The History of the Most Broken Metas in Rust 

I remember you could bind both scroll wheels to attack so you could spray M9 inhumanly fast

You forgot one of the biggest metas in the game. Survey charges and personal quarries. If you didn't have one you were considered weak.

Just want to confirm that yes no upkeep on TC's was a thing for a very long time. I still remember upkeep getting added and the outrage it caused as most of the building changes do.

Doors used to have a soft side so if you placed a door backwards they were super easy to melee. Can't forget about arrow raiding wooden doors either

when they added tech tree and mp5 was at the top of tier 3, I think that counts as a meta. with old recoil too, everyone was rolling mp5

6:29 torches used to deal fire damage and were basically one of the very rare fire damage sources in rust at the time wood is weaker to fire (and was much more so back then) which led torches that are cheap as hell to be stupidly good at breaking wood

Seeing rust legacy makes me so nostalgic. Especially the maps, it always felt like something out of a fallout game, you never get unique topography like that anymore

Something that wasnt mentioned were stone spears and water pipe. At one point a Stone spear headshot would almost kill (or even kill not 100% sure anymore) someone wearing a metal facemask. If you were just starting out on a server that was a fresh wipe then this was a way to get someone by suprise. Also waterpipes (and crossbows technically) used to have much shorter draw animations. So what alot of people did was load up like 3 or 4 waterpipes in your hotbar and cycle through them giving you basically something faster than a pumpshotgun. Also the same with crossbows as they used to be much stronger too back then, was not uncommong in early wipe to leave the base with 2 or 3 crossbows equiped before you had guns.

everytime i see the graphics from prime rust i get really nostalgic and i just wish that facepunch would allow us to switch versions like in minecraft

Back in 2015/16 i believe it was, you were also still able to place triangle foundations in square slots, which basically every base used. Also, back when TC's didn't have upkeep, the range of the TC was not tied to the structure, so for bigger bases you HAD to have multiple TC's, which could all be placed on the same building; the circle these TC's covered would only go up, not down, meaning you could have multiple TC's on top of each other, as long as you placed the top one's first!

I remember back in the day you could loot furnaces through walls if they weren't placed right. When icebergs first came out there where super op for a base. You couldn't place any twig or ladders if there was a tool cupboard by you. So if you found the right iceberg it was almost impossible to get up to. You used to be able to do some crazy stuff with TC's too.

one thing for the eco raiding was because doors had softsides back then so if there was a backwards door you could break it super easy with boneclubs

You forgot the spear meta, I don’t remember the year but everyone stopped using the bow and would just use like 3 spears and would throw them. Also hot swapping multiple pipe shotguns so you could shoot them really fast.

this brings back memorys... all the sick footprints for bases, an actually usable m9 (im talking after infinite dps nerf), good recoil and my lovely compund bow.... i think there sould be a t3 compund bow that can only be found but is as good as the old one

"old rust" is prime rust imo. Spent most of my hours in that golden era and the game just isnt the same anymore. So I'll try and clear up some things that I can remember. Crossbow was able to 1 shot head shot because armour worked like it does irl. It only provided protection to the areas covered. So the eyes and back of the head werent protected by the metal facemask. There was no upkeep. Decay worked based on door activity. If you didn't open/close a door on your base it would start to decay. You reset the decay timer by opening/closing doors. Eco raiding was mostly due to idiots putting doors on backwards, doors used to have a softside like walls do. But you still could hardside raid with bone clubs, you just needed a lot of guys. Torch did extra damage to wood when lit, it was like 10hp per hit but it ruined the durability really quickly. But if you had heaps of bags/nakeds you could get through wood pretty easily. While on the topic of wood, people would raid with bows because you could pick up arrows almost infinitely after shooting them into buildings/doors. So basically any naked iwth 5 arrows could break into any wood base. You could build bases on any monument. Clans tended to take larger ones. But places like airfield had loads of solos/duos living onto of the monument. You also forgot some other things from this era. Weapons not showing on player models, pipe draw time was super quick which let you stack a hotbar of them (spears were similar). There was also a point in time where you could softside the corners of walls on square foundations from outside the building. Raided so many 3x3s and 2x2s from outside with just pickaxes during that time. There were also heaps of other base metas/glitches. Glitching into rocks/foundations was super common. Anvil rock was prized like the old caves. Quarries and pumpjacks could also be placed anywhere, so clans would never have to leave their giant compounds (no upkeep remember). You could get low grade from teh pumpjacks to run them and use the extra to run the quarries, and there werent components back then. It was just learn the BP from frags/books and then make it with raw resources. Because TC range was based on the TC and not the building there was heaps of grubbing by placing TCs in triangles next to large clan compounds and then building in. Ramsey started out doing this in his old vids. But basically any big base could not have perfect TC coverage. It also meant that if someone had shitty TC placement you could grief them just by placing your own TC next to their base. There was also a very funny method with keys in the day. There used to only be like 100 unique keys and you had to have the key in your invent to open the door with the key lock. Because of this if every time you made a key lock it was set to one of those 100 keys. So by placing down heaps of key locks you could generate all the possible keys. Then you could just open any key lock on the map XD. Boosted tommy was also good for a bit. You also used to be able to rotate building pieces for an unlimited amount of time. This meant you could make bases with no doors where you entered by rotating foundation stairs. Was super good for wipe day to have a full stone base and not doors. There was an oversight at one point where you could place any item including crossbows into the crossbow attachment slot. So you could have an unlimited invent with crossbows. There were also some stupid ak metas in 2018 or so with muzzle breaks. Cant really recall. Just remember everyone bitchin about it. But I really stopped playing by then 2015-2017 was the best imo. Half foundations were also a thing, you could build pretty much infinitely high by jumping and placing them beneath you like in minecraft. When they first added ladders everyone started building ugly baes with floors hanging off the sides. Ladders were made because people used to use the half foundation method to build on top of really tall rocks that you could walk/jump up otherwise.

