Stone Quarry Rust: Rates, Metal Ore & How to Run It

The Stone Quarry is the quiet workhorse of Rust. It has no keycard puzzle, no scientists and no radiation, and it barely gets a second look from raiders, yet it pours out five thousand stone and a thousand metal ore for every single unit of diesel you feed it. That is enough raw material to wall in an entire compound, top up a base after a raid, or bankroll a wipe of sheet metal upgrades, all without swinging a pickaxe at a single node.

The catch is the same one shared by its two sibling quarries: nobody owns it. You cannot lock it, you cannot base on top of it, and the machine is loud enough to tell the whole area you are farming. The difference with the Stone Quarry Rust experience is that hardly anyone bothers to contest it, because stone is the one resource almost nobody is short of. That makes it the safest quarry to run, and quietly one of the most useful if you know what to do with the metal ore it throws in for free.

This guide covers all of it: exactly how much stone and metal ore the quarry gives per diesel, how to run it, why the stone needs no smelting but the metal ore does, what all that material actually builds, how it stacks up against the Sulfur Quarry, the HQM Quarry and the Giant Excavator, why you can no longer place your own quarry, and whether it is even worth your diesel. Every number here is cross checked against RustHelp, Corrosion Hour, RustClash and the Facepunch wiki.

• What It Is
• Stone Quarry Stats
• How to Use It
• Stone Per Diesel
• Stone vs Metal Ore
• What It Builds
• Stone vs Sulfur vs HQM
• You Cannot Place One
• Taking Control
• Quarry vs Excavator
• Is It Worth It?
• Pro Tips
• FAQ

What Is the Stone Quarry in Rust?

The Stone Quarry is one of three static mining quarries baked into every Rust map. Each one is a small, unremarkable dug pit sitting beside a road with a mechanical mining rig planted in it. There is the Stone Quarry, the Sulfur Quarry and the HQM Quarry, and each is hard coded to produce only its named resource. The Stone Quarry produces Stone, plus a smaller amount of Metal Ore as a bonus. You cannot switch it to sulfur or high quality metal.

Think of it exactly like a pump jack, but for building material instead of crude oil. You feed it diesel, flip it on, walk away, and come back to a hopper full of stone and ore. It is world furniture, not equipment. It has no owner, no lock and no building privilege, the same way a small oil refinery or a recycler at a monument belongs to whoever is standing at it.

What sets the Stone Quarry apart from its siblings is who cares about it. Sulfur becomes explosives and HQM becomes armor, so both of those quarries get fought over. Stone is the material almost every player has too much of, since it drops in bulk from ordinary nodes all over the map. That makes the Stone Quarry the wallflower of the three, but it also makes it the one you can usually run in peace, and the free metal ore it hands you every cycle is genuinely worth having.

Stone Quarry Rust Stats

How to Use the Stone Quarry in Rust

Running the Stone Quarry is about as simple as Rust monuments get. There is no puzzle, no hazmat requirement and no keycard. The only thing you need to bring is Diesel Fuel and, if you want the metal, a furnace waiting at home for the ore.

1. Find the quarry. The Stone Quarry is a fixed roadside monument. On the in game map it is a small quarry icon, and 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 and roughly 42 minutes of run time.
3. Turn it on and let it dig. Start the engine and the mining arm begins swinging. It drops 5,000 Stone and 1,000 Metal Ore into the output hopper per diesel burned. 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 haul. The stone is ready to use straight away. Smelt the Metal Ore in a furnace to turn it into Metal Fragments, one for one.

Stone Quarry Rates: How Much Stone Per Diesel

This is the number everyone actually searches for. One unit of Diesel Fuel produces 5,000 Stone plus 1,000 Metal Ore and 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 and the other quarries share. The stone lands ready to use, and the metal ore smelts one to one, so 1,000 ore becomes 1,000 Metal Fragments.

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 back and forth, and the only reason not to is that a full stack means 42 minutes of an unlocked hopper filling up while you are not looking.

Stone Is Ready, Metal Ore Needs Smelting

Here is the one quirk that makes the Stone Quarry different to run. The two things it drops behave completely differently once they hit the hopper.

The stone is finished product. It comes out as plain Stone, the exact same item you get from a rock node, and you can build with it the second you pick it up. No furnace, no processing, nothing. That is a big part of why the Stone Quarry is so low effort: five thousand build-ready stone a cycle with zero extra steps.

The metal ore is not finished. Metal Ore does nothing on its own; you have to run it through a furnace to turn it into Metal Fragments. Per the Facepunch wiki, metal ore smelts one to one, at roughly one every 3.3 seconds in a normal furnace. A batch of 1,000 ore takes a while in a single furnace, so a large furnace or an electric furnace is worth having if you are running full stacks. It is slower to process than sulfur ore, but it is still free metal you did not have to mine.

What the Stone Quarry Builds

Stone and metal fragments are the two most common building materials in Rust, so a full Stone Quarry run translates very directly into base. This is where the quarry earns its keep, especially if you are about to expand a compound or recover after a raid.

Put the quarry’s output next to real build costs and the value snaps into focus. A full stack of diesel gives you 100,000 stone and 20,000 metal fragments, which covers:

So a single full stack is roughly enough high external stone wall to ring a large compound, with fragments to spare for doors and sheet metal upgrades. The 20,000 metal fragments are the real prize here. Fragments go into sheet metal doors, metal walls, auto turrets and countless deployables, and hand mining that much metal ore from nodes is a real grind. The quarry hands it to you as a side effect of farming stone you may not even need.

