Updated August 2026

If you have ever watched a farmer clear a mining spot in half the time and walk away with a truck load of metal, there is a good chance they had a tea running. Ore Tea in Rust is the single best buff for gathering, a cheap berry brew that makes every metal, sulfur and stone node pay out more while it is active. It is one of the most underrated items in the game, and most players either never touch it or never make the good version.

This guide covers the whole thing: what Ore Tea does, the exact yield bonus for Basic, Advanced and Pure, how to brew it from berries at a Mixing Table, how much a Pure Ore Tea really costs, whether it works on stone, and how to stack it with a pie and a jackhammer for the fastest farming in Rust. Every number here is checked against the in-game item data, not guessed.

Rust Ore Tea: the real in-game Basic, Advanced and Pure Ore Tea renders, a berry brew that boosts the metal, sulfur and stone you mine from nodes by up to 50%
Ore Tea comes in three tiers. Drink one and every node you mine gives more, for a full 30 minutes.
TL;DR Ore Tea (shortname oretea) is a buff you brew at a Mixing Table that temporarily increases the ore you gather from nodes. There are three tiers: Basic (+20%), Advanced (+35%) and Pure (+50%), and every tier lasts 30 minutes and gives +30 hydration. You make a Basic from 2 Yellow Berries and 2 Blue Berries, then combine four of each tier to climb to the next. It works on metal, sulfur and stone nodes, including the bonus High Quality Metal you get finishing a metal node. If you farm ore, you should always have one running.

What is Ore Tea in Rust?

Ore Tea is a consumable buff, one of the many teas you brew at a Mixing Table from berries. Its whole job is to increase the amount of ore you pull out of nodes. When the buff is active, every swing on a metal, sulfur or stone node gives you more resources than normal, right up until the node is gone. The in-game description says it plainly: it “temporarily increases your yield from harvesting ores.”

Teas are Rust’s answer to potions. You do not equip them, you drink them, and the effect ticks down on a timer in the corner of your screen. Ore Tea specifically is a gathering tea, in the same family as Wood Tea and Scrap Tea. Where those boost wood from trees and scrap from barrels, Ore Tea boosts the metal, sulfur and stone you mine. For anyone who spends time farming to fund a base or a raid, it is the most valuable tea in the game.

oreteaItem shortname
+50%Yield at Pure tier
30 minDuration, every tier
BerriesThe only ingredient

The beauty of Ore Tea is how cheap the payoff is. Berries grow for free, a Mixing Table is one of the first deployables you can afford, and a single tea can pay for itself many times over in one farming trip. The only real cost is the time spent building a small berry farm, and once that is running you can keep a whole team stocked with tea for the entire wipe.

Ore Tea tiers: Basic, Advanced and Pure

There are three tiers of Ore Tea, and the only thing that changes between them is the size of the bonus. Every tier lasts the same 30 minutes and restores the same +30 hydration. So the higher tier you drink, the more ore per node you get for the exact same amount of time.

Rust Ore Tea tiers compared: Basic Ore Tea +20%, Advanced Ore Tea +35% and Pure Ore Tea +50% ore yield, each lasting 30 minutes and made at a mixing table
Same 30 minute timer on all three. Basic is +20%, Advanced +35%, and Pure +50% ore yield.
TierOre yieldDurationMade fromShortname
Basic Ore Tea+20%30 minutes2 Yellow + 2 Blue Berryoretea
Advanced Ore Tea+35%30 minutes4 Basic Ore Teasoretea.advanced
Pure Ore Tea+50%30 minutes4 Advanced Ore Teasoretea.pure

Because the timer never changes, there is no reason to sip a weaker tea to “save” the good ones for later in terms of duration. A Pure Ore Tea is simply +50% for 30 minutes, and a Basic is +20% for the same 30 minutes. The trade is purely how many berries you are willing to spend for a bigger bonus, which is why serious farmers brew Pure and casual players get plenty of value from Basic.

All three stack to 10 Every tier of Ore Tea stacks up to 10 in a single slot, so a full stack of Pure Ore Tea is five hours of +50% farming in one inventory space. That makes tea easy to carry on a long grind and easy to hand out to teammates before a farm run.

How to make Ore Tea in Rust

Making Ore Tea is simple once you have a Mixing Table. The recipe for a Basic Ore Tea is 2 Yellow Berries and 2 Blue Berries. Drop them into the Mixing Table, and after a five second mix you get one Basic Ore Tea. That is the whole recipe, and the order you place the berries in does not matter.