Dropboxes used to be lootable from the outside if you looked down on them from the right angle. When Rust first when from legacy to alpha, the building mechanic allowed you to eco-raid. There were 6 levels of building, and you'd have to hit the walls, etc.. with your hammer repeatedly to upgrade them, each hit of the hammer would take a small amount of resources. And if you hit the walls repeatedly, they would gradually downgrade. And yes, there was no upkeep in tool cupboards. There would be bases so big, it would drop your FPS to single digits. I know, cos we built many of them ;) And each base would need multiple TC's to extend their radius. You couldn't just put down one tool cupboard like you do today to have ownership of all things connecting to that foundation. They only extended so far and so high before you needed another.

The Hapis Cave bases were insane,. I've built (and raided) a lot back in the day, it was wild to see the different ways people approached it. Here's a few things I remember from "old rust": - Flamethrower meta when they were first implemented into the game. You would hold down the LMB just long enough to get the fire to "stick" to the wooden walls, and then it would drip down and set the floor on fire. This floor fire would then do crazy ticking damage to the wood walls and you could raid bases almost entirely AFK. Just dab a little fire here and there and let it do the work for you. - "Softsiding" on stone walls where you turned your graphics down to their lowest setting and it allowed you to target the soft side of a wall where they met at 90 degrees, and pickaxe your way into bases much quicker. - You could squeeze out one more slot of smelting in the large furnaces too by starting something smelting, and then replacing the charcoal with one of the smelted items. It would smelt all slots and literally spit the charcoal out of the top of the chimney (before they changed smelting). And as others have stated yeah there was no building decay in "old rust". The TC just gave you building privilege within a certain radius of the TC which resulted in a LOT of abandoned bases on monthly wipe servers. People who knew they were bored of the game and would stop playing would just empty their chests onto the floor so it despawned but the base would remain. People would waste TONS of C4/Rockets raiding it to find it completely empty.

Kinda crazy how it all changes so quick. I started playing in early 2015 and mainly played legacy (even after new rust released) because my pc was awful. Only got to play new rust in the beginning of 2016 a little bit before the XP update. Even after 2016 the game is so different. It’s kinda sad in a way because we will never have the game we played back then back, but hey that’s how it goes, things change and I’m happy rust has gotten the attention it deserves.

ah miss 2018-2020 rust, such good times

This is such a massive throwback, in early 2014-2015 rust, the p250 being completely cracked. This makes my 22.8k hour rust player mind, so happy. The wall stacking in early rust, i have a picture of me and my friends figuring out how to place 6 triangles inside of 1 square.

You forgot the meta where when rust first came out with heavy armor it had no slowness and no restrictions, it was a metal kit on steroids and people would only use the chestpiece

I've not played rust for more than 200 hours and not played in YEARS but these videos are brilliant, straight to the point and very easy to follow, keep it up bro

Dope video, dude. Brought back a lot of memories!

Hapis caves were insane. Lived in the cave under site a multiple times the entrance to the cave is on the road with the monument above you. You could hear people recycle from the cave and talk to them.

