How to Build a Simple 2x2 Starter Base Design (2024)

When you’re new to base building in Rust, and you’re looking for guidance, people will be quick to recommend building a 2×2. This is solid advice since the 2×2 design has stood the test of time and is valued by countless players for its simplicity.

However, it can be surprisingly non-trivial to figure out the details, as there are so many versions and approaches to building 2x2s. In this video, I will show you how to build a dead-simple 2×2 starter base, which is pretty close to what most people would build – but more optimized.

I’d recommend it as a starter base for two to four people, though you’ll be able to squeeze in 6+ sleeping bags if you don’t mind using the corridors. In contrast to my previous 2×2 starter base, this one has a lot more storage, providing a storage capacity equivalent of 10 large boxes. And more importantly, it does not suffer anymore from issues with not being able to replace doors after the April 2019 update.

The layout is perfectly balanced. No matter which angle raiders take, or whether they are watching this video while raiding the base, it takes a minimum of 12 rockets to reach the TC, and 15 rockets to raid both loot rooms.

That’s not outstanding for a main base, but decent for a starter base – enough to prevent quick and easy eco raids. The only required blueprint to achieve this level of protection is the garage door, which is quite easy to find in one of the brown crates.

The build cost is about 15k stone and 3k metal fragments. The daily upkeep is about 2k stone and 1k metal fragments. That’s 2 stone nodes and 2 metal nodes per day.

The video is laid out as a tutorial, which means that I will not only show you what to build, but also explain the rationale behind it, and alternative design choices. I will assume that you build this right after having spawned fresh into a new server.

We don’t know any blueprints yet. To that end, the base will grow in small increments, which is crucial for high pop servers.

Before we dive into the build, let’s go through some design principles of 2x2s. First, the basics. 2x2s are called 2x2s because at their core, they consist of four squares arranged in two rows of two squares. There are several ways of building a simple 2×2.

The worst possible way is to build walls around the perimeter and put a door on the side. If you open the door and someone kills you, they can go deep, which means they can run inside your base and steal your loot.

Hence, experienced players will recommend you to build a triangle airlock. If you use single doors, they will open into each other and block door campers from running through. Next, people tend to compartmentalize the inside of the 2×2. The reason is that if raiders blow through the airlock or through a wall, they won’t automatically gain access to all loot.

The two most common forms of that are the U shape and the F shape. In the U shape variation, a wall next to the entrance separates the main loot room and requires raiders to blow through three more doors to get there.

This is the safest version, but it usually makes it more difficult to place items efficiently while providing a good quality of life. In the F shape variation, there are two walls and a door like this. This provides two squares for the loot, and two squares for you and your team to move around.

However, once broken the front door, the raiders can typically use splash damage to break two doors at the same time, which makes the design weaker against door raids.

Nevertheless, we’re going to use the F shape because it provides more space for your loot and for your team to move around. The larger the group the more important mobility becomes. To mitigate the door raid weakness, we will buff the door raid path in the final design.

With all those doors in place, it still takes just 10 satchels to blow through the stone wall and get to the TC and the main loot. Thus, people tend to strengthen the walls in two ways. First of all, they upgrade the walls, for example, to sheet metal.

Now a raid through walls will either cost 23 satchels, 8 rockets, or about 400 explosive ammo. The second common strategy is to add triangles to the side and place walls around the perimeter. This is called honeycombing.

In some cases, people leave the inside of the triangles open, in other cases, they fill them up with more walls. Without those extra walls, raiders can reach into two squares at once. With those extra walls, they will only be able to break into one.

Thus, leaving those walls out to save cost only makes sense if the core is open because whether they breach one or two walls, they already have access to everything.

Until now I left the roof open to be able to better visualize the build concepts I was talking about. In reality, your 2×2, of course, needs a roof. If you used sheet metal for the walls of the core and stone for the honeycomb, the roof should match that strength.

The simplest solution is to place floor tiles and upgrade them to armored. That costs 52 high quality in total and will add about 8-15hqm to your daily upkeep depending on how much you extend the base.

If that’s too much for you at the beginning of the wipe, you can use sheet metal and strengthen the ceiling with its own honeycomb. The roof building block creates the best-looking honeycomb, but they have a weakness.

Any naked arms with persistence and a hatchet can build a floor tile here and then hit the soft side of this wall with a spear. In case you didn’t know, every building block has a weak side that can be raided comparably cheaply with tools.

For stone walls, it takes 23 spears, which requires to farm about 7k wood. In comparison, hitting the strong side would take 236 spears, and take almost two hours.

I, therefore, recommend this much blander approach and surround the core of the 2×2 with stone half walls. Before you close that off, we need to talk again about splash damage. Without any extra protection, raiders with rockets or explosive ammo can damage all four floor tiles at the same time, giving them access to the full core.

