Tea Recipes

Tea Recipes

Last updated: May 18, 2026

Tea is the most underrated mechanic in Rust. Every farm, every monument run, every raid benefits from the right tea. This file is every recipe — what it does, how to make it, when to drink it.

How tea works

Tea is crafted at a Mixing Table (Workbench 1 , research 75 scrap , craft 200 frags + 100 stone , or buy at Bandit Camp Food Market for 175 scrap).

The Mixing Table accepts:

• Berries (Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, White, Black, plus the Black Raspberry variant) — the primary ingredients
• Mushrooms — secondary ingredient for some recipes
• Specific blueprints / mixing recipes that you unlock by experimentation or from rustlabs.com

A successful recipe takes ~30 seconds at the table. Output is a single tea bottle.

Teas come in three tiers:

• Tier 1 (Lesser) — short duration, mild effect, cheap ingredients
• Tier 2 (Regular) — medium duration and effect, mid-cost
• Tier 3 (Pure) — long duration, strong effect, expensive

Most Pure-tier teas last 30 minutes (not 10 — corrected from older docs). Each Pure tea is crafted from 4 Advanced (which each take 4 Basic), so a Pure equals 16 Basic teas at the raw ingredient level.

The Mixing Table — where to get it and what it costs

The Mixing Table is the only workbench in Rust that brews tea, and nothing else can substitute for it. You have two routes to one. The first is the free public table inside the Bandit Camp compound — walk into the building near the Food shop and the table is there for anyone to use, no scrap spent. This is the zero-cost option for early wipe, but it is also the riskiest: the Bandit Camp safe zone protects you while standing on the table, but other players watch the table for easy targets and you must carry your raw berries through open road to reach it.

The second route is owning your own table. The blueprint is sold at the Bandit Camp Food shop for 175 scrap, after which you research it for an additional 75 scrap at a Research Table, then craft the deployable from 200 metal fragments + 100 stone. All-in that is 250 scrap plus a small ore investment for a permanent base fixture. For any player past the first day of wipe, owning the table pays for itself within a single Pure Scrap Tea run, because it removes the round trip to Bandit and lets you brew on demand.

How brewing actually works — ingredients and timing

Brewing is a two-input system: you load ingredients into the table's input slots and press Mix. For a Basic tea you place 4 berries in the exact color order the recipe calls for. The order is not cosmetic — a wrong sequence either produces a different tea or wastes the berries entirely, so always confirm the recipe before pressing Mix. A Basic brew completes in roughly 5 seconds; the table does not need fuel, water, or power, only the ingredients themselves.

Tier upgrades use the same table but a different input. Instead of berries you place 4 finished teas of the same type and tier: 4 Basic Scrap Teas brew into 1 Advanced Scrap Tea, and 4 Advanced into 1 Pure. Because each tier is a 4-to-1 conversion, a single Pure tea represents 16 Basic teas = 64 berries of raw input. That compounding cost is why Pure teas feel expensive and why mass berry farming (covered in the horticulture file) is the real bottleneck, not the table itself. Brew time stays short at every tier, so the table is never the slow part — growing berries is.

The complete tea recipe list

Scrap Tea (the big one)

Tier	Ingredients	Buff
Lesser	5 Yellow berries + 1 White berry	+25% scrap from containers, 5 min
Regular	8 Yellow + 2 White + 1 Yellow Berry Seed	+35% scrap , 8 min
Pure	32 Yellow + 32 White berries (or 4 Advanced)	+200% scrap from barrels for 30 min

Why it matters: the only tea that scales BARREL farming runs. Important correction: Pure Scrap Tea affects barrels only — NOT containers/crates and NOT recycler. Drink before barrel-heavy farming routes (roads, monuments where you smash a lot of barrels).

Max Health Tea & Healing Tea (two separate teas)

Why it matters: double your effective health for fights. Drink before raids.

Stamina Tea — DOES NOT EXIST

Why it matters: sprint longer, escape sticky situations. Critical for raid extraction.

Anti-Rad Tea

Tier	Ingredients	Buff
Lesser	5 Green berries	Radiation slowly drains, 5 min
Regular	8 Green + Mushroom	Faster rad drain, 8 min
Pure	10 Green + 5 Mushroom	Strong rad clearance, 10 min

Why it matters: essential for Launch Site, Train Tunnels, Power Plant deep loot.

Wood Tea

Tier	Ingredients	Buff
Lesser	5 Brown/dark berries	+20% wood gathering, 5 min
Regular	8 Brown + tools	+30% wood gathering, 8 min
Pure	10 Brown + 5 tools	+50% wood gathering, 10 min

Why it matters: double your wood farm rate. Use during base build hours.