What about the 50 rads meta where you could sit on top of launch site 24/7, that was very fun

Great video Gamesense! Learned some new stuff from this one, crazy how the meta's have changed over the years.

nice video, zprotz :) - for Old Rust I would add: TC/wood door raiding with bow and arrows, multiple crossbow/waterpipe in hotbar meta (because you insta swapped them), and tower raiding (building huge towers to jump into compounds) [and yes, you were right.. there was no upkeep in TCs. you couldn't even open up a TC until 2017-2018]

Started playing in late 2015, I remember you could eco-raid with bows. I can't remember if stone walls were affected but I do remember a few wooden bases I raided just shooting arrows at the walls before they broke. It would only take around 5 mins as a solo. EDIT: Oh and those stacked walls/doors you showed in old rust were broken as hell. We used a base named beyblade if i recall correctly and changed it alittle to have so many stacked doors. Those hapis cave bases were something else too. You'd always have a tc placed at the entrance and one right in the back so they would overlap. Had a mate that was beast at building in there and would do a mini courtyard between the entrance and the bunker end of the cave. Or you would just seal off the front and use that hidden entrance at the top of the cave.

Correction, until 2017 upkeep wasn't a thing, that's right, but bases would still decay, the way it worked was that there was a timer that restarted every time you opened a door, so that way inactive bases would eventually decay, it took around 3/4 iirc. Also when upkeep initially came out it was EXTREMELY expensive, much more than it is now, there was a huge backlash from the community so they changed it to what it is now which is a lot better. Edit: I'm watching the video as I write this so I feel like correcting certain things as it goes on. Yes you could build walls very close to each other, that was basically the norm when it came to high level bases but there was a very important reason for it, back then singular walls were much easier to raid, stone requiring 2 C4s like now, but so did sheet metal, while armored (which by the way was even more expensive than it is now) required just 3 C4 to go through, making any base hard to raid required layers upon layers of honeycomb or some rather smart techniques such as making loot rooms as high as possible so multiple people would be needed to reach them (you couldn't use ladders back then) unless the TC was taken. As for the Crossbow being one shot against HQM, that was true in very early versions of experimental, this lasted up to early 2016 due to the way armor worked, basically the actual mesh of the armor was what actually protected you and the gaps in it were completely unarmoured, HQM helmets basically only protected from the front and bucket helmets were actually extremely viable back then because they were the only ones which gave complete 360° protection, I kind of miss that feature actually

The most memorable part to me over the years was the P2/Crossy meta. You're correct, full kits were vulnerable to 1 shots from Crossy and Rust PvP blew up at the time due to the primary weapon being an early tech pistol which in certain scenarios was way more effective than 70% of firearms. Had fun with my friends running around feeling like a military officers giving each other field updates with our pistols and swords.

In Rust legacy you could also place a foundation with some boxes on and a sleeping bag, then place multiple ramps on top of it (they stacked) and f1 kill and respawn inside, it was basically completely un-raidable, you could also shoot out of it and loot out of it but not the opposite way round, this too was a very broken meta at the time. There was one way to kill players inside of the ramp base, if they didn't stand in the correct place their head would bob out the top and you could headshot them, but most people knew this and either crouched or stood in the correct place. Also 2013 Rust (Alpha) was different to 2015 Rust, you could place doors and a few other structure related things basically anywhere, like doors in the middle of fields, barricade in bases etc, you could even stack metal doors which was a meta at the time, not literally stack them but they didn't require to be in a doorway so you could place them like a cm apart from each other, effectively stacking them, was very op.

There was actually a cave that you could place boxes and I think even build in on the legacy rust map as well. It was essentially invisible from the outside too with a single narrow choke point of entry. It became a highly contested spot on every server once people learned about it

This was a fun trip down memory lane, m9 used to be peak speed run strats just recycle buy one and recycle grenades for ammo and you can crush early wipe. the bone club meta was unreal, doors used to have softsides as well making the strat more effective along with bow raiding.

Great Vid and watch. Just wanted to point out before the window mini glitch you used to be able to fly to the top of Power, Train and Water and loot the card rooms. When rust was fun 😢

Seeing the old Legacy meta was such a trip down memory lane. So many memories of building cliff bases and camping on high with a bolty

Maaan fuuunk, the 7:45 LR taps sound and those clifs unlocked such an imense and beautiful nostalgia, dam i miss those days.

Thanks for nostalgia, I remember doing those old deep cave bases alot.

To say i've experienced every meta from 2015 till now, Forgot 90% of these so this video is a massive nostalgia hit.

Ah yes. It got darker the less HP a part had. I distinctly remember how you could eco raid any stone base. There was a bug in the game that allowed you to soft side pick any foundation from the outside through a tiny pixel gap between the wall and foundation. Man I've spent some nights with that shit to rid of asshats who zerged me down like no tomorrow... For them, there literally wasn't. That part of Rust was the most fun to me. As the Meta was basically changing every Month. New cat and new mouse. So much fun. However... I give modern Rust the Buildings. They look much more aesthetically pleasing compared to the ladder safe roof overhangs we had to use back then.

ngl i like the immersion of being outside in the blistering sun then going into a dark building and not having immediate great vision

Keep it up! You helped me out with blender from the start!

