Doors and locks (every door tier and raid cost)

Doors are the soft spot in every base. A wall costs 2x explosive damage; a door costs 1x. Pick the wrong door, place the wrong lock, share the wrong code in voice chat, and your loot belongs to someone else by morning. This page is the full 2026 reference: every door tier, every lock, every raid cost, every common mistake.

1. Door tier comparison

Every placeable door in vanilla Rust (2026), ranked by HP and tier. Costs and HP values cross-referenced with rustlabs.com and the Rust Wiki.

Crafting times and stack sizes can change between Facepunch updates; the materials column reflects current 2026 values.

1.1 Every tier in full — when to place what

Door choice is a wipe-timeline decision, not a one-time pick. The right answer changes hour by hour as your sulfur economy grows and as the raiders around you tech up. Here is the start-to-finish progression most experienced players run, verified against rustlabs.com, the WikiRust 2026 door tables and Corrosion Hour's base-building guides.

• Wood Door (200 HP, WB0, 100 wood): A placeholder and nothing more. It survives roughly one satchel charge or a few axe swings, and even a naked with a rock and patience can chew through it. Use it for the first 20–30 minutes of wipe while you gather stone, then upgrade or replace it the instant you can. Open/close is fast (a standard swing, ~0.4s arc) so it is fine for a panic exit — it is the defense that fails, not the speed.
• Sheet Metal Door (250 HP, WB1, 1 sheet metal + 75 frags): The workhorse. This is the "real" door for 90% of solo and duo bases all wipe. It costs one C4 or four satchels to breach, swings at normal speed, and pairs with a code lock for instant group access. If you only ever learn one door, learn this one. It is the cheapest meaningful entry point on a stone base, which is exactly why you honeycomb behind it (see section 8).
• Armored Door (800 HP on this build, WB3, 8 HQM + 5 wood): The single toughest door in vanilla Rust and the only one with a built-in eye slot for peeking. Reserve it for your loot core and airlock — placing armored doors on every external doorway is a common HQM waste because raiders ignore high-HP doors and breach a cheaper wall instead. Swing speed matches a normal door. Note: independent trackers such as WikiRust list the armored door as high as 1000 HP after a 2026 balance pass; treat 800–1000 as the practical band and always confirm on your server before doing raid math.
• Garage Door (600 HP, WB2, 15 HQM + 5 gears): A vertical sliding door with no swing arc. Its defining trait is speed: it takes roughly 1.3–1.5 seconds to open and the same to close. That slowness is a liability on a chase (you cannot slam it behind you) but an asset in a fixed defensive position — you crouch-peek the low gap, fire, and let it grind shut. It always needs a double/garage frame and cannot take a code lock the way swing doors do on some servers; auth is handled through the Tool Cupboard. Gears are the gating cost, not metal.
• Double Door (250 HP per leaf, WB1): The doorway-frame variant of the sheet door. Critically, a double door is not weaker than a single door despite covering twice the visual area — each leaf carries full door HP, so a raider must spend the full C4 cost on the leaf they choose. Use double doors where you want a wider opening for base aesthetics or vehicle access, never expecting a defensive discount.
• Ladder Hatch (200 HP, WB2, 8 HQM + 1 sewing kit): A floor-frame door with a retractable ladder built in. It is your roof and multi-floor access. At 200 HP it is soft — one C4 — so never let a ladder hatch be the only thing protecting a loot floor; honeycomb the ceiling around it or stack it behind an airlock. The retractable ladder means raiders cannot climb it while it is closed.

Rule of thumb: sheet metal everywhere as default, armored only on the airlock and loot core, garage doors only in deliberate defensive cubbies, ladder hatches always honeycombed. Spending HQM on armored doors a raider will simply skip is the most common mid-wipe resource leak.

2. Door frame variants

A door is only as strong as the frame it lives in. Frames take wall HP, not door HP.

Note: a sheet metal doorway frame is 1000 HP — the door itself is only 250 HP. Raiders will always hit the door, never the frame.

