Almost everything you do makes your character stronger. Your skill level is the big one: it gives skill points, bonuses that grow on their own, and rewards along the way. Next to it, ZLevels make you better at gathering by gathering, every weapon gets better the more you use it, cooking and fishing level up as jobs, and every Blight creature you kill teaches you how to kill the next one.
At a glance#
| System | You level it by | What it gives | At a wipe |
|---|---|---|---|
Skill level (/st) |
Nearly everything: gathering, killing, looting, crafting, Blights, events | Skill points, ranks, bonuses that grow every level, rewards | Level and XP kept, skill points handed back |
ZLevels (/stats) |
Mining, woodcutting, skinning, picking things up, crafting | More resources per hit, faster crafting | Kept |
Weapon proficiency (/weapons) |
Firing and killing with each gun or bow | More damage, bigger magazines, free shots | Kept |
| Cooking and fishing | Cooking food, catching fish | Chance of an extra item | Kept |
Enemy mastery (/codex) |
Killing each kind of Blight creature | More damage to it, less from it | Kept |
Your first hour#
- Pick your role when the Personnel screen opens. It gives you free skill points straight away. See Roles.
- Open your skills with
/stand spend those points. - Gather, loot and fight. Almost everything pays skill XP, and the XP bar under your belt shows it.
- Gather at night: double skill XP and double wood, ore, skins and wild plants.
Skills#
Open them with /st (or /skills, /skilltree or /xp). Every skill, with its ranks and what each rank does, is also on the website's Skills page.
Levels and ranks#
| Highest level | 100 |
| XP to go from level n to the next | 500 × n (level 10 costs 5,000) |
| Skill points | 1 every level, plus 1 extra every 5 levels |
| Ranks | A new rank every 5 levels: Fresh Spawn, Scavenger, Survivor, Drifter, Outrider ... up to Eternal |
| Chat tag | Your level and rank in front of your name, for example [12 Survivor] |
Every level also adds bonuses on its own, without spending points: more wood, stone, ore, wild plants, skins and fish, better smelting and cooking, craft and research refunds, and more. Each one grows 10% at the levels it belongs to. /st shows yours.
Level rewards: every level pays 15 scrap times the level you reach (level 20 pays 300). Every tenth level adds a supply signal, and levels 25, 50 and 75 add 1,000 scrap.
Earning XP#
Nearly everything pays. The main sources:
| What you do | Skill XP |
|---|---|
| Hit a tree / chop it down | 12 a hit / 75 |
| Hit a stone, metal or sulfur node / break it | 20 a hit / 80 |
| Pick up a wild plant or pickup | 30 |
| Catch a fish | 100 to 200, by fish (junk 50) |
| Harvest an animal | 15 a hit, 75 for the whole animal |
| Kill a scientist / heavy scientist | 350 / 700 |
| Kill a zombie | 500 |
| Kill a wolf, boar or stag / bear | 250 / 400 |
| Kill a Bradley / patrol helicopter | 1,500 / 3,000 (shared by damage) |
| Open a locked crate / supply drop | 500 / 1,500 |
| Each fragment you siphon in a Blight | 40 |
| A Blight you helped clear | 600 |
| Raid bases | 250 (easy) to 2,500 (nightmare) |
| Win an event | 2,000 |
| Card puzzles | 150 (green), 250 (blue), 400 (red) |
| Every 30 minutes played | 60 |
Blight creatures also pay their own kill reward on top (see the Bestiary), and so do Night Zombies.
More XP:
- Night: double skill XP, and double wood, ore, skins and wild plants.
- Rested XP: time offline banks 1,000 XP an hour (up to 100,000). While you have some banked, you earn 25% more.
- Your role: the Citizen earns 15% more, the Vagabond 10%, the Scientist and Responder 5%.
- VIP ranks add XP too. See VIP.
- Chainsaws and jackhammers earn a quarter of the normal gathering XP.
Warning: Dying costs you 20% of the progress in your current level (10% if a player killed you). You never drop a level.
Paths and abilities#
Skills are grouped in paths. Each skill has 1 to 5 ranks, needs a level, and most need the first skill of their path first. You spend skill points on them.
| Paths | What they are for |
|---|---|
| Lumberjack, Miner, Skinning, Gathering, Angler, Marine | Gathering, fishing, the sea |
| Metabolism, Medical, Survivor | Staying alive: food, healing, the cold |
| Combat, Hitman, Raider | Fighting and raiding |
| Scavenger, Builder, Driver | Looting, building and vehicles |
| Virulent | The Blight's own path. Opens at level 20. See The Blight |
| Luck | Lucky I to V: +10% each on every gear chance, opening at levels 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25. See Gear Luck |
| Scientist, Test Subject, Citizen, Soldier, Responder, Vagabond | One path for each role. See Roles |
Some skills are abilities: active powers with a cooldown, such as marking enemies, healing your team or a burst of damage. Use them from Rust's pie menu: bind a key with bind x skills.wheel in the F1 console, hold it and pick one. /wheel opens it too.