Stone Quarry vs Sulfur Quarry vs HQM Quarry

All three quarries look identical and work identically. 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 comes out of the hopper.

The Sulfur Quarry and the HQM Quarry are the two that groups actually fight over. Sulfur becomes explosives, HQM becomes armor and high tier gear, and both are things people go to war for. The Stone Quarry sits at the other end of the scale: stone is dirt common, so the pit is usually empty and yours for the taking. What tips it from “curiosity” to “worth a trip” is the 1,000 metal ore it adds every cycle, which is the one part of its output that is genuinely annoying to farm by hand.

If your wipe plan is offense, the Sulfur Quarry is your machine. If it is high tier defense, the HQM Quarry is the prize. If you are simply trying to put up a lot of base fast, or you want easy metal fragments with no competition, the Stone Quarry is the quiet pick. Many groups run all three across a wipe as the need changes.

Can You Place Your Own 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.

How to Take Control of the Stone Quarry

Because the Stone Quarry cannot be locked, “controlling” it does not mean owning it. It means occupying it. The good news is that this is the easiest quarry to hold, simply because so few people want it. Where the sulfur pit turns into a warzone, the stone pit is usually deserted.

The tactics that matter:

• Presence is ownership. Whoever stands on the hopper when the output drops collects it, even if a rival paid for the diesel. This applies to every quarry, stone included, so do not wander off from a full load.
• It is the least contested pit. Stone is cheap and common, so the Stone Quarry is usually the safest of the three to run. If you want quarry output without a fight, this is it.
• It is still loud. A running quarry can be heard across the area. Even a quiet farm can draw a curious roamer, and a hopper of stone plus 1,000 metal ore is a free grab for whoever finds it unattended.
• Bring the diesel and a furnace plan. No diesel means no dig. Carry the stone home and smelt the metal ore behind walls rather than cooking exposed at the pit.
• Do not overcommit to walling it. The no build zone is 38,751 m2, the largest of the quarries, and stone is not worth caging in with high walls and auto turrets the way sulfur might be. Guard it with your body, not your base.

Stone Quarry vs Giant Excavator

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

The Giant Excavator digs stone about twice as fast and lets you choose which resource to run, which on paper makes it the better machine. In practice it is a single, central, unmissable monument guarded by scientists that the strongest group on the server usually treats as theirs. For a resource as cheap as stone, that is rarely worth the fight. The Stone Quarry is the low key alternative: less per minute, but roadside, no radiation, no NPCs, and almost never contested. For plain building material, the quiet quarry wins on effort every time.

Is the Stone Quarry Worth It?

Honest answer: yes when you need bulk or want the metal, no for a quick handful of stone. The Stone Quarry is the least glamorous monument in the game, but it has a clear job, and it does it with almost no risk.

It is worth it when you are about to wall up a big base, recover from a raid, or you want a fat pile of metal fragments without grinding nodes. A full stack of diesel is roughly 75 high external stone walls plus 20,000 fragments, mined with zero tool wear and zero radiation, in the safest quarry on the map. For bulk building material, nothing else is this hands off.

It is not worth it when you only need a bit of stone. Stone nodes are everywhere and fast to hand mine, especially with a jackhammer, so a quick top up almost never justifies a diesel run. Stone is also the slowest quarry to pay back if you only value the stone, since the material is so cheap. The moment the calculation changes is when you factor in the metal ore.

Stone Quarry Pro Tips

A few habits that make the Stone Quarry Rust run pay off instead of wasting your fuel:

• Run it for the metal ore, not the stone. The stone is a bonus you will often have plenty of. The 1,000 metal ore a diesel is the part that is genuinely hard to farm by hand, so let that justify the trip.
• Line up your furnaces first. The stone is ready to go, but 20,000 metal ore is dead weight until it is smelted, and it cooks slowly. Have a large furnace or a bank of furnaces ready at home before you dig a full stack.
• Match the load to the job. Load exactly the diesel you need for the build you are planning. There is no bonus for over loading, and a big unattended hopper is still a free grab.
• Stack diesel from two monuments. The best diesel sources are Power Plant and Water Treatment. Loot their spawns on the way and the quarry run costs you nothing but the drive.
• Do not sink explosives into it. The quarry cannot be destroyed or picked up, so there is nothing to raid. Save your explosives for actual bases.
• Know the other monuments. The quarries are the quiet cousins of the bigger Rust monuments. If you want sulfur or HQM instead, their quarries work exactly the same way, and the excavator digs any resource if you can hold it.

Stone Quarry Rust FAQ

Sources

• RustHelp: Stone Quarry monument for the 5,000 stone and 1,000 metal ore per diesel yield, burn time, no build area and monument profile.
• RustHelp: Sulfur Quarry and HQM Quarry for the sibling quarry yields.
• Facepunch wiki: Metal Ore for the 1 to 1 smelt ratio into metal fragments and the furnace smelt time.
• Facepunch wiki: Stones for the ready to use stone item.
• 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.
• Rustafied: Quality of Life update, 1 December 2022 for the move from low grade fuel to diesel.
• Facepunch Devblog 70, the devblog that originally added the quarry on 23 July 2015.