Mining Quarry Rust: Rates, Types & How It Works

The Mining Quarry is one of the most misunderstood machines in Rust. Half the player base still thinks you craft one, throw a survey charge, and plant your own private gold mine wherever you like. That has not been true for years. Today the Mining Quarry Rust experience is entirely about three fixed machines that sit beside the roads on every map, run on diesel, and belong to nobody until someone stands on them.

This is the full picture. Not the Sulfur Quarry on its own, not the HQM Quarry on its own, but how the whole quarry system actually works in the current game: what a mining quarry is, the three types and exactly what each one pays per diesel, how to run one, why you can no longer build your own, how it compares to the Giant Excavator, and how organised groups take and hold the good ones. Every number here is cross checked against RustHelp, RustClash, Corrosion Hour and the Facepunch wiki.

• What It Is
• At a Glance
• The Three Quarries
• How to Run One
• Rates Per Diesel
• Getting Diesel
• You Cannot Place One
• Quarry vs Excavator
• Taking Control
• Is It Worth It?
• Pro Tips
• FAQ

What Is the Mining Quarry in Rust?

A Mining Quarry is a mechanical mineral generator. It is a mining rig planted in a shallow dug pit, and its whole job is to convert Diesel Fuel into a stream of ore while you stand around and wait. You feed diesel into the engine, flip it on, and the arm swings and drops ore into an output hopper. No pickaxe, no tool wear, no risk to your character.

The important part is what “Mining Quarry” means in the current game. It is a type of machine, not a single object you own. There are three of them baked into every vanilla map as fixed monuments, each hard coded to a single resource. It works exactly like a pump jack, which is the same idea for crude oil instead of ore. A quarry is world furniture, the same as a monument recycler or a small oil refinery. It has no owner, no lock and no building privilege.

That single fact, that nobody owns it, is what makes quarries interesting. The machine does the farming for free. The entire game around a quarry is about who is willing to bring the diesel and stand on the hopper when the ore lands.

Mining Quarry at a Glance

The Three Static Quarries: Sulfur, HQM and Stone

All three quarries are the same machine. They are static, they run on diesel, they burn one unit in about two minutes, and their fuel and output slots are public. The only thing that changes is what falls into the hopper. This is the heart of the whole topic, so here is each one with a link to its full breakdown.

At a glance the HQM Quarry looks like the worst deal by a mile. Fifty ore against a thousand sulfur ore feels like a rounding error. That reaction is exactly backwards. Facepunch tuned the numbers this way on purpose, because High Quality Metal is worth many times more than sulfur or stone per unit. You can farm sulfur off nodes all day and stone is basically free, but HQM is the resource you never have enough of. So the quarry that prints it slowly is the one worth camping.

The Sulfur Quarry is the other genuinely useful one, since 1,000 sulfur ore per diesel can quietly feed a raiding session. The Stone Quarry is mostly a curiosity, because almost nobody struggles for stone, though the 1,000 metal ore it also drops is a small bonus. If you only ever learn one quarry, learn the HQM one.

How to Run a Mining Quarry in Rust

Running a quarry is about as simple as Rust monuments get. There is no puzzle, no hazmat suit, no keycard and no fuse. The only things you need to bring are diesel and a plan for smelting the ore afterwards.

1. Find a quarry. Each quarry is a fixed roadside monument shown as a small quarry icon on the in game map. On the ground it is a shallow dug pit with the mining rig in the middle. It never moves for the wipe.
2. Load diesel fuel. Hold E on the engine and drop Diesel Fuel into the fuel slot. One diesel runs a single cycle of about two minutes. Twenty diesel is a full stack.
3. Turn it on and let it dig. Start the engine and the mining arm swings, dropping ore into the output hopper as the diesel burns. It is loud, so anyone in the area knows it is running.
4. Collect and smelt. Hold E on the output hopper to take the ore. Sulfur and HQM ore go into a furnace to become finished metal, while stone is ready to use straight away.

Mining Quarry Rates: How Much Ore Per Diesel

This is the number everyone actually searches for. Each quarry produces its resource per unit of diesel, and one diesel takes about 2 minutes to burn. That works out to roughly 29 diesel an hour if you keep it topped up, the same burn rate the pump jack uses.

The yield scales in a straight line. There is no bulk bonus for loading more diesel, so five diesel and twenty diesel earn exactly the same per unit. The only reason to load a full stack is to save yourself trips, and the only reason not to is that a full stack means around 42 minutes of an unlocked hopper filling up while you are not looking.

Where to Get Diesel Fuel for a Quarry

Because every quarry burns diesel and only diesel, a quarry run is really a diesel run first. Diesel cannot be crafted at any workbench, so you are looting or trading for it every single time.