2.1 Door frames vs wall frames — don't confuse them

New players routinely mix up the two "frame" objects, and the mistake leaves a hole in the base. They are different building pieces with different jobs:

• Doorway (door frame): A wall socket with a floor-to-ceiling opening sized for a door. You place it in a wall slot and then deploy a single door, double door, or garage door into it. The doorway itself upgrades with wall-tier HP (250 wood / 500 stone / 1000 sheet / 2000 armored), so the frame is tough — the door dropped into it is the weak point.
• Wall Frame (window frame): A wall socket with a smaller window-sized opening. It accepts shutters, bars, embrasures or a strengthened glass window — not a door. People try to put a door in a wall frame, find they cannot, and leave the opening unshuttered overnight. A wall frame with nothing in it is an open invitation.
• Floor Frame: A floor socket with a hatch-sized opening. It accepts a ladder hatch or floor grill. This is how you build vertical access and shooting floors.

The practical takeaway: every frame you place creates a hole that must be filled with the correct fitting and locked or authed. An empty frame is structurally a doorway with no door. Walk your base before logging off and confirm every doorway has a locked door, every wall frame has a shutter or window, and every floor frame has a hatch.

2.2 High external gates — the compound layer

High External Wood (1500 HP) and Stone (1500 HP for the stone version's intended balance) gates are not base doors — they are compound-wall gates that swing on high external walls to fence open ground around your base. They have no lock socket of their own and are opened by anyone with Tool Cupboard authorization on the gate, so they only make sense inside a TC-protected compound. Wood gates are cheap but flammable and chop quickly; stone gates resist fire and melee far better and are the standard for any compound you intend to defend.

3. Code Lock

The default lock for 99% of bases.

• Cost: 1 Metal Fragment + 1 Wood (crafted via blueprint, instant).
• Workbench: WB0 (default BP).
• HP: Tied to the door's HP; destroying the door destroys the lock.
• Code: 4 digits, 0000–9999.
• Owner view: Green text on the lock UI; non-owners see red "Locked."
• Guest code: Second 4-digit slot. Anyone with the guest code can open the door but can't change codes or remove the lock.
• Removal: Hammer (with auth) to pick the lock off. C4'ing the door destroys the lock with it.
• Lockpicking: REMOVED from vanilla Rust. The old lockpick mechanic from early Rust is gone in 2026 — there is no way to "pick" a code lock without breaking the door.

Place the lock first, then set the code. If you walk away without setting a code, anyone who finds the door can claim it.

3.1 Code lock mechanics in full

The code lock is the single most important defensive item in Rust, and its mechanics reward players who understand every detail:

• Crafting: The code lock blueprint is unlocked by default — no workbench, no research required. It costs 1 metal fragment and 1 wood and crafts effectively instantly, so there is never an economic excuse for an unlocked door.
• Deployment and the unlocked window: A freshly placed code lock is unlocked and unowned until you hold the USE key on it and set a 4-digit code. During that window any player can interact with the lock, set their own code, and take ownership of your door. The gap between "lock placed" and "code set" is the most exploited mistake on wipe day — close it immediately.
• Ownership and the green text: The player who sets the code becomes the owner. When the owner (or any authorized player) looks at the lock, the on-screen prompt and lock text render in green, signalling "you are authorized, the door opens freely." Non-authorized players see red "Locked" text and must enter the code. New players should train themselves to glance for green text before assuming a door is theirs.
• Authorizing yourself: Entering the correct main code once authorizes you to that lock for the session — you then walk through freely without re-typing until you die or the server restarts, at which point you re-enter the code once.
• Guest code: A second, independent 4-digit slot. Anyone holding the guest code can open the door but cannot change either code, cannot remove the lock, and cannot authorize others. This is the correct way to grant temporary access to a trade partner or friend-of-friend, because you can rotate the guest code at any time without locking your own team out of the main code.
• Wrong-code shock: Entering an incorrect PIN delivers a small electric shock and a brief lockout animation — a minor deterrent against blind brute-forcing, though it is no real defense against a determined raider with C4.
• What a code lock secures: Not just doors. Code locks deploy on storage boxes, large boxes, fridges, lockers, tool cupboards, and more. Locking your TC with its own unique code is a baseline practice.
• Removal: An authorized player can hammer the lock off (it returns no resources). Destroying the door with explosives destroys the lock along with it.

