Rust custom map build order (RustEdit cheatsheet)

This is the order to build a custom Rust map in, start to finish: terrain in Crucible Heightmap, then everything else in RustEdit.

Keep the one-page version

The whole checklist fits on one image, sized to sit beside RustEdit and still be readable. Pick the one that matches your monitor:

• Half a screen, next to RustEdit: 4K (1920x2160) or 1080p (960x1080)
• Full screen, on a second monitor: 4K (3840x2160) or 1080p (1920x1080)

All four are also free in the Crucible Launcher under Shop, then Extras, alongside the free plugins, prefabs and maps.

Before you start

• Crucible Heightmap for the terrain and the world layers.
• RustEdit for monuments, roads, rail and everything else.
• Crucible Local Server to walk the map in game. You will test more than once.

Set your map size before anything else, because it is not something you change later: see Rust map sizes and resolutions.

1. Update the launcher and your apps

Open the Crucible Launcher and install or update Crucible Local Server and Crucible Heightmap if you have not already. See install and manage apps.

2. Shape your terrain with worldgen off

Build your terrain shapes in Crucible Heightmap with worldgen turned off. Every conjure, slider drag and brush stroke re-derives the world layers when worldgen is on, so leaving it off keeps the app fast while you are still deciding what the land looks like.

This is the stage for multi-island maps, drawn or imported island shapes, channels, volcanoes and the terrain brush.

3. Turn worldgen on and fine-tune

Enable worldgen. Now look at what it put down:

• If your lakes or cliffs landed somewhere bad, move the islands, do not fight the layers. Position is the input.
• Then set your biomes and anything else you want to adjust.

4. Export the .map and open it in RustEdit

Export a .map file from Crucible Heightmap and open it directly in RustEdit. One file, no import dialog: it carries your terrain, ground textures, biomes, topology, lakes, lava and cliffs together.

Caution

In RustEdit’s proc gen menu, the topology passes reset your topology, and the cliff pass takes your cliffs and lakes with it.

Biomes and ground textures have their own checkboxes and are safe. Ticking Topology plus the cliff types at the bottom is the combination that wipes what Crucible exported. Full detail: how to make a custom Rust map.

5. Do a first sweep of the map

Before you place a single prefab:

• Look over the whole map for terrain that needs smoothing or flattening.
• Check that world origin (0, 0, 0), the spot you load in at, sits under terrain.
• Check every topology layer is the way you expect it to be. See Rust biomes and topology for what each layer actually does in game.

6. Cargo path, harbors and the ferry terminal

Place your cargo path now, and decide where your harbors and ferry terminal will sit. You can place the oil rigs at this point too, so cargo has something to navigate around.

Do not apply any masks to the harbors or the terminal.

7. Place the main monuments

Decide where your main monuments go and which way they face, with your future road, trail and rail links in mind. Do not apply any masks yet.

The main set:

• Compound (Outpost)
• Apartment Complex
• Launch Site
• Military Tunnels
• Power Plant
• Trainyard
• Airfield
• Excavator (Giant)
• Water Treatment

These are all important to have. If you are short on space you can get away with dropping Trainyard, Military Tunnels, Excavator, Airfield or Apartment Complex, but some players will not like it unless custom monuments replace them. On maps around 3500 to 6000, try to fit all of them.

8. Proc gen the tunnels, then mask the monuments

With the main monument positions settled and their heights roughly where you want them, proc gen the underground tunnels only.

Then go through every monument: select the monument and its underground tunnel point, and line up any that did not connect properly to the tunnel system.

Only once the tunnels are right, apply the masks on each monument.

9. Place the rest of the monuments

Place the remaining monuments where you want them, with your road and trail routes in mind.

• Abandoned Cabins
• Swamps
• Caves
• Ice Lakes
• Ranch
• Large Barn
• Bandit Camp
• Fishing Village
• Lighthouse
• Satellite Dish
• Radtown 1 (Sewer Branch)
• Abandoned Military Base
• Arctic Research Base
• Dome
• Junkyard
• Underwater Labs
• Oil Rig
• Large Oil Rig
• Missile Silo
• Jungle Ruins
• Waterwells
• Ziggurat Temple

Do not place these four if you plan to proc gen them, because they will not connect to proc gen roads and will need hand-placed paths:

• Abandoned Supermarket
• Oxum’s Gas Station
• Warehouse (Mining Outpost)
• Radtown

Place them anyway if you are happy to place their roads by hand, or to skip proc gen roads entirely.

