Rust Research Table Guide: How to Find & Craft It to Create Blueprints

Rust Console Edition is all about gathering, crafting, and building, and like any survival sim, simple recipes just don’t cut it once you start to expand your base. So, after you’ve fumbled your way to your first little shack, how do you expand your builder’s arsenal? The answer is the Rust research table.

As simple as it is to bash a rock off a tree for wood, the Rust research table will solve a lot of your uiulding issues, allowing you to fabricate your own blueprints. This guide goes over everything you need to know about the Rust research table. 

What is the Rust Research Table? 

The Rust research table is essential to your continued survival in Rust Console Edition. It allows you to create blueprints for any item you currently have in your inventory. While blueprints require you to deposit the item the blueprint is for and cost scraps to produce, the research table enables you to craft any blueprinted item from then on – even after death.

This essentially saves you if you have been raided or have left the game long enough for your base to decay; you can skip past many of the earlier stages of crafting.

How to Find a Research Table

As soon as you have picked up an item that’s worth keeping, and you don’t have the blueprint to craft it, you’ll want to seek out one of these research tables, which can be found dotted around Rust’s map.

Exploring many of the game’s various monuments is a good place to start.

Research tables can be found in sites such as Bandit Camp and Outpost and are typically placed inside decaying buildings. Named locations have a higher chance of having a research table; however, picking out a location will require a bit of searching on your part.

While we would never condone this sort of behavior, there is also the option to use research tables that belong to fellow survivors if you somehow find yourself inside an insecure base. That’s up to you. 

How to Craft Your Own Research Table

If you fancy owning one of these handy stations yourself, you’ll require both the resources and a Level 1 workbench.

Workbenches are found in small aircraft hanger-styled buildings. If you spot a recycler – more on those in a second – then you’re in the right spot.

Once you have found a workbench, crafting a research table will set you back in both Metal Fragment and Scrap.

Research tables cost:

• 200 Metal Fragment
• 75 Scrap

If you are light on scrap, it can be easily sourced from the barrels, crates, and military crates that are scattered across the Rust map. Either opening up a crate or breaking down a barrel will do the trick.

Metal fragments are slightly more difficult to produce, but there are a couple of solutions. For anyone just starting out, you’ll want to collect metal blades, metal sheets, and propane tanks, and dump them into one of those recyclers. While the amount of Metal Fragment you’ll get from your deposit can vary, these recyclable materials will be the most efficient.

However, these materials take 60 seconds to wear down, and that’s a lot of time to be out in the open. For those a bit further down the line and, more importantly, with a safe base to craft in, you’ll need a furnace, a ton of wood, and metal ore.

Metal ore can be mined from the shimmering rocks found on the foot of rocky terrains with a stone pickaxe. Once you have deposited your wood and have your smelter burning, you are ready to produce some Metal Fragments. Smelting your metal ore down to Metal Fragments can take a few minutes, but this is a far safer method that will deliver more bang for your buck.

Now that you have your scraps and metal fragments, you can head to that workbench and craft yourself a research table. 

With your Rust research table ready to go, you can craft blueprints as fast as you can loot. And although you might come back to find it all raided the next day, at least you’ll still have your blueprint.