Resources are the bread and butter of Rust. Without them, you cannot craft your base, repair your weapons, or build that amazing pool that you always wanted.
The best way to get the most important resources in Rust (Metal Fragments, Sulfur, and High Quality Metal) is by smelting ores and metals in the Furnace.
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This is why you will often see plates have dozens of Furnaces inside their bases, as they are trying to produce enough Sulfur to finally make all those C4 bombs needed to destroy an Armored Wall.
In this guide, we will go through all the important facts that you will need to know about smelting in Rust, including how to build and use a Furnace, how much ore you can smelt with 1000 Wood, and how to make auto smelters for your base.
Table of Contents
- How Smelting Works in Rust
- How to Build and Use a Furnace in Rust
- How Much Ore Can 1000 Wood Smelt in Rust?
- Optimal Ore/Wood Inputs for Furnace and Large Furnace
- Can You Smelt Faster?
- How to Set Up an Automated Furnace Smelting Machine in Rust
How Smelting Works in Rust
There are four types of resources that you can get when you mine big rocks in Rust:
- Stone
- Metal Ore
- Sulfur Ore
- High Quality Metal Ore
All of the ores are relatively useless by themselves. To actually use them to make guns, ammo, and other useful items, you will need to smelt them.
Smelting Metal, Sulfur, and HQM Ores will turn them into their useful counterparts, Metal Fragments, Sulfur, and High Quality Metal. To smelt these ores, you will need a Furnace.
How to Build and Use a Furnace in Rust
The Furnace is a cheap deployable item that you can craft from the start of the game, without a blueprint, for Stone x200, Wood x100, and Low Grade Fuel x50.
Luckily, the Furnace is very small, and you can easily place it anywhere inside your base in Rust. You can even mash three of them on a triangle foundation if you want to be efficient with your space.
Once you get further in the game, you can also craft a Large or Electric Furnace. Both of them are much better than the normal Furnace and will be very useful when you want to automate the smelting process.
The Furnace requires fuel to work. If you don’t give it any, there is no way to actually smelt all your ores. Luckily, the fuel you need for the Furnace is Wood.
How to Smelt Metals
Once you have a Furnace inside your Rust base, you just have to place the Metal, Sulfur, or HQM Ores inside the Input slots. You will then have to also place Wood in the Fuel slot and then press the Turn On button at the bottom.
You can place a maximum of 1,000 Wood in the Fuel slot. It will usually take around 30 minutes for all of the Wood to disappear. However, the speed at which ores smelt inside the Furnace only depends on the type of ore that is being smelted.
After you turn on the Furnace, the process is passive. You can also keep giving it resources while it works and it will continue smelting until there is no more fuel left.
Even when the ores have all been smelted, the Furnace will continue burning through the Wood until it is all gone.
There is also a 75% chance that you will get Charcoal when you burn Wood at the Furnace. There are many players that just leave the Wood to burn while they are offline to farm Charcoal.
A different type of metal that you can also smelt in the Furnace in Rust is the Empty Can of Beans and Tuna Can. A single Can will give you Metal Fragments x15, and it will only take Wood x5 and 10 seconds.
How Much Ore Can 1000 Wood Smelt in Rust?
One of the most popular questions that players have in Rust is how much ore can 1,000 Wood actually smelt?
Since the Wood limit is 1,000 for the basic Furnace, players will always wonder how many ores they can place inside the Furnace while they leave and do something better with their time.
Here are the exact amounts of ore that players can smelt for 1,000 Wood in Rust:
- 600 Metal Ores
- 1,200 Sulfur Ores
- 300 HQM Ores
The first two options are relatively normal, you just have to place two stacks of 300 Metal Ores or 600 Sulfur Ores, but you can’t actually place 300 HQM Ores inside a normal Furnace.
Since the stack limit for HQM Ores is 100, you can only place 200 HQM Ores inside the Furnace.
This means that you will actually only need 666 Wood to smelt all of the 200 HQM Ores.
Optimal Ore/Wood Inputs for Furnace and Large Furnace
Now that you know the most efficient amount of ores that you need for 1,000 Wood, here is a table to help you figure out the best optimal ore/wood inputs to smelt for both the normal Furnace and the Large Furnace in Rust:
| Type of Furnace | Ore | Wood | Time to Smelt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Furnace | Metal x600 | x1,000 | 33 minutes |
| Furnace | Sulfur x1,200 | x1,000 | 33 minutes |
| Furnace | High Quality Metal x200 | x666 | 22 minutes |
| Large Furnace | Metal x5,000 | x1650 | 55 minutes |
| Large Furnace | Sulfur x5,000 | x850 | 27 minutes |
| Large Furnace | High Quality Metal x500 | x335 | 11 minutes |
Can You Smelt Faster?
There is no way to smelt faster in Rust. There are just some things that you always need to do to make sure that the process is moving as fast as possible.
For example, make sure that the ore stacks are exactly the same, as this will make them finish at the same time, without wasting any Wood.
So, make sure you know how to properly split stacks and place them in the Furnace so that they have the same size.
Otherwise, there is nothing you can do to make the process faster. The best thing you can do is to get the Large Furnace as fast as possible, as it is the fastest out of the three furnaces.
However, if you want to make the process as seamless as possible, then you should use the Electric Furnace.
How to Set Up an Automated Furnace Smelting Machine in Rust
The best way to smelt ores in Rust is to make an automated system where ores and Wood automatically come out of your chests, and then they go into the Furnace.
For this process, the Electric Furnace is the best one to use since you don’t need to use Wood.
Here is what you need to set up an automated Furnace smelting machine in Rust:
- Box
- Electric Furnace
- Conveyor
- Storage Adaptor x2
- Pipe Tool
Here is what you have to do to make the system work:
- Place the Storage Adaptors on the Box that will supply the resources and on the Electric Furnace.
- Drag pipes using the Pipe Tool from the Storage Adaptor on the Box (Industrial Out) to the Conveyor (Industrial Input)
- Drag pipes from the Conveyor (Industrial Output) to the Electric Furnace’s Storage Adaptor (Industrial In).
- Now connect the final pipes from the Electric Furnace (Industrial Out) to the Box (Industrial In).
- Connect the Conveyor to electricity and then turn it on.
The Conveyor will now move resources from the Box into the Electric Furnace and then the output from the Furnace will move itself back into the Box.
You can filter what types of resources move through the Conveyor by holding down E while looking at it. Make sure to select the ores (and Wood, if necessary), and the Conveyor will only move them into the Furnace.
The Furnace will automatically transfer all output items back into the Box, so you won’t have to do anything there.
That’s everything you need to know about smelting in Rust!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