2:20 Yeah bases used to have no upkeep and very loose terms for stability, I had a Rust clan from right when “new rust” was released and made a mega 10x10 base, this was also when there were no ladders (there were but could only be placed inside your own base) or helicopters or anything so we had mini bases on like floor 10 of our 10x10 that held our loot and it was just so insane to even attempt to raid

You used to be able to swipe airdrops while they were dropping using mini’s for a while, was really funny to deny them server-wide.

I got into rust right at the end of old rust. I'm so glad I got to live through those days that definitely was the best version. 8k hours later, still having fun. Yes that hapis cave was the best cave to live in.

I remember no upkeep rust. U used to be able to tell how long ago a svr wiped just by the haphazard husks of bases that were once built, raided, then abandoned. Walls and foundation of a once secure building just plagued any free space on the map.

I remember that during the level system one member of ones clan always needed to do the last hit on farm stuff like nodes to progress as fast as possible on levels.

You mentioned one shotting with crossys, to go a little bit deeper the metal facemask used to have holes in where arrows and bullets could hit and deal full damage.

Nice video I really enjoyed watching it!

Before TCs required resources to upkeep, decay used to be based on whether or not a door was opened in the area. Large bases would sometimes have pointless doors that the owners would make sure to just open once a day

The occasion with the M9 was actually the same with revolvers. I remember having a spamming macro and a silencer on a revolver. Most fun times ever hahaha

When oil and minis started to be a thing I used to buy some fuel in outpost, find mini and go to secret on large. It was broken af on full server. Every few minutes I got shitload of loot

Used to be able to put code locked double chests in small procedurally generated rocks and still access them without the ability for someone to destroy it. Secondly, can’t forget the various incarnations of the blueprints system and the metas for things like gaining exp.

It was for a very small amount of time but you used to be able to loot drop boxes through walls if it was placed high enough. had some fun wipes with that one

I have 14K hours and I remember that when Nailgun was added to Rust you was able to raid a wooden doors/walls with it someone else remember the times? :D

Loved the vid! Wish we could've seen slug meta there before the nerf!

A big Meta in early Rust was bow raiding. Also at one point there was such thing as a softside door making it super easy to raid

This video gives me so much nostalgia, been there since legacy, it's been a wild ride :D

always go back to my old youtube just to watch old content man the nostalgia is crazy

In the old Rust era, the original Quarries and Pumpjacks were actually craftable. Clans would have upwards of 12 quarries and 3 pumpjacks running 24/7, creating utterly insane sulfer outputs that allowed even small clans to engage in 300+ rocket raids. And basically no one left their bases.

Back in Legacy, the meta was to create L shaped towers, because you couldn't raid walls, only doors.

Love your vids, please do history of glitches next!

Cant forget about stacking high externals with layers as well as directly against your base walls and building in bus stops were so OP. Also cant forget raiding wooden doors with survey charges and hatcheting their soft side.

Before ladders and other ways to get on top of bases it was really funny just looking at a wall wondering what kinda base it could be hiding, having little clue how much boom to bring

as someone who played every single one of these versions at one point or another, this really brings me back

"old rust" was defo the goated era of the game, quarrys, screaming when you was downed, solid recoil and damage on all guns, not to mention bolty used to 1hs kill if you shot above the faceplate

7:51 no. The compound bow used to not have a blueprint until about 2 years ago

I didnt start playing rust until a year ago, but rust is still a nostalgic game for me. I remember watching my older brother play it all the time and waking up to him yelling at 2 AM lol. I remember the old oil rig and i was amazed by this game years ago.

yeah, I remember when we had a squad of 10 people. But we used wooden spears to bust down walls. It also lagged the sound heavily

U forgot to mention spears in like 2015 that could one tap full metals when thrown

i started playing in like 2018, and i rememeber when there was maxium amount of minis on server when they spawned on the roads, and some guy always had taken like 10 minis in his base and so more wouldnt spawn

i also liked the good ol pickaxe trough base walls in legacy, the pickaxe did a good amount of damage and you could use any melee weapon to hit people on the other side of a wall, killed many people like this, very nice way to start a raid was killing a defender like this

I like that there's someone in the rust community who now covers the old. There's still a lot to hate about the game today but damn there was some disgusting stuff back in the day. I still remember you were able to run around full speed and ads with heavy armor when it first came out. Also back in the day the only way to get good with guns was using them in a server, whereas today you can skip that part and become a ukn main... keep up the good work mayn

this was such a nice trip down memory lane remember all of the "old rust" tricks xD good times

Horse gang were pretty accurate actually getting horses armors learning bps and crafting all of them were accurate to having ak full gear, thats pretty fun and were really good meta actually, i was sad about it

God damn this video made me feel old. Haven't touched Rust since maybe 2018 (the XP update) and I have so many good memories of it.

