Rust Guide: How to find Food and Cook in Rust

There are a number of ways to keep yourself from starving in Rust, though food isn’t necessarily aplenty. If you don’t know what you’re looking for to sustain yourself, you can very easily starve to death in your first few attempts to play the game.

You’ll have to rely on your wits to survive your first few days, but luckily food isn’t too hard to come by at the very start provided you know where to look.

Rust: How to Get Your First Foods

You’re probably not going to have a farm to work with or a safe community to rely on during your starting hours with the game or a server, meaning you’ll have to forage to sustain yourself early on. First you’ll have to find a river.

Hold the G key to bring up the map and try to find the river closest to you. You’ll want to make your way there to find your first food: pumpkins and corn.

Both pumpkins and corn grow by rivers, though corn only grows in temperate areas. You can also drink the water from rivers if you need to.

Corn satisfies 40 Hunger and provides 5 Hydration, while pumpkins satisfy 100 Hunger and 30 Hydration.

Harvesting corn and pumpkins grants seeds for them, which you can later use to farm for a steady supply of food.

Rust: How to Cook Food

As you progress, you’re probably not going to want to eat nothing but pumpkins and corn. Luckily, just about anything you can kill drops meat. Though you’ll want to cook it first.

To cook meat in Rust, you’ll need to make a campfire. Campfires aren’t just useful for cooking, they also provide a bonus to comfort, which increases your health regeneration.

You’ll need 100 wood to craft a campfire. To cook on it, hold the E key and ignite the fire if it’s not lit. Then, choose the open option to place food items and wood in the campfire’s inventory to get started cooking. A campfire can cook up to four foods simultaneously.

That’s it for getting your first foods in Rust. Check out our other Rust guides here on GameSkinny.