A Tool Cupboard in Rust has 24 inventory slots, and how long a base survives is set by how much upkeep those slots can hold against what the base costs per hour. Wood, stone and metal fragments stack to 1,000 per slot; high quality metal stacks to only 100, which is what usually runs out first on an upgraded base.
Upkeep is charged continuously against the cupboard's contents and scales with the number and tier of the building blocks in its radius. Blocks inside a stocked cupboard do not decay; the moment it empties, they begin decaying at their tier's rate.
The practical ceiling is therefore 24 slots of the resources a base actually consumes. A stone base can fill nearly every slot with 1,000-stacks and last a long time unattended; an armored base burns high quality metal at 100 per slot and needs restocking far sooner.
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24. That is the ceiling on how much upkeep you can leave a base with, so the resource that stacks smallest — high quality metal, at 100 per slot — sets how long an upgraded base can be left alone.
It depends entirely on how many blocks are in range and what tier they are, which is what the cupboard calculator works out. The upper bound is 24 slots of resources: 24,000 wood, 24,000 stone, 24,000 metal fragments or 2,400 high quality metal at maximum stacking.
Yes. While the Tool Cupboard has the resources the base costs, nothing inside its radius decays. Upkeep is consumed continuously, and decay only starts once the cupboard cannot pay.
Because armored building blocks cost high quality metal to maintain, and it stacks to only 100 per slot against 1,000 for the other resources. An armored base can hold at most 2,400 HQM in its cupboard, so it runs dry far sooner than a stone base of the same size.
Yes, and non-linearly — upkeep scales with the number of building blocks in the cupboard's radius as well as their tier. Adding external walls and unused rooms raises the hourly cost of a base you then have to keep stocked.
Stack sizes and the Tool Cupboard slot limit come from the RustTools cupboard data set. Values are read from the RustTools game data set, the same data the calculators run on. Data on this page was last verified against Rust in August 2026. Facepunch balance patches can change these values — see the changelog for what has been re-checked. RustTools is an unofficial fan project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Facepunch Studios.