3.2 The shock-trap exception

Combined with electricity, a code lock can be wired so that a wrong entry triggers external circuits — advanced bunker builders pair this with shotgun traps or alarms. For most players, the takeaway is simpler: the wrong-code shock means a raider cannot quietly digit-guess your door without you potentially noticing, but it never replaces real wall and honeycomb defense.

4. Key Lock

Largely a meme on solo servers — but it has one real use.

• Cost: 15 Wood.
• Crafts: Instantly, default BP.
• Key: Each Key Lock generates a unique physical key item. Keys go in your inventory and are dropped on death.
• Master key: The lock's owner gets a master key that opens all their locks of that type.
• Weakness: Lose the key, lose the room. Die outside your base, your key is on your corpse for anyone to pick up.

Best use: as a second lock on internal loot boxes inside a clan base, where you don't want random teammates touching your stash but you don't want to burn a code-lock slot. The master key is yours; teammates with TC auth can't open it.

4.1 Key lock mechanics in detail

• Cost and access: 15 wood, default blueprint, instant craft, no workbench. It is the cheapest possible lock and the only one a fresh spawn can realistically afford in the first two minutes of wipe.
• The key item: Deploying and locking a key lock generates a physical Door Key in your inventory. That key is a real, lootable item — it occupies an inventory slot and drops on your corpse when you die. A raider who kills you outside your base can pick up the key and walk straight in with zero explosives.
• Master key: The lock's owner holds a master key that opens every key lock they own of that type, so an owner is not juggling a keyring — but each additional person who needs access must be handed a crafted copy.
• Group friction: Distributing and tracking physical keys across a group is clumsy, and a lost key locks that player out permanently until the lock is replaced. This friction is exactly why code locks won the meta.

4.2 When a key lock actually beats a code lock

Despite its reputation as a meme, the key lock has two legitimate niches in 2026:

• Wipe-minute-one stopgap: Before you have a metal fragment to spare or have even found a furnace, a 15-wood key lock on your starter door buys real protection. Swap it for a code lock the moment you can.
• Anti-teammate inner vault: In a clan base, every member with TC auth can open code-locked internal doors. A key lock on your personal loot boxes cannot be opened by a teammate just because they have TC authorization — only the master-key holder gets in. If you are worried about an insider going rogue, a key-locked personal stash is genuinely safer than a code lock whose code is known to the group.

5. Authorization sharing

Three separate auth systems in Rust 2026, and people constantly confuse them:

Voice chat codes get screen-capped. Streamers leak codes constantly. The safer pattern in 2026:

• Share via the Rust+ companion app smart-alarm + pair feature, or in-game team chat (ephemeral).
• Use guest codes for friends-of-friends — you can change the guest code without locking out your main team.
• Never reuse codes between bases. One leaked code = entire base portfolio compromised.

5.1 Sharing authorization safely — Rust+ vs voice

The fastest way to lose a base is to read your code aloud on a stream, in Discord, or on open voice while a stranger is in earshot. Build a discipline around how access is shared:

• Never speak codes on open voice. Proximity voice carries to any player nearby, including a raider hiding outside your wall. Streamers leak codes weekly this way; treat every code as if it is being recorded.
• Prefer in-game team chat. Team text chat is visible only to your authorized team and scrolls away — it is the lowest-exposure channel for passing a code internally.
• Use the Rust+ companion app for coordination, not for codes. Rust+ lets you pair smart switches and smart alarms, monitor your base remotely, and get raid alerts on your phone. It is excellent for knowing someone is at your door; do not, however, paste codes into any chat that lives outside the game where it can be screenshotted.
• Authorize by action, not by announcement. The most secure way to "share" a door is to walk a trusted player to it and let them enter the code once themselves, or hand them TC auth at the cupboard. Nothing is spoken, nothing is logged.
• Guest codes for outsiders, main codes for core team only. A guest code can be rotated the instant a trade goes wrong without disturbing your team's access.
• Rotate after every betrayal or suspicious wipe. If a player leaves the group or you suspect a leak, change every main code that player ever saw — and never carry a code over to next wipe.

