When you first join the game, navigating the map is the most difficult thing that you encounter. It’s about finding your way around or more importantly where you exactly are. This guide will be helpful to the people who are pretty new to the game because advanced players might already know few things that I’m mentioning here.
When you spawn, you have got your torch, rock, and you have a couple of bandages. It can be a day or it can be a night as well. You won’t know where on the map you are unless you have been there before. Here is how I navigate the map: the first thing you need to do is have a look on the map available at Play Rust Wiki. It’s an excellent map that shows you the basic structure of the road.
As is generally assumed, the road is not a figure of 8 shaped, it’s like a figure of 8 but the middle sections don’t meet, so it’s more like an hourglass shape. It means that when you spawn in with a friend or if you try to find a friend, go clockwise or go anticlockwise until you meet somebody on the road. This method doesn’t work always because you don’t know what curve you are on. You feel like you are going clockwise, but in reality, you are on a section of the road that’s kind of inverted. It all makes sense when you are looking directly at the map.
The most important thing is that you should know the shape of the road because it’s the main feature to navigate with. Apart from the road, you have buildings to navigate with, you have the sun itself, and you have natural features. Oftentimes, natural features don’t work that well, for instance, if a friend of yours asks for your exact location, what if you tell him that I’m at a place where I can see a mountain, and there is grass everywhere. It would be absurd to say so because the entire game is full of landscapes like these.
What I do to remember most of the locations is that I get to know the buildings very very well. At first, I just have a look at the general map, and then instead of memorizing different places, I just get used to them. I usually remember the order of the buildings in which they appear on my left as well as right. The interesting thing is that the community has started giving names to places, and it’s now easier than ever to remember the places.
Another thing you can use to your advantage is the direction of the sun because it rises and sets in the two opposite sides of the map. Another thing you can use as a reference point is the big mountains set on the north of the map. Because of their size, these mountains are very useful because you can see them from distant places.
It is very good to build your house near a place which has some features, but avoid building it too close to the road. Also don’t build your house too close to buildings not only because of the radiation of zombies, but because other players will find you easily as they will also be using road navigation.