprint persistence, this is a direct head start for the next wipe.
• Find teammates for the next wipe. At week's end people are free and talkative — it's easiest to make deals right now.

The only things that carry through a wipe are experience and your team. Everything else turns to ash exactly at 19:00 on the first Thursday.

FAQ

Is it mandatory to log in during the first hour of the wipe?

For competitive play — yes, because the best base spots and the grids closest to monuments are taken in the first twenty to thirty minutes. But logging in a few hours later also works: there's less free space, but the map already has other people's barrels, unfinished bases, and corpses, and the first wave of monument fights has died down. The worst option is joining on day two — resource competition remains, but the head start is already lost.

What to do if my base got raided on Wednesday?

Don't restart at the same spot and don't quit the server. First, check your stashes: if you spread loot across multiple points, you already have starting capital. Then — a quick small base in another grid, workbench 1 rebuilt, and a monument loop for fragments. Mid-week is the most accessible time for catching up: components are plentiful on the map, and some players have already burned out and are playing at half effort.

Where can a solo get blueprint fragments without heavy monuments?

Basic fragments are collected at mid-tier monuments without serious resistance — Water Treatment, Train Yard, Power Plant, and small monuments give one or two per run. You can also get them from airdrops, with a chance from crates and barrels, and from metal detector searches along roads. For advanced fragments, a solo player is usually better off with conversion: twenty basics turn into one advanced, and that's safer than assaulting Launch Site.

Should I play on weekly servers instead of monthly ones?

Depends on how much time you're willing to invest. Weekly wipes give a fairer start and lots of PvP on even footing, but leave no time for electricity, farms, and big bases. Monthly ones let you build a full project, but by week three the gap between clans and solos becomes insurmountable. Optimal for solo — weekly or biweekly wipes.

Conclusion

A wipe week splits into four phases: establish (day 1), collect blueprint fragments and components (days 2-3), fight and fortify (days 4-5), spend everything you've stockpiled (days 6-7). Each phase has its own goal, and the biggest mistake is getting stuck in the previous one: sitting on scrap when it's time to raid, or hoarding sulfur until the wipe when there's nothing left to spend it on.

After the blueprint fragments update, the plan got stricter: base-sitting no longer works as a strategy because workbenches only unlock through monuments. But the goal also became clearer — a monument route, a steady component flow, loot distributed across the map, and a deliberate resource dump at the end. Follow the schedule, and the wipe stops being a lottery.

Sources: rust.facepunch.com/news (Meta Shift update, October 2025), wiki.facepunch.com/rust (Workbench Level 1-3, Blueprint Fragments), rusthelp.com (workbench recipes), corrosionhour.com (update previews), blueprint fragment farming guides (shockbyte.com, physgun.com), Facepunch force wipe schedule.