Rust Ore Tea recipe: two Yellow Berries and two Blue Berries go into a Mixing Table to brew one Basic Ore Tea in five seconds
The Basic Ore Tea recipe: two Yellow and two Blue Berries, mixed in five seconds.
  1. Get a Mixing Table. Craft one for 200 Metal Fragments and 100 Stone at a Workbench Level 1, or buy one for around 175 scrap at Bandit Camp. A Cooking Workbench works too.
  2. Gather Yellow and Blue Berries. Pick them from bushes around the map, or grow your own in planters. You need two of each per Basic tea.
  3. Mix a Basic Ore Tea. Put 2 Yellow and 2 Blue Berries in the table and wait five seconds. Out comes one Basic Ore Tea.
  4. Combine up if you want more. Four Basic teas mix into one Advanced, and four Advanced mix into one Pure. Same table, same five second mix each time.

The Mixing Table is the gate here, not the berries. Once you have the table up and a small berry supply, you can brew Ore Tea endlessly for the cost of a bit of farming. Berries also grow back on their own once planted, so a tea farm is close to free to run after the initial setup.

Pure Ore Tea: the farmer’s favourite

Pure Ore Tea is the top tier and the one dedicated farmers live on. It gives the biggest bonus at +50% ore yield for 30 minutes, which means for every two nodes you would normally clear, Pure Ore Tea gets you the ore of three. Over a long farming session that is an enormous amount of extra metal, sulfur and stone for zero extra swings.

Rust Ore Tea upgrade path: four Basic Ore Teas make one Advanced Ore Tea, four Advanced make one Pure Ore Tea, so one Pure costs 32 yellow and 32 blue berries
Climbing to Pure: four of each tier make one of the next, so a Pure is a real berry investment.

The catch is the cost. Because you build every tier from four of the tier below, a Pure Ore Tea is not cheap in berries:

To makeYou needBerry total
1 Basic Ore Tea2 Yellow + 2 Blue4 berries
1 Advanced Ore Tea4 Basic teas16 berries (8 Yellow + 8 Blue)
1 Pure Ore Tea4 Advanced teas64 berries (32 Yellow + 32 Blue)

So one Pure Ore Tea costs 32 Yellow Berries and 32 Blue Berries, the same as 16 Basic teas’ worth of berries. That sounds like a lot, but a couple of well tended planters produce berries faster than you will drink tea, and the +50% bonus more than pays back the harvest. If you only ever make one tier of Ore Tea, most farmers would tell you to skip straight to Pure and just grow the berries to feed it.

The timer does not scale, only the bonus A common mistake is thinking Pure Ore Tea lasts longer than Basic. It does not. All three tiers run for exactly 30 minutes. You brew Pure for the bigger +50% bonus, not for more time, so plan to re-drink every half hour on a long farm no matter which tier you use.

What does Ore Tea boost? (Yes, including stone)

Ore Tea increases your yield from the three ore nodes in Rust: metal, sulfur and stone. A very common question is whether it works on stone, and the answer is yes. Stone nodes count as ore nodes for the buff, so Ore Tea boosts the stone you mine right alongside the metal and sulfur.

Rust Ore Tea boosts every ore node: metal nodes give more metal ore and bonus HQM, sulfur nodes give more sulfur ore, and stone nodes give more stone
Ore Tea lifts the yield on all three node types, including the bonus HQM at the end of a metal node.

Here is what more yield means on each node type:

  • Metal nodes give more Metal Ore, which you smelt into Metal Fragments. Ore Tea also boosts the chunk of High Quality Metal Ore you get on the finishing hit, which is the part farmers care about most since HQM is always in short supply.
  • Sulfur nodes give more Sulfur Ore, the base of gunpowder and every explosive. More sulfur per node means cheaper explosives when it is time to raid.
  • Stone nodes give more Stone for walls, foundations and upkeep. Stone is the cheapest resource, but a big base eats a lot of it, so the boost still adds up.

The buff lifts the ore itself, so it does not matter whether you are hitting nodes with a rock, a pickaxe or a jackhammer. The tool changes how fast the node comes apart, but Ore Tea changes how much you get out of it, and the two work together.

The Mixing Table: where every tea is born

You cannot brew a single tea without a Mixing Table, so it is the first thing to sort out. It is a cheap early deployable and well worth rushing if you plan to farm seriously.