We, therefore, place half walls as separators above the core as well. And if you’re worried that raiders might splash out the outer ceiling, then soft side all those four separators and then splash out all the inner ceilings.

Upgrade them to sheet metal. Some people claim that those half walls could be replaced with lower cheap walls, however, they’re only marginally effective in preventing splash damage so I would recommend against that. With all that honeycomb in place, raiding through walls has become the least efficient method.

However, the door raid is still just a couple of satchels and can be done by a determined raider on wipe day. The easiest upgrade is to replace all sheet metal doors with garage doors. You can typically find them on wipe day already.

Further, what people usually do is to extend the airlock along with the honeycomb and add in more single doors. This now requires 10 rockets for a full raid. One plus a bit of explosive ammo per sheet metal door, three for those two garage doors, and one for the last garage door.

The weak point is this wall, as raiders can use one rocket to blow out the outer door and then use 8 rockets to reach into this main loot room. This is considerably cheaper than the 12 rocket it would require to go through walls.

Thus, in this build, I will extend the airlock outwards. This allows to honeycomb that bit and maintains 12 rockets worth of protection there. Further, to match the cost of the door raid with the cost of the raid through walls, we will replace those two single doors with garage doors. In this configuration, the door raid will require 12 rockets to reach the first loot room, and 15 to reach them both. That’s the theory, now let’s start building that thing.

Before you do any building in-game, I strongly recommend that you practice at least the initial build steps on a build server. Right after you spawned your first task is to determine and to get to the location where you want to build the base.

When you spawn, immediately run away from the beach as quickly as you can. Don’t pick a fight with other nakeds, it will just use your time and mostly gain you nothing. Once you got a moment to breathe, open the map and decide where you want to build.

On the way to that location, pick up hemp plants and craft sleeping bags. I tend to place one about every five squares so if you get killed you won’t have to spawn again at the beach. Once you arrive at the location, place one or two sleeping bags nearby. Further, consider hiding a stash or a small wooden box in a bush.

Farm some wood for a stone hatchet. Until you get a good eye for the land and its restrictions, it’s safer to build the footprint before starting the build. Nothing is more aggravating than starting a base and then realizing that a slope or a building block zone prevents you from completing the build. It costs 575 wood to layout the footprint as shown.

Now we can start building the base. Upgrade this 1×1, surround it with walls and a ceiling, and a wall frame facing into the core. Use whatever material you have for the upgrade. If it’s only wood, that’s fine for now.

Place a wooden double door into the wall frame and lock it with a key lock. The door should swing outwards. Upgrade the square in front of the door and place a single door frame at this side, and surround the rest with walls. For about 4k wood, you now have a place where door campers cannot easily go deep.

Since we are currently tied to key locks, I and my team typically assign a builder to remain inside of the base and operate the door for the rest of the team while they are out farming.

Next, craft a TC and place it against the back wall on this side of the single door. It needs to be flush against the back wall. Use the rest of the space for a few boxes and the sleeping bag of the builder.

Upgrade that 2×1 apart from the single doorframe to stone as it comes in. The next challenge will be to obtain low-grade fuel for furnaces. Kill animals, hit red barrels, buy at an outpost, or use an oil refinery to refine it out of crude oil. You need 50 low grade per furnace. The first one goes into this corner. Two more can go along the wall. You can place up to three sleeping bags in front of them.

Once metal fragments are cooking in those furnaces, first replace the key locks with code locks so that your team can access the base. Then upgrade the doors to sheet metal. If at any point you cannot place a door, this is most likely thanks to the April 2019 update.

Check whether any object is too close to the door. You may have to pick it up and replace it after you place the door. Craft two large boxes for the main loot room. Clear out the small boxes and the sleeping bag. Note that you can rotate deployables with the R key.

Push your avatar against the left wall and place this box first. It should align perfectly with the wall. Jump onto this box and place another box like this. Run outside to the back of the 2×1. Place a half wall and floor tile here.

Then you should be able to place a floor tile through the wall. If that was successful, destroy the twig on the outside. Back inside, you should see a triangle sticking into the TC like this. Upgrade it to stone.

Remove the double door and climb onto the triangle. We first place this box. Clip it in and out of the wall to see whether its edge emerges at the same time. If that’s the case, the box is well aligned and will allow the placement of the last large box which is placed the same way as the first one. The two small boxes from the start can fit here.

Now once you obtained 50 scrap, craft a level one workbench and place it into this corner next to the exit. This item layout has become the common interior for all of my bases that come with a starter 2×1.

I haven’t found anything that works better at the beginning of the wipe and that combines efficient use of space with some space to move around for the team.

Next, we’re going to extend the base into a 2×2. As said earlier, this design will use the F shape. Upgrade the remaining squares. Place a wall frame here, and add a double door. Upgrade the triangle, and add another double door.

Both of them should swing inwards so you can close them from the inside of the base if needed. We now got this whole square available as extra loot storage. Place a half wall and a square floor tile on top.

