Giant Excavator – Rust Monument Guide

In this guide, we will be exploring the Giant Excavator monument. This guide contains the general strategy and meta for the monument, a map with Crate spawn locations, and callouts so you can more easily navigate the monument.  It also has a section on the titular Excavator, how to use it, and what benefits it has.

For info on how to read the map and some more general information about the guide please refer to the Map Key in the Main Guide.

General Info

Giant Excavator is located in the desert, and towers above all the nearby terrain with its massive trusses and machinery, so it should be easy to locate. Once you are there, you should know that the Giant Excavator is the fastest way to collect material in Rust, if you can pay to operate and defend it. Using it to shred the nearby ground can allow you to collect huge amounts of sulfur, metal, and high-quality metal, so long as you can kill its guards and defend its drops from players.

Strategy and Meta

Giant Excavator can make you unbelievably rich in a relatively short amount of time. But first, you will need to clear it out of all the others with the same idea and start the digger. There are 18 scientists throughout the base, and starting the digger will cause enough noise to attract whoever you don’t clear out first. In addition, you should always expect players to counter at this monument, and so should proceed with caution wherever you go inside it.

There are some important things to keep in mind when it comes to PvP at Giant Excavator. Firstly, this monument is incredibly open, which means there are many angles you can be attacked from. To swing this to your advantage, make sure to bring a sniper rifle or another long-range weapon, and — like any other monument — be sure to use the high ground to your advantage.

You are able to climb all the way onto the top of various parts of the Excavator and sit on each of the arms. These will move around and allow you to have constantly changing angles and are large enough that you can reposition to keep the enemy off balance. This will enable you to scout for incoming players and snipe them before they reach the edge of the monument, and camp the drop-off points to pick off looters.

If you’re attacking, you should keep in mind that the enemy is likely going to be on the lookout for you. To avoid being spotted, try attacking from odd angles, pushing from below, and sneaking around. You should constantly be moving from cover to cover to prevent clear shots at you. Smoke grenades can be incredibly useful for this, especially if you are there just to loot and scoot the resource drop-offs for easy profit.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the monument will call an airdrop every 10 minutes. If you’re a defender, this can add an extra influx of loot, but it can also force strategic decisions to be made: should you prioritize the resources being collected, or should you gather the Crates? Generally, gathering the Crates will be the better choice. The items in them are typically worth more than the materials you are excavating, and — more importantly — grabbing the Crates will prevent naked and primitive-gear players from looting weapons that they can then use against you. By that same token, grabbing these Crates as attackers can give you the weapons you need to take on the defenders, assuming you can reach them without being gunned down.

Crates and Callouts

The following callouts correspond to the numbers on the image above:

1. Train Station
2. Gravel Pile
3. Cliff Above the Digger
4. The Digger
5. Ultimate Height
6. Resource Selection Arm
7. Mini Excavator
8. Main Excavator

How to Start the Digger

All you need to mine resources using the digger is Diesel Fuel. To start, simply take the Diesel to the center of the Main Excavator (#8), insert it into the fuel tank, and click the start button. Run to the Resource Selection Arm (#6) and choose what materials you want to collect on either side.

That’s all you need to do for the resources to begin collecting at the 2 drop-off areas. Provided you manage to defend them from opportunistic looters, the resources will be all yours!

Below is a chart for how many resources you can expect to gather of each material per excavator cycle. Keep in mind that the excavator will always run for 40 minutes, and always requires 20 units of Diesel Fuel.

As you will note, almost all of these outputs are worth the Diesel. However, it is important to note that if you are harvesting metal fragments or stones, they will fill up your inventory (not including the Hotbar) in 10 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively.

Because of how quickly your inventory will fill with resources, it is highly recommended that you bring a car with a camper and storage so that you can easily deposit and transport your resources. This also has the added benefit of allowing you to have extra kits ready, so you can re-engage enemies faster. The other option is to build an Excavator base nearby so that you can depo quickly to keep space in your inventory. This can serve as a Forward Operating Base (FOB) and makes it easier to chain excavator runs to build up a mass of recourses.

Take a trip over to Giant Excavator in your next wipe for those sweet, sweet resources! Good luck defending if you’re running it, and if you’re countering, good luck stealing away with all its riches! Check out our other Monument Guides for information on the other monuments.