Stone Tea

Tier	Ingredients	Buff
Lesser	5 White berries	+20% stone gathering
Regular	8 White + tools	+30% stone gathering
Pure	10 White + 5 tools	+50% stone gathering

Why it matters: speed up base upgrades. Use during wipe day stone farming.

Ore Tea

Tier	Ingredients	Buff
Lesser	5 Grey berries	+20% ore gathering
Regular	8 Grey + pickaxe	+30% ore gathering
Pure	10 Grey + 5 pickaxe	+50% ore gathering

Why it matters: smelt-ready metal frags faster. Pair with industrial smelt setup.

Every tea, tier by tier — the exact numbers

The single most useful thing to memorise is how each tea scales across the three tiers, because the gap between Basic and Pure is enormous and decides whether brewing is worth your berries. Cross-checked against rustlabs.com, the Rust Fandom wiki, corrosionhour.com and the Facepunch wiki, these are the live 2026 values. Note that the gathering teas (Wood, Ore, Scrap) all run for a 30-minute buff window, while Max Health is a shorter buff and Healing teas apply instantly with no timer.

A few things jump out of that table. Scrap Tea has by far the steepest curve — Pure is four times the Basic bonus, so it is the one tea where pushing all the way to Pure is almost always correct. Ore Tea is the flattest — Pure only triples Basic and tops out at +60%, so an Advanced Ore Tea is often the sensible stopping point unless you are running a dedicated metal session. Wood sits in the middle. The combat teas are different in kind: Max Health stretches your effective HP pool (a Pure Max Health Tea on a 100 HP character means you can be healed up to roughly 120), while Healing Teas are consumable burst heals you carry like a syringe rather than a buff you pre-drink.

How tea bonuses stack

The stacking rule has exactly one line you must remember: different tea types stack, the same tea type does not. Drinking a second Wood Tea while one is active simply replaces or refreshes the timer — it never gives you +60% on top of +30%. But Wood Tea, Ore Tea and Scrap Tea can all run at once, and each applies to its own resource independently. The combat teas layer on top of the gathering teas freely, so a full wipe-day farmer can legitimately be running Pure Wood + Pure Ore + Pure Scrap + Max Health all at the same time.

• Stacks (different types): Wood + Ore + Scrap + Max Health + Anti-Rad — all active together, all timers tick down independently.
• Does NOT stack (same type): two Scrap Teas, two Wood Teas, a Basic and a Pure of the same tea — only one effect applies, and a fresh drink just resets the duration.
• Best practice: drink your longest-duration teas first and your shortest last so the timers expire close together, and never waste a Pure by drinking it on top of an existing buff of the same type.

Which teas are worth brewing

Not every tea earns its berry cost. Ranked by real return for an active player:

• Pure Scrap Tea — always brew. +200% scrap from barrels is the highest-ROI consumable in the game for anyone running roads or monuments. One run pays back the berries many times over.
• Wood Tea — brew when building. Pure Wood at +100% literally doubles your wood income; invaluable on wipe day and before a big base upgrade, much less useful mid-wipe.
• Ore Tea — Advanced is usually enough. The +60% Pure cap is modest; brew Advanced for routine mining and save Pure for dedicated metal grinds.
• Anti-Rad Tea — situational but cheap insurance. Brew a couple of Basic or Advanced before any heavily irradiated monument; you rarely need Pure.
• Max Health / Healing Tea — keep a small stock for raids. Worth having before a planned raid or defense, not worth mass-brewing.

Salvage Tea (DOES NOT EXIST)

Important: there is no "Salvage Tea" in Rust. No tea boosts recycler yield. This was a misconception in older guides. The cheapest way to maximize recycle yield is +20% bonus monuments (Airfield, Arctic Research, Abandoned Supermarket) and the Scope arbitrage at Bandit.

Salvage Tea — REMOVED

Why it matters: more scrap per recycle. Stack with Scrap Tea for monster runs.

Berry Tea (food/water)

Tier	Ingredients	Buff
Lesser	5 mixed berries	+20 hunger/thirst, 5 min
Regular	8 mixed berries	+30 hunger/thirst, 8 min
Pure	10 mixed berries + ingredients	+50 hunger/thirst, 10 min

Why it matters: sustain field expeditions without carrying food.

Crafting Tea (armor slot rolls, NOT faster crafts)

Tier	Ingredients	Buff
Pure	32 Blue + 32 White berries	+50% chance of extra armor slot rolls for 30 min

Why it matters: crafting tea was widely misunderstood. It does NOT reduce craft time — it improves armor crafting quality (better protection slot rolls). For faster craft times, use Workbench Level 3 (faster than WB2 which is faster than WB1 ).

