Gunpowder — the Foundation
Everything explosive starts with gunpowder, and gunpowder starts with the two things your furnaces produce (see the Smelting & Refining guide):
- Recipe: 30 Charcoal + 20 Sulfur -> 10 Gun Powder, 2 seconds to craft, by hand or at a workbench. That's a 3:2 charcoal-to-sulfur ratio.
Production is bottlenecked by whichever input you farm least: 500 sulfur with only 100 charcoal still makes barely 30 gunpowder (charcoal runs out at 3 batches). Charcoal is the sneaky bottleneck, so run dedicated wood furnaces to bank it. Gunpowder stacks to 1,000 and mixes fast -- farm sulfur and craft gunpowder BEFORE committing to a specific raid tool, so you don't lock sulfur into the wrong item if the target changes.
Rifle & Shotgun Ammo
Gunpowder feeds every crafted round. The common ones (each craft yields 2 bullets in ~10 seconds):
- 5.56 Rifle Ammo: 10 Metal Fragments + 20 Gun Powder + 5 Sulfur.
- Explosive 5.56: same recipe -- 10 Metal Fragments + 20 Gun Powder + 5 Sulfur -- and the cheapest ammo blueprint to research (125 scrap). Useful for chipping soft walls and doors.
- Incendiary 5.56: 10 Metal Fragments + 20 Gun Powder + 5 Sulfur + 1 Low Grade Fuel.
Gunpowder also goes into buckshot, slugs, handmade shells, pistol ammo, and every rocket variant -- so a healthy gunpowder stock is the backbone of both shooting and raiding.
Explosives — the C4 Component
"Explosives" is the crafting ingredient that powers C4 and rockets (not a fired round). Unlock it by researching for 500 scrap at the Research Table, then craft at a Tier 3 Workbench:
- Each Explosive: 50 Gun Powder + 3 Low Grade Fuel + 10 Sulfur + 10 Metal Fragments.
It's the most resource-intensive intermediate in the game, because the raid tools need them in bulk. Tech-tree the blueprint when you can rather than burning a finished charge to research it.
Raid Tools & Their Real Cost
What the explosives actually build:
- C4 (Timed Explosive Charge): 20 Explosives + 5 Cloth + 2 Tech Trash at a Tier 3 Workbench, 30s to craft. Throw it on a wall/door; it arms and detonates after 10 seconds with focused damage (a door C4 destroys only the door). It's the single most sulfur-hungry item in Rust (~2,200 sulfur each) -- never recycle one.
- Rockets: the other main breaching tool, ~1,400 sulfur each -- fast to deploy and effective at range, but very sulfur-heavy.
- Satchel Charges: the budget option at ~300 sulfur each; cheaper but unreliable (they can dud).
Most raids mix them: rockets or satchels for outer walls, C4 for the final loot room. Plan in SULFUR, not gunpowder -- it's the true raid currency.
The Mixing Table
Once you're crafting at scale, the Mixing Table pays for itself. It costs 200 Metal Fragments + 100 Stone and needs a Tier 1 Workbench to craft.
Why bother: - It crafts Gunpowder for ~33% less charcoal -- a direct cut to your biggest bottleneck. - It crafts Explosives faster than a Tier 3 Workbench.
For any base doing regular raiding, a Mixing Table running gunpowder in the background quietly stretches every furnace's charcoal output and shortens the explosives grind. Pair it with split sulfur/charcoal furnace banks and you've got a proper raid-prep economy instead of a hand-craft slog.