Destroy the half wall and upgrade the square floor. This will be your makeshift shelf. As before, align the first box by pushing your avatar against the left wall. Don’t place it all the way back to make it easier to access it later. Use the line on the floor as a reference.

Next place a barbecue with a lid opening away from that box. Then another large box should fit to the right of it. Finally, three small boxes should fit here, here, and here.

On the upper part, you can simply copy those steps. That’s easiest if you connect a twig floor tile for now. Here however we’re going to incorporate the workbench. Jump into the loot room and place it as far back against that wall and in the center of those lines.

Place two small boxes as far right as possible. The left one should stick out a bit more than the right one to make it easier to access it. Then as before place another large box and fill the gaps with two small boxes.

You can now close off the loot room with a sheet metal double door. The space in front of the loot room can take more bags. This way you can house a group of 5-6 people in the base already.

One great hack is to place carpets or bear rugs above sleeping bags. When you spawn, eat something, and sit next to a heat source such as the furnaces. This should boost your comfort level up to 100. As long as your hunger level doesn’t drop too low, this will fully regenerate your health.

Currently, the biggest risk of the base is that someone goes deep because those double doors do not act as an airlock. Thus we’re going to build one next. Upgrade all the triangles in front of the exit. Place a wall here, four wall frames here, and two doorways here.

Fill those wall frames with shopfronts. Have the smooth part on the inside. I believe they are meant to place the other way around, but in this orientation, it will give you more space and they won’t block each other from being placed.

You now have an actual airlock which provides you excellent all-around visibility. I use this corner for the research table with a drop chest underneath. Then close off the ceiling.

Now let’s turn to upgrade the base. I would start with the honeycomb. That leaves you more metal fragments for the door, gear sets, and weapons. Just before you start, I would upgrade the backs of the two loot rooms to sheet metal, as they are difficult to reach from the inside of the base.

Upgrade the triangle foundations to stone. Add floor tiles above them. Then fill out the honeycomb in this order. Since the core of the base is separated, we fill out the honeycomb to counter the use of splash damage. Now climb on top of the base and honeycomb the ceilings.

After these upgrades, the doors have become a weak point. So, therefore, bit-by-bit start replacing the double doors with garage doors. The only door I would not recommend to replace is the one that leads to the airlock.

One, you don’t want raiders to see that you have garage doors, and second, this door can be closed through the door behind it, which can be helpful to trap players who are trying to go deep.

Carefully watch where I place the rollers of the doors. They’re configured not to be visible from the outside. You alternately want the garage door here as well. Not only does it push the raid cost to 15 rockets, but it also creates more space for you and your team to move.

Therefore, craft three machetes and start hitting the weak side of the stone frame. Once the door is gone, you can place a garage door here as well.

Then bit-by-bit, upgrade the walls of the core to sheet metal. I would start with the loot rooms and work my way towards the airlock. The last bit to upgrade is the first triangle outside of the core. This triangle here still requires our attention.

So far, it costs only three rockets to get here, and it would cost another eight to break into the second loot room. The simplest fix is to place a stone wall here. My preferred solution, however, is to use this bit as usable honeycombs, such as for furnaces.

Once you get the reinforced glass window blueprint, this path will no longer be a weakness. After that much farming, your team hopefully has the 500 scrap for a tier two workbench together. Craft it, then take a hatchet and destroy the tier one workbench.

Replace it with a tier two workbench and don’t forget to place a small box underneath. Thanks to tier two, you can now craft lockers. You can purchase one at bandit camp for 40 scrap, and even research it there for another 75.

The base has space for two of them along those walls. The reason I like lockers so much is that they are the fastest way to get geared up. This can make a difference if, for example, you just respawned from a lost fight and need to return to it quickly. That is, if your teammates have some discipline and keep the kits and the lockers complete.

And here is one final touch for the base that you can do with electricity. While garage doors are strong and provide space, they have a downside. Because they open and close so slowly, people tend to leave them open.

Let’s help them a bit by automating the garage door with electricity. You need only two components. A pressure pad and a door controller. Place the pressure pad between those lockers. Place the door controller somewhere next to the door, then close the door and unlock its code lock.

You can now pair the door controller to the door. A green light indicates success. Now run a cable from the door controller to the pressure pad. This is what it does. When you want to leave the base, step onto the pressure pad.

The door opens automatically and immediately closes behind you. This makes it trivial to keep the door closed when leaving the base. And when you return open the door manually, and run over the pressure pad.

The door will close automatically. Beyond that passive circuit, I would not recommend using any additional electricity. Solar panels and windmills tend to make bases more interesting for raiders.

And that’s your beautiful new standard 2×2 done. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. I really like the openness of this 2020 design, and I believe your teammates will appreciate it as well.

May it bring you safely through early wipe.

Until then, Evil Wurst out.