Raid Rust bases with a plan.

Exact explosive costs shift slightly between game updates, so treat these as a starting reference, not gospel — check current patch notes before planning a big raid.

Bring more than the calculated minimum. A raid that stalls one wall short of the loot room because you underestimated is the single most common way raids go wrong. Look up crafting costs and stack sizes for Satchel Charges and Rockets in our item database.

Look for the softest side first — a wall of a lower tier than the rest usually means the owner ran out of resources or time partway through building. That's your entry point, not the front door.

An external Tool Cupboard, visible and unprotected, is often the fastest way to deny a base's building privilege entirely rather than breaching wall by wall.

Offline raiding avoids a firefight but takes longer and risks the owner logging back in mid-raid. Online raiding is faster but means fighting for what you're trying to take — decide which trade-off fits your group before you commit resources.

Loot fast and loot the highest-value containers first — vaults, large boxes, the tool cupboard's own stash. You may not get time to clear everything.

Watch for automated defenses — turrets, traps — and for the base owner returning. A raid isn't over until you're safely away with what you came for.

A lot of what gets a base raided has nothing to do with its walls. Where you build, how visible you are, and how much you advertise matters as much as wall tier. A base tucked away from open ground and major roads gets far less foot traffic than one sitting on a flat, obvious plot near a monument — fewer eyes on your build means fewer people who ever decide it's worth the explosives.

Keep your wall tier consistent on every side. A single lower-tier wall — the one you meant to upgrade later and never did — is exactly what an attacker is scanning for, and it turns a base that would otherwise cost a full rocket rotation into a one-wall problem. The tool cupboard deserves the same treatment: bury it behind multiple layers instead of leaving it reachable from outside, since losing building privilege partway through a raid is far worse than losing a single wall.

• Split high-value loot across more than one locked container or building — a successful breach should never mean a total loss.
• Place turrets and traps where they cover your likely entry points, not just your front door; they raise the time and resource cost of every attempt.
• Set up any early-warning tools your server allows so you get a warning the moment someone starts working on your walls, not after they're already inside.
• Avoid broadcasting your location through chat, vending machine names, or team recruitment — the fastest way to get found is to tell people where you are.

For the building side of this, see our honeycombing and TC upkeep guide. Tired of being raided on someone else's server? Get your own with our Rust server hosting plans.