In legacy rust you used to be able to stack sloped pieces infinitely and great a little base of just 100 sloped pieces that you had to break through 1 after the other. Hackers were pretty common back then and could glitch through floors but the sloped piece was more difficult so it was a great way to prevent hackers from glitching in your base.

I remember a really old meta from back when you needed to collect blueprint fragments, A semi auto pistol with 3 crossbows and a half inventory full of medsticks (i also really think they should bring that version back as well as the xp system version)

Crossbow used to ignore part of your helmet and did more crit shot damage, so you could get one tapped in HQM if shot through the eye.

at 2:20 for upkeep, bases would start to decay if no doors are opened after 24 hours and only the foundations start decaying back in 2016

So much nostalgia, sad not to see super chest on here, where heavy chestplate had no negative effects.

Also the bus stop base. Imaging having a core of your base where three of the walls and the roof were invincible

you missed quarry and pumpjack meta in rust. They were around for a while but not even many clans utilized it, as soon as they started tho it got nerfed. You had survey charges found in barrels or crafted, throwing them on ground would either drop nothing or max 5 of each resource, lowgrade high quality, metal, sulfur. sometimes it even dropped a bit of all! If it dropped low grade you could place a pump jack there and extract crude oil with lowgrade, and yes... it was a lowgrading duping mechanism only if you were lucky to have lowgrade spots in your compound. People had made multiple compounds to extract all resources. It was fun just that no one was going farming anymore and if well organized there was no limit to how many quarries and pumps one could run, so it was gonna make Rust like satisfactory (the game). Old rust was crazy fun... it even felt more real idk why...

Such a good vid. This perfectly sums up my Rust experience, I don't like all the new change that's come with the game and honestly because of this I've just left the game behind. So many good memories though it's just hard to play now with all these new metas.

everyone on a nostalgia trip, but i dont see anyone mentioning old Hapis. that shit was LIT. static map, crazy fights, good memories

The labs meta and tc stacking at every second floor should have been mentioned but except that very good job and good memories

i miss legacy rust. that's the one i played like 600hrs. i can still remember the map layout... rust 2015ish i played too, with th glitched stacked walls

glad this video is blowing up, if you didnt know the history, it would be a lot of reading and it still wouldnt probably paint the full picture like you do in this video. everyone give this man a sub for a high quality video

the 2013 rust clips gave me so much nostalgia

There also was a time when the sparkle for nodes came out that you could farm noes instantly with a bone knife

Rust is so cool game to be honest. You can do absolutely everything. You can go to war, you can chill, you can communicate, you can make fun, you can farm whatever you want, you can craft whatever you want, you can build whatever you want, you can be farmer, you can be electrician, you can be pvper, you can be builder. I mean there is so many activities in this game that damn, game is so big. Huge respect to Rust devs for making this game that big and enjoyable. P.S. nice vid, I also enjoyed :)

Damn I just realised I started playing Rust just after Legacy which is insane to think about and I had to check but seeing this brought back memories so thanks for that

hapis once allowed to build bases in the middle of the airport. It was dope

One of the greatest things was when BPs spawned in crates back in the day before research, day one wipe finding AK and just crafting it in your pocket no workbench no nothing. Amazing

Looting sleepers through walls, building on monuments, rock bases, water bases, bus stop bases, slugs, blueprint drops, griefing with barricades and spike traps... This was the Rust I long to go back to, the *TRUE* Rust experience!

I remember my old base at the end of Hacker Valley :) I got raided only 1 time for 4 months... no one was going there to see if there is any base or not

7:35 gave me flashbacks to a time i never want to remember rest in peace all the chads that lost their lives to combound bow grubs

i think the time where comp bow just came into the game was the most fun and purest form of rust back when we had just wiped timers on servers so we knew exactly when someone just wiped their server just by clicking the fresh

i remember getting a mini off the road on wipe and sending it to secret on large rig to get a gun out of the elite crate inside of secret. Those were some of the best times!

Camping bandit camp with the new homing missile is gonna 100% be a new strat

Clan: we’re being attacked by slow, heavily armored people, riding on fast unarmored horses! Also the Clan: let’s shoot the heavily armored people!