6. Raid cost per door

Raid math assumes the door is hit directly (1x damage multiplier). Walls take 0.5x from most explosives, so wall-raiding is usually cheaper per HP — but doors are softer absolute targets and skip the frame entirely.

For comparison: a Stone Wall (500 HP, 0.5x explosive multiplier) effectively absorbs 1000 HP of explosive — 4 C4. Sheet wall = 8 C4. Armored wall = 16 C4.

Conclusion: Sheet metal door is almost always the cheapest entry point on a stone base. Armored door on an armored base is a wash with the wall. Garage door is the most explosive-efficient defense per HQM spent because it forces 3 C4 minimum.

There is no "soft side" on doors — door HP is identical from both sides. The old soft-side mechanic only applies to walls.

6.1 Reading the raid table like a raider

Raid cost is not just trivia for the defender — it is how you predict what a raider will do to your base, so you can build the cheapest path to be a path you control. A few principles drawn from rusttips' raid calculator and Corrosion Hour's raid breakdowns:

• Raiders breach the cheapest object, not the most obvious one. If your sheet metal door costs 1 C4 but the stone wall beside it costs 4 C4, the door is the path — unless you have honeycombed so that the door leads nowhere. Make the cheap path lead into an airlock.
• C4 is the most sulfur-efficient explosive on high-HP doors. One C4 deals enough damage to drop a sheet door outright and chunk an armored door hard; rockets and satchels scale worse per sulfur as door HP climbs. A defender who forces a 3–4 C4 minimum (garage or armored door) has meaningfully raised the sulfur bar.
• Satchels are a wipe-day and low-tier tool. They are cheap and craftable early but unreliable (they can dud) and inefficient against anything past a sheet door. Expect satchels in the first day, C4 and rockets later.
• Explosive 5.56 is a last resort on doors. The ammo counts in the table (dozens to hundreds of rounds) show why — gunpowder spent on explo ammo is almost always better spent crafting C4. It matters mainly for door-camping a fight, not for cold raids.
• Double the door, double the bill. Because each leaf has full HP, a raider choosing a double-door leaf still pays the single-door C4 cost — there is no surface-area discount.

Defender conclusion: you cannot make a door un-raidable, only expensive and slow. The win condition is forcing the raider to spend more sulfur and time than your loot is worth, and to spend it inside a killbox you can shoot into.

7. Door stuffing and peeking

A half-open door is a defender's best friend.

• Door stuffing: Stand inside the doorframe and open the door. Your body blocks the gap, but you can peek by ADS-ing through the half-open swing arc. The attacker can't easily shoot past you without exposing themselves.
• Garage door peek: Hold the open-key, then close it the instant you've taken a shot. Garage doors close slowly (~1.5s), so you can dump a full mag before the door is back down. This is why garage doors are S-tier defender doors and F-tier wipe-day doors.
• Armored door slot: The horizontal eye slot on the Armored Door lets you see (and shoot with thin weapons like bows) without opening it. Raiders often boost a buddy onto your slot to block your vision.

7.1 Door-stuffing and peeking, in depth

"Door stuffing" is the technique of using a half-open door and your own body as a moving shield. Done well it lets one defender hold a doorway against several attackers; done badly it gets you traded instantly. The mechanics that make it work:

• The swing-arc shield: A swing door pivots through an arc. When it is roughly half-open, the door panel itself blocks a slice of the doorway while your body fills the rest. You aim down sights through the remaining gap, fire, then step back so the panel and frame cover you while you reload. The attacker must expose far more of their body to hit the same line.
• Hug the hinge side. Stand on the side the door hinges from so the panel sweeps toward the attacker as it opens, giving you cover for longer through the swing.
• Garage-door peek timing: Garage doors slide vertically and close slowly (~1.3–1.5s). Hold the open input, take your shots through the rising gap, then release — the door grinds shut over more than a second, which is enough to dump a burst and still be covered before a raider can punish. This slow close is a defensive feature and a wipe-day liability in the same trait.
• Crouch the gap. A half-raised garage door leaves a low slot. Crouch behind it and you present only a thin horizontal sliver; a standing raider must drop prone to return fire down that same line, which is slow and commits them.
• Armored-door eye slot: The horizontal slot lets you watch an approach and even loose arrows or bolts without opening the door at all. Counterplay: raiders boost a teammate up to physically stand in your slot and blind you, or simply C4 the door — so treat the slot as an early-warning tool, not a fortress.
• Reset discipline: The whole technique depends on returning to full cover between shots. Close the door (or let the garage door fall) the instant a shot lands or you start a reload. Greeding one extra shot with the door open is how stuffers die.