Worth trying through proc gen instead of placing: Oasis, Canyon, Lakes, Jungle Swamp.

10. Custom safe zones and prefabs

Place your Combined Outpost custom prefab if you are not using Bandit Camp, or build your own, plus anything else safe-zone related: a marketplace drone shop at Fishing Villages, the Ranch or the Large Barn, or custom airwolf camps around the map.

The Combined Outpost, an Airwolf Camp and a Fishing Marketplace are all free in the Crucible Launcher under Shop, then Prefabs.

11. Rivers, extra lakes and waterfalls

Add your rivers, any extra lakes you want, and waterfalls if you want to go crazy with it, all by hand.

You can try river proc gen on a larger map, but hand-placed river paths give a better result.

12. Roads

Try road proc gen, with roadside monuments included if you want Oxum’s Gas Station, the Abandoned Supermarket, the Warehouse (Mining Outpost) and Radtown placed properly and automatically because you left them out in step 9.

If the result is no good, undo or reload your last snapshot save and place the roads by hand. Either way you will end up hand-placing roads and dirt roads in the spots you can see you want them.

Select all with Ctrl + A while a path is selected and switch to Bezier to round the road paths off nicely.

13. Underground road tunnels (optional)

If you want road tunnels, build them with the Road Tunnel prefabs. Cover them properly with terrain and paint an alpha hole where the road goes in.

No terrain triggers and no prevent building volumes are needed.

14. Rail

Decide where your rail paths go. Use Snap to nearby node to connect into the Trainyard and to create side rail paths for spawning wagons and engines.

Same as roads: Ctrl + A with a path selected, then Bezier to round the rail paths off.

15. Road and rail dressing

Now that road and rail heights are final, select each road path and spawn its substations, telephone poles and road signs.

• Apply a height mask to the substations.
• Remove the bus stops if you do not want them.
• If you remove one of these spawns, remove its splat and building topology too.

Power plant transformers on the poles are decided randomly in game, so there is nothing to place for those.

16. Rocks, trees and the rest of the scatter

Proc gen or place the rest. The important ones:

• Vine Trees
• Rock Formations
• Rock Formations Arctic
• Arid Rock Formations
• Rock Formations Small Arctic
• Rock Formations Small Arid
• Rock Formations Small Jungle

All of these need a cleanup pass. Check nothing spawned on a road, in a river, inside a monument or inside a cliff.

You can also proc gen these, which all need cleanup and can all be skipped to improve map performance without hurting play much:

• Shore Ice
• Icebergs
• Icesheets
• Roadside Wrecks
• Coastal Rocks Large Arctic
• Coastal Rocks Large
• Coastal Rocks

Icebergs end up in the way of the cargo path. Roadside wrecks need checking so they are not on the road or blocking the rail. Coastal rocks all need lowering into the ground by hand so none of them poke out of the terrain or float.

17. Ziplines

Try zipline proc gen with Transmission Towers, Powerline Layout and Powerline Topology all selected, then clean up what it puts down. Placing ziplines by hand where you want them is usually easier than cleaning up the proc gen.

You can also build custom zipline points from these prefabs.

Launch points:

• Ziplinelaunchplatform
• Ziplinelaunchplatformstairs
• Ziplinelaunchpoint

Landing points:

• Ziplinelandingplatform
• Ziplinelandingplatformstairs
• Monumentziplinedismountpoint

18. Test it in game, more than once

Run the map on a server and walk it. The free Crucible Local Server picks up your Crucible exports on its own, so this is one click. See test your map on a local server.

What to check:

• Floating cliffs.
• Monument seating, that every monument sits properly in the ground.
• Tree and ore populations, that they look right.
• Zipline connections.
• Roads and rail, that they look right and are actually driveable.
• General playability, and clean up whatever you find.

19. Make it yours

The rest is up to you: plugins, custom prefabs, server settings. At this point you have a Rust map with everything a normal server has, on entirely custom terrain.

Install the RustEdit extension on the server. Everything you placed as custom data (spawn points, NPCs, ziplines, puzzles and the rest) only loads if the extension is there. It needs Carbon or Oxide, and Crucible Local Server installs it for you from the Map tab: the RustEdit extension row shows Installed or Not installed with a button beside it. See run a custom map.

Two free plugins worth having on a custom map, both in the Crucible Launcher under Shop, then Plugins: MapDoorAntiSpam, which fixes door spam and the invisible collider beside a closed map-placed door, and ExcavatorArmFix.