How to Get Cloth in Rust
Four ways to get cloth in Rust: wild hemp plants (10 cloth + 1 seed each), large planter farms (up to 70 cloth per Y-gene plant), animal corpses (boar/wolf/deer 10-30 cloth) and abandoned cabin loot.
Cloth is the bottleneck resource for sleeping bags, bandages, basic clothing, the Tier 1 workbench and most early-wipe progression. There are four reliable sources: wild hemp plants (renewable), planter farms (renewable, scales), animal corpses (passive while you do other things), and abandoned cabin loot (one-shot wipe-day grab).
Step-by-step
Pick wild hemp plants