8. Honeycomb door rooms

The standard "airlock" pattern, used in every serious base since 2018:

Why it works:

• Raiders must blow two armored doors = 8 C4 just to see your loot.
• The TC sits inside the airlock — raiders need to destroy it before they can upgrade/break stuff, but it's behind the first door.
• If you get pushed at door 1, retreat behind door 2 and reset.

Variants: triple-airlock (12 C4 minimum), shooting-floor airlock (loot through a floor hatch from above), and the "bunker" airlock with a sleeping-bag respawn inside.

8.1 Airlock design principles

An airlock is a small trap room sandwiched between two locked doors. Its entire value comes from one discipline rule and one structural rule:

• Discipline rule — one door at a time. Door A and door B must never be open simultaneously. Step in, close A behind you, then open B. If both are ever open, the airlock is just a hallway and provides no protection. On a raid push, an open inner door is a free path to your loot.
• Structural rule — honeycomb the airlock. The walls of the airlock room should themselves be backed by honeycomb filler cells so a raider cannot simply blow a side wall and bypass both doors. An un-honeycombed airlock is defeated by going around it.
• TC placement: Putting the Tool Cupboard inside the airlock means a raider must breach door A and win the fight in the trap room before they can even touch the TC — and the TC keeps them from upgrading or repairing while you counter-push.
• Respawn integrity: A sleeping bag or bed inside the airlock or loot core lets you respawn behind your own doors mid-raid and keep contesting. Place bags so you never spawn outside a locked door.

8.2 Honeycomb door rooms

Honeycomb is the ring of small filler cells (triangle or square foundations and walls) wrapped around your loot core. A "honeycomb door room" extends that idea: instead of one door into the core, the path threads through several honeycomb cells, each sealed by its own locked door.

• Splash absorption: Explosive damage has area falloff. Honeycomb cells soak splash and force the raider to breach each wall or door deliberately rather than chaining one blast into your loot.
• Multiplied raid cost: Every extra armored door in the honeycomb path is another ~4 C4. A raider facing three sequential armored doors is looking at 12+ C4 before they see a single box — often more than the loot is worth.
• Decoy doors: Not every honeycomb door needs to lead anywhere. A locked door opening into a dead 1x1 cell wastes a raider's first C4 and their time, and tells you which side they are pushing.
• Cost to you: Honeycomb eats a lot of building resources and upkeep. Balance the number of cells against the upkeep your farm can sustain — an over-honeycombed base that decays because you cannot feed the TC is its own failure.

9. Common mistakes

The five mistakes that kill more bases than raiders do:

1. Wood door in a real base. 1 satchel = open base. Wood door is a wipe-hour placeholder only.
2. Code lock on the outside-facing door without a backup. If someone bags inside your base or uses a Boom-Box exploit, your single door is the only thing between them and your loot.
3. Default-adjacent codes. 1234, 0000, 1111, 6969, 4321, 1212. Every raider tries these first. Always use a random 4-digit code.
4. Same code on every door. One leak compromises the whole base.
5. Forgetting to authorize teammates on the TC. Code lock lets them in; TC keeps them from upgrading or repairing your walls.