Tea cocktail (rare)

Some recipes require specific seed varieties (Yellow Berry Seed, etc.) on top of berries . Find seeds by harvesting mature plants. Plant your own seed stockpile.

Tea crafting workflow

Optimal solo workflow:

1. Set up a greenhouse (see 05_Horticulture.md)
2. Grow YYYYYY berries of all 6+ colors
3. Place a Mixing Table in your base
4. Pre-craft 5-10 Scrap Teas as your stockpile
5. Drink 1 before each major monument run
6. Restock after every wipe cycle

Total time investment: 4-6 hours of horticulture setup. Total return: 30%+ scrap throughput for the wipe.

Multi-tea stacking

Yes, you can drink multiple teas at once. They stack:

• Scrap Tea + Salvage Tea + Crafting Tea = ~30% scrap from containers + 50% from recycling + faster ammo crafts. Triple-stacked monument run.
• Health Tea + Pure Tea = +100 HP + stamina regen. Raid defense god mode.
• Wood Tea + Stone Tea + Ore Tea = +50% on all gathering. Wipe day farming god mode.

Watch the buff timers — they tick down independently.

Tea trading

Bandit Camp doesn't buy tea directly, but other players will trade for it. Some servers have an in-game economy. Pure Scrap Tea typically trades for 15-25 scrap, depending on rarity.

Greenhouses with proper hemp /berry rotation produce more tea than a solo can drink. Selling surplus is a meta passive income.

Tea economy — ingredient cost vs payoff

Tea is only "free" if you ignore the time spent growing berries, and the real economic question is whether the buff returns more than the berries you spent. Because a Pure tea is a 4-to-1-to-4-to-1 chain, every Pure costs 16 Basic brews = 64 berries. With a properly tended Large Planter Box yielding 4-6 berries per plant every 2-3 hours, a single planter of one color produces enough for one or two Pure teas per grow cycle. The math below assumes a mid-wipe solo farm.

The takeaway: spend your best berries on Scrap and Wood, never over-invest in Ore or Anti-Rad. Surplus Basic teas are worth more traded to teammates or sold than upgraded into a Pure you will never drink. A clean berry rotation produces far more tea than one solo can consume, so treat the excess as a tradeable commodity rather than a stockpile to hoard.

Common tea mistakes

1. Drinking Lesser tier in a Pure-budget situation. Always Pure for serious runs.
2. Crafting tea and never using it. Tea expires — keep stockpile reasonable.
3. Forgetting to bring tea to a monument. Drink at base before leaving.
4. Not stockpiling berries . Grow at scale, sell surplus.
5. Mixing wrong berries . Check the recipe before crafting; wrong combination wastes ingredients.
6. Drinking Anti-Rad Tea AFTER getting radiation. Drink before entry — preventive.

More mistakes that quietly waste berries

• Drinking a second tea of the same type. It does not stack — you just reset the timer and waste a whole tea. Wait for the buff to expire, or carry a different type.
• Expecting Scrap Tea to boost crates or recyclers. It only affects barrels. Smashing crates with Scrap Tea active does nothing extra.
• Brewing Pure when Advanced was enough. For Ore especially, the jump from Advanced to Pure is small — you burned 12 extra Basic teas for +20%.
• Letting berries rot uncollected. Harvest on time and keep a 2-genes clone to replant; an idle planter is lost tea.
• Carrying raw berries to the Bandit table through open road. If you have your own table, brew at base — berries are a juicy target.
• Drinking gathering tea before you travel. The 30-minute timer starts immediately; drink only once you have actually reached the farm spot.

Pro tips

• Pure Scrap Tea is the single highest ROI item for active players. Always have 5+ in your stockpile.
• Tea + buff stacking is broken in the best way. Run Pure Scrap + Salvage + Crafting for ~1.5x scrap -per-hour over baseline.
• Pair the Mixing Table with the Industrial Crafter — auto-crafter pulls berries from a box, mixing table produces tea, conveyor stores it. Fully automated tea farm.
• Anti-Rad Tea before any Power Plant run. 10 minutes of clean rad-free running through the most radioactive part of the game.
• Health Tea before any planned raid defense. Surprise raid you didn't see coming, drink it mid-fight if you can.
• Berry -color cheat sheet:
• Yellow + White = Scrap
• Red = Health
• Blue = Stamina/Pure
• Green = Anti-Rad
• Brown/Black = Resource gathering
• Always grow Yellow berries first. Scrap Tea is the most impactful.