• Buy it at the Outpost. The Outpost fuel vendor trades Low Grade Fuel for diesel. It is the steadiest supply and worth a stop every time you pass through the safe zone.
• Loot industrial monuments. Power Plant, Water Treatment, Trainyard and the oil rigs all spawn diesel in their crates and barrels.
• Remember it is loot and trade only. There is no recipe for diesel, so you cannot fall back on crafting. Grab it whenever you see it, because a quarry with no diesel is just scenery.

Can You Place Your Own Mining Quarry in Rust?

No. This is the single most common misconception about quarries, so it is worth being blunt: you cannot craft, research or place your own Mining Quarry on a vanilla Rust server. The only quarries in the game are the three static ones on the map.

It was not always this way. Years ago you could throw a Survey Charge, read how much of each resource a patch of ground held, and then place your own Mining Quarry or pump jack right on the crater. Facepunch removed that entire flow. The deployable Mining Quarry lost its recipe, and both machines were rebuilt as fixed monuments for everyone to share.

Mining Quarry vs Giant Excavator

Both machines run on diesel and both hand you ore, so players constantly ask which one to run. They are not really competitors, they are two different scales of the same idea.

The Giant Excavator pays roughly double per diesel and lets you choose which resource to dig, which on paper makes it the better machine. In practice it is a single, central, unmissable monument that the strongest group on the server usually treats as theirs, and both of its outputs sit out in the open. A Mining Quarry is the low key alternative: less output per diesel, but roadside, no radiation, and far less likely to get you third partied. If you already control the excavator, use it. If you are a duo or trio who wants ore without a war, a quarry is your machine.

How to Take Control of a Mining Quarry

Because a quarry cannot be locked, “controlling” it does not mean owning it. It means occupying it. You do not put a code lock on the hopper, you put a body next to it. This is the part of Mining Quarry Rust play that separates the groups who actually get the ore from the ones who keep feeding diesel to strangers.

• Presence is ownership. Whoever stands on the hopper when the ore drops collects it, even if a rival paid for the diesel. Never leave a running quarry unattended on a busy server.
• It is loud. A running quarry can be heard across the area. If you start it and leave, assume someone heard it and is on the way.
• Load small when solo. Five diesel is ten minutes you can guard. Twenty diesel unattended is a gift to whoever wanders past.
• Big groups wall it. The small no build zone stops you basing directly on the quarry, but organised clans cage the surrounding ground with high external walls and auto turrets so only they can reach the output.
• Bring the diesel and a furnace plan. No diesel means no dig. There is no furnace on site, so smelt nearby or haul the ore straight home before someone taxes the hopper.

Is a Mining Quarry Worth It?

Honest answer: it depends entirely on which quarry and whether you can hold it. A quarry is not efficient in raw tonnage and it is always public. What it is, is the least painful way to get resources you would otherwise grind by hand, especially HQM.

It is worth it when you want HQM without swinging a pickaxe at rare metal nodes, you have looted diesel to spare, and you already control the surrounding ground. Ore every couple of minutes with zero tool wear and zero risk to your character is a steady, almost AFK trickle, and for a group that already holds the area that is close to free armor, turrets and gunpowder.

It is not worth it when you are exposed. A quarry is slow, it is loud, and the hopper is open to anyone. A single roamer can undo an hour of digging by holding E while you are off getting more diesel. And if your goal is raw resource tonnage rather than a specific resource, hand mining nodes with Ore Tea often beats standing at a quarry.

Mining Quarry Pro Tips

The gap between a full hopper and a robbed one is where most Mining Quarry Rust runs actually get decided. A few habits that keep the ore in your pocket:

• Pick the quarry that matches your need. The HQM Quarry for armor and turrets, the Sulfur Quarry for raiding, the Stone Quarry only if you are genuinely short on stone.
• Line up diesel first. No diesel means no dig. Loot the industrial monuments on the way, or buy diesel at the Outpost, before you commit to the drive.
• Match the load to your presence. Solo, load five diesel and babysit it. In a group, one person loads a full stack while the rest hold the ground.
• Bring your own furnaces, or smelt at home. Sulfur and HQM come out as ore and there is no furnace on site, so plan the smelt before you dig.
• Do not sink explosives into it. The quarry cannot be destroyed or picked up, so there is nothing to raid. Save your explosives for bases.
• Know the other monuments. Quarries are the quiet cousins of the bigger Rust monuments. If a quarry is contested, the Giant Excavator or a metal node run with tea is your fallback.

Mining Quarry Rust FAQ

Sources

• RustHelp: HQM Quarry, Sulfur Quarry and Stone Quarry for the per diesel yields, burn time and monument profiles.
• RustClash: Mining Quarry for the item data and diesel consumption.
• Corrosion Hour: Quarry and Pump Jack Reference Guide for the static monument confirmation and operation.
• Corrosion Hour: Survey Charge for the removed deployable quarry and the leftover survey charge.
• Facepunch Devblog 70, the devblog that originally added the quarry on 23 July 2015.
• Rustafied: Quality of Life update, 1 December 2022 for the move from low grade fuel to diesel.
• Facepunch wiki: Mining Quarry for the item flags and description.