Respec#
Changing your mind costs scrap: 1,500 the first time in a wipe, and each further respec in the same wipe costs 1.5 times the last one. At every wipe all your points come back for free.
Prestige#
At level 100 you can prestige: your level starts again, and you keep a lasting bonus. You can do it up to 5 times. When you are ready, the button is on the settings page of /st.
| Each prestige gives | |
|---|---|
| XP bonus | +20% on everything, for good |
| Skill points | 2 extra |
| Chat tag | A new tag colour, and the server is told |
Prestige is never reset by a wipe.
ZLevels#
ZLevels is a second "get better by doing it" system with five skills. It runs next to your skill level, and both bonuses apply together. The bars sit beside your health.
| Skill | You level it by | XP per action (day / night) | Bonus | Cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mining | Hitting ore nodes, picking up stone and ore | 30 / 60 a hit | +20% ore per level | 200 |
| Woodcutting | Chopping trees | 30 / 60 a hit | +20% wood per level | 200 |
| Skinning | Harvesting animals | 30 / 60 a hit | +20% skinning per level | 200 |
| Acquire | Picking up hemp, berries, mushrooms, wood piles and other pickups | 60 a pickup | Starts at 3x, then more per level | 200 |
| Crafting | Crafting (3 XP per second of craft time) | - | Crafting 5% faster per level | 20 |
- Crafting level 20 makes your crafts instant.
- Level-up rewards: every ZLevels level-up pays 8 Chimera Coins times your new level, and a little skill XP.
- Dying: if you had been alive for at least 10 minutes, each ZLevels skill loses up to half of the XP you need for its next level. Suicide costs nothing.
Commands: /stats shows your levels, /statinfo explains each skill, /statsui hides or shows the bars, /statsonoff turns ZLevels off for you (and back on).
Tip: Gather at night. ZLevels XP per hit doubles for mining, woodcutting and skinning, and your skill level doubles XP and yields at the same time.
Weapon proficiency#
Every gun and bow you use has its own level, from 0 to 10. You get better with an AK by firing an AK.
- 1 XP for every shot, 45 XP for every kill with that weapon.
- Guns, bows and launchers count. Melee weapons and throwables do not.
| Level | Total XP | Damage | Extra magazine rounds | Wear | Chance a shot costs no ammo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 162 | +2.5% | +1 | -5% | 2% |
| 2 | 570 | +5% | +2 | -10% | 4% |
| 3 | 1,308 | +7.5% | +2 | -15% | 6% |
| 4 | 2,460 | +10% | +3 | -20% | 8% |
| 5 | 4,110 | +12.5% | +4 | -25% | 10% |
| 6 | 6,342 | +15% | +5 | -30% | 12% |
| 7 | 9,240 | +17.5% | +6 | -35% | 14% |
| 8 | 12,888 | +20% | +6 | -40% | 16% |
| 9 | 17,370 | +22.5% | +7 | -45% | 18% |
| 10 | 22,770 | +25% | +8 | -50% | 20% |
The damage bonus works against anything you hit with that weapon. Chat tells you when a weapon levels up, and /weapons lists every weapon you have trained.
Cooking and fishing#
Cooking and fishing are jobs with their own levels, earned by doing them.
| Cooking | Fishing | |
|---|---|---|
| XP | 1 for each food item that finishes cooking in a campfire or oven you placed | 4 for each fish |
| Bonus | 3% chance per level of 1 extra cooked item | 3% chance per level of 1 extra fish |
| Max | Level 10 (30%) | Level 10 (30%) |
Total XP for each level: 81, 285, 654, 1,230, 2,055, 3,171, 4,620, 6,444, 8,685, and 11,385 for level 10.
Tip: Cooking XP goes to whoever placed the oven, even while you are offline, and only food counts. See Cooking.
Enemy mastery#
Every kill of one kind of Blight creature makes you better against that kind: up to +16% damage to it and 12% less from it, at 25, 100, 400 and 1,200 kills. Each kind counts on its own. Type /codex (or /knowledge). More on The Blight.
What a wipe keeps#
The map wipes on the first Thursday of every month at 12:00 (America/Denver). See Server Basics.
| Progress | At the wipe |
|---|---|
| Skill level and XP | Kept |
| Skill points you spent | Handed back, to spend again |
| Prestige | Kept |
| ZLevels | Kept |
| Weapon proficiency | Kept |
| Cooking and fishing | Kept |
| Enemy mastery | Kept |
| Your role | Cleared: you choose again |
| Chimera Coins, your vault | Kept |
Commands#
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/st (or /skills, /skilltree, /xp) |
Your skills, paths, bonuses and level |
/wheel |
Your ability wheel (or bind a key to skills.wheel) |
/stats, /statinfo |
ZLevels |
/statsui, /statsonoff |
Hide the ZLevels bars / turn ZLevels off for you |
/weapons |
Your weapon levels |
/codex (or /knowledge) |
Your enemy mastery |
/crates |
Citizen only: marks storage boxes near you |
/track |
Vagabond only: the nearest animal |
Related pages: Roles · The Blight · Gear Luck · Night Zombies · Getting Started