Rust Mixing Table: craft it for 200 metal fragments and 100 stone at a Workbench Level 1, or buy it for about 175 scrap at Bandit Camp, then research it for around 75 scrap
Three ways to get a Mixing Table going: craft it, buy it at Bandit Camp, or research the blueprint.
HowCostNotes
Craft it200 Metal Fragments + 100 StoneAt a Workbench Level 1, roughly 30 seconds
Buy itAbout 175 scrapFrom the Bandit Camp vending machines
Research itAround 75 scrapUnlock the blueprint at a research table

Once the table is placed, brewing is instant and free apart from the berries. A Cooking Workbench can brew teas as well, but it is a later, pricier deployable, so the Mixing Table is the standard choice for anyone who just wants tea. Scrap prices at Bandit Camp drift with the game’s dynamic pricing, so treat the 175 figure as a ballpark rather than a fixed sticker.

Farming the berries for endless tea

Ore Tea runs entirely on Yellow and Blue Berries. You can pick them wild from bushes scattered around the map, and each bush you harvest also drops a seed. Plant those seeds in a planter box and you have the start of a self sustaining tea farm.

Rust Ore Tea ingredients: Yellow and Blue Berries picked from wild bushes for seeds, then grown and cloned in planter boxes to keep a mining team stocked with tea
Pick Yellow and Blue Berries wild for seeds, then grow and clone them indoors to keep the tea flowing.

There are five berry types in Rust (white, yellow, red, green and blue), but Ore Tea only needs the yellow and blue ones. A small indoor farm of a few planters, with a light and some water, produces far more berries than a solo drinker will ever get through. Once berries are growing you can also clone the best plants to expand the farm quickly.

Berry genetics are optional Hardcore farmers min-max berry genetics to squeeze out bigger yields, and that is worth learning if you run a big group farm. But you do not need any of it to make Ore Tea. Any Yellow and Blue Berries, wild or grown, brew exactly the same tea. Start simple, and only chase genetics once your farm is the bottleneck.

Stack Ore Tea for the highest yield in Rust

Ore Tea is strong on its own, but the reason it defines the farming meta is that it stacks with other buffs. The gathering bonus from a food like a Bear Pie is a separate multiplier, so it piles on top of your tea rather than overwriting it. Add a Jackhammer to tear through nodes at top speed and you have the fastest ore farming setup in the game.

Rust Ore Tea stacking combo: Pure Ore Tea plus a Bear Pie gathering bonus plus a Jackhammer stack together for the highest ore yield per node in the game
The mining meta: Pure Ore Tea for yield, a Bear Pie on top, and a Jackhammer to clear nodes fast.

The way to think about it is that each piece solves a different problem. Ore Tea raises how much ore the node contains for you, a Bear Pie raises your gather rate on top of that, and a Jackhammer raises how fast you can physically mine it out. Run all three at once and a farming trip that used to take an hour drops to a fraction of the time with a far bigger haul. Even just a Pure Ore Tea and a jackhammer is a massive upgrade over swinging a bare pickaxe.

Farming hard before the wipe? Every berry, tea, and stack of ore in your base is wiped on the force wipe. Check exactly when it lands so you can time your grind and start the new wipe with a plan.

Check the wipe countdown

Is Ore Tea worth it?

For anyone who farms, Ore Tea is one of the highest value items in Rust, full stop. The ingredients are practically free once you have a berry farm, the buff lasts a useful 30 minutes, and even the Basic +20% pays for itself in a single node run. If you spend any real time mining, not drinking Ore Tea is leaving a large amount of ore on the table every trip.

Where it matters less is if you barely farm. If you get most of your resources from raiding, recycling and monument runs, a gathering tea does not do much for you, and you might prefer a Scrap Tea for barrels instead. But the moment your plan involves a pickaxe and a node field, Ore Tea belongs in your loadout.

  • Always have one running while farming. A tea only ticks while you drink it, so pop one before you start hitting nodes, not after.
  • Match the tier to the trip. A quick top-up run is fine on Basic. A dedicated multi-hour ore grind deserves Pure.
  • Brew in bulk. Teas stack to 10, so make a full stack when your berries are ready and you are set for hours of farming.
  • Share with the team. Hand teas out before a group farm. Everyone mining under +50% turns a base build into a short job.
  • Do not forget the timer. Re-drink every 30 minutes. It is easy to grind past the buff running out and not notice your yields dropped.
  • Feed the sulfur into a plan. More sulfur per node means cheaper raids, so price your targets with the raid calculator and farm to that number.