9.1 More door mistakes that end wipes

• Leaving a code lock placed but uncoded. An unlocked, unowned lock can be claimed by the first player who holds USE on it. The window between placing the lock and setting the code is a real exploit vector — set the code before you do anything else.
• Empty wall frames and door frames. A doorway with no door, or a wall frame with no shutter, is an open hole regardless of how thick your walls are. Walk the base before logging off.
• Armored doors everywhere. Raiders skip high-HP doors and breach a cheaper wall. HQM poured into external armored doors a raider will never touch is wasted — spend it on the airlock instead.
• Garage door as the main wipe-day door. Its slow close means you cannot slam it behind you on a chase; an attacker walks in during the 1.5s grind. Garage doors belong in fixed defensive cubbies, not on your run-in entrance.
• No honeycomb behind the cheap door. If your 1-C4 sheet door opens directly onto your loot, you have built a 1-C4 base. The cheap door must lead into an airlock or honeycomb, never the core.
• Ladder hatch as sole loot-floor protection. At 200 HP a hatch is one C4. Honeycomb the ceiling around it or stack it behind a door.
• Reusing last wipe's codes. Anyone who ever knew your code can try it on day one of the new wipe. Fresh codes every wipe, every base.

10. Pro tips

• Key Lock as backup on TC-critical boxes. If a teammate goes rogue, your master-key boxes stay safe even if they have full TC auth.
• **Garage doors for defensive positions** — turret cubbies, peek-bunkers, shooting floors. Never as your main wipe-day door (too slow to close on chases).
• Lockpicking is gone. The 2026 vanilla loadout has no lockpick item — don't waste inventory worrying about it. Modded servers may re-add it; check server rules.
• Place locks before walking away. Anyone can claim an unlocked door.
• Test your code from the outside. Multiple raids have started because the owner set the code wrong and locked themselves out, leaving a window broken open to "fix it later."
• Armored door peek slot points the way you face when placing. Plan your peek angles before hammering.
• Double doors take the same C4 as single doors — they are not weaker, despite the bigger surface.

10.1 Advanced door pro tips for 2026

• Lock your Tool Cupboard with its own unique code. The TC is the real heart of the base — controlling it controls upkeep, building privilege and turret friendly-fire. Give it a code no other door uses.
• Set codes facing away from windows. A raider watching through a window or strengthened-glass pane can read the digits as you type. Turn your back to open lines of sight when entering a PIN.
• Use guest codes as a tripwire. Hand a guest code to a player you are not sure about; if loot starts vanishing, you know the leak's source and can rotate that one code without disturbing your team.
• Stagger door HP through the airlock. A sheet outer door (cheap, expected) leading to armored inner doors trains raiders to under-budget, then walls them into a sulfur sink.
• Pre-plan the armored door's peek slot. The eye slot faces the way you are looking when you place the door. Decide your peek angle before you hammer it in.
• Keep a spare lock and door in your loot core. Mid-raid you may need to re-seal a breached doorway; a spare sheet door and code lock can buy you a counter-push.
• Confirm your code from outside before logging off. Lock yourself out by mistyping and the only fix is breaking your own door — leaving the base open. Test it.
• Match door tier to wall tier. An armored door in a stone wall just tells raiders to hit the 4-C4 stone wall instead of the 4-C4 armored door — either way they pay the same, so don't overspend on the door.

10.2 Lockpicking status in 2026

To settle a recurring question: there is no lockpicking in vanilla Rust in 2026. The legacy lockpick item from early Rust was removed years ago and has not returned. There is no way to silently defeat a code lock or key lock — the only path through a locked door is destroying the door (or the lock with it) using explosives, fire, or melee. Some modded servers re-add a lockpicking plugin, so if a server's rules or plugin list mention it, that behaviour is server-specific; on official and standard community vanilla servers, plan your defense as if every door can only be opened by the code, the key, or a raid.

11. Sources

• rustlabs.com — Door category (HP, costs, raid tables): https://rustlabs.com/group=doors
• rust.fandom.com — Code Lock article: https://rust.fandom.com/wiki/Code_Lock
• rust.fandom.com — Armored Door article: https://rust.fandom.com/wiki/Armored_Door
• corrosionhour.com — "Best Door for Your Rust Base": https://www.corrosionhour.com/rust-doors-guide/
• corrosionhour.com — Rust Base Building tips: https://www.corrosionhour.com/rust-base-building/
• rusttips.com — Raid cost calculator and door breakdowns: https://www.rusttips.com/raid-calculator
• Facepunch patch notes — Garage Door & Armored Door balance history: https://rust.facepunch.com/news
• Facepunch devblog — Lock and door changes (lockpick removal): https://rust.facepunch.com/blog

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