Rust: How to Prevent Base Decay With a Tool Cupboard

Craft and secure the Tool Cupboard

Rust’s Facepunch-hosted community wiki describes the Tool Cupboard as the control point for building privilege and decay protection. It costs 1,000 wood, and the wiki recommends securing it with a lock because raiders look for it. Keeping the cupboard in a base and keeping resources inside it are both part of the upkeep task. [1]

Steps

1. Craft a Tool Cupboard, place it for the intended building and protect access to it with a lock. [1]

Authorize the people who need building access

The player placing the cupboard is authorized automatically. Teammates are not added automatically: the wiki tells them to approach and press E to authorize. The Building Privilege indicator appears above the health bar when an authorized player is within the cupboard’s covered area. Check that access before assuming a placement problem is a bug. [1]

Steps

1. Have each teammate who needs access approach the cupboard and press E to authorize, then check Building Privilege in the intended construction area. [1]

Read the upkeep requirement and supply the listed materials

Open the cupboard inventory to read the upkeep cost per 24 hours and remaining protection time. Building walls, foundations, ceilings and roofs contribute their materials, as do doors and window pieces. A stone base with sheet-metal doors therefore uses stone and metal fragments for upkeep, while placed items such as sleeping bags do not add to that cost. [1]

Steps

1. Press E to open the inventory. Supply the materials required by the displayed upkeep and read the resulting protection time rather than assuming one material covers every building part. [1]

Account for disconnected structures and a missing material

A separate building needs its own cupboard unless it is connected to the protected structure by foundations. Being somewhere inside the displayed privilege area does not, by itself, protect every disconnected building from decay. When one upkeep material runs out, the wiki says the parts made from that material lose health; other stocked materials do not replace it. [1]

Steps

1. For a disconnected outbuilding, either connect its foundations to the main structure or supply its separate Tool Cupboard. When checking decay, inspect which particular upkeep material has run out. [1]

Understand what building privilege does not block