Rust Ore Tea FAQ

What does Ore Tea do in Rust?
Ore Tea temporarily increases the amount of ore you get from mining nodes. While the buff is active it boosts your yield from metal, sulfur and stone nodes by +20% at Basic, +35% at Advanced and +50% at Pure. Each tea lasts 30 minutes and also restores +30 hydration.
How do you make Ore Tea in Rust?
Brew a Basic Ore Tea from 2 Yellow Berries and 2 Blue Berries at a Mixing Table or Cooking Workbench, which takes about five seconds. To make the higher tiers, combine 4 Basic Ore Teas into 1 Advanced Ore Tea, and 4 Advanced teas into 1 Pure Ore Tea.
What berries do you need for Ore Tea?
Ore Tea uses Yellow Berries and Blue Berries. A single Basic Ore Tea takes 2 Yellow and 2 Blue Berries. You can pick both from wild bushes around the map, which also gives you seeds to grow them in planters.
How long does Ore Tea last in Rust?
Every tier of Ore Tea lasts 30 minutes. The duration does not change between Basic, Advanced and Pure, only the size of the bonus does. So a Pure Ore Tea is a bigger +50% boost for the same 30 minutes as a Basic, and you re-drink every half hour on a long farm.
What does Pure Ore Tea do?
Pure Ore Tea is the top tier and gives the biggest bonus, +50% ore yield for 30 minutes. It is made by combining 4 Advanced Ore Teas, which works out to 16 Basic teas or 32 Yellow and 32 Blue Berries. It is the tea dedicated farmers use for the highest yield per node.
How many berries does a Pure Ore Tea cost?
A Pure Ore Tea costs 64 berries in total, split as 32 Yellow Berries and 32 Blue Berries. That is because 1 Pure is 4 Advanced, 1 Advanced is 4 Basic, and 1 Basic is 2 Yellow plus 2 Blue. A couple of planters produce that many berries quickly, so Pure is very affordable once your farm is running.
Does Ore Tea work on stone?
Yes. Ore Tea boosts stone nodes along with metal and sulfur nodes. All three count as ore nodes for the buff, so while a tea is active you gather more stone, more metal ore and more sulfur ore, including the bonus High Quality Metal you get finishing a metal node.
Does Ore Tea increase High Quality Metal?
Yes. Ore Tea boosts the High Quality Metal Ore you get when mining metal nodes, including the bonus chunk awarded on the finishing hit. Since HQM is one of the hardest resources to gather in bulk, this is one of the main reasons farmers keep an Ore Tea running.
Are teas worth it in Rust?
For farming, absolutely. Ore Tea pays for itself in a single node run and the ingredients are nearly free once you grow berries. Gathering teas like Ore, Wood and Scrap Tea are the most cost effective buffs in the game for anyone who spends time collecting resources. They matter less if you mostly raid or run monuments.
What is the difference between Basic, Advanced and Pure Ore Tea?
Only the bonus changes. Basic Ore Tea gives +20%, Advanced gives +35% and Pure gives +50% ore yield. All three last 30 minutes and give +30 hydration. Advanced is made from 4 Basic teas and Pure from 4 Advanced, so higher tiers cost more berries for a bigger boost, not more time.
Can you stack Ore Tea with other buffs?
Ore Tea stacks with gathering buffs from food like a Bear Pie because those are separate multipliers, and it pairs with a Jackhammer to clear nodes faster. You only benefit from one Ore Tea at a time, though, so drinking a Basic and a Pure together does not add up. A higher tier simply overrides a lower one.
Where do you get a Mixing Table in Rust?
You can craft a Mixing Table for 200 Metal Fragments and 100 Stone at a Workbench Level 1, or buy one for around 175 scrap from the Bandit Camp vending machines. The blueprint costs roughly 75 scrap to research. A Cooking Workbench can also brew teas if you have one.
Is Ore Tea better than Scrap Tea?
They do different jobs. Ore Tea boosts the ore you mine from nodes, while Scrap Tea boosts the scrap you get from barrels. If your plan is a mining trip, Ore Tea wins. If you are running roads smashing barrels, Scrap Tea is the one to drink. Many players keep both and pick based on the farm.
Do teas wipe in Rust?
Yes. Teas, berries, planters and everything else in your base are removed on the force wipe like all other items. That is why it is worth timing your farming to the wipe cycle so you are not sitting on a huge stock of tea and ore when the reset hits. Check the countdown so you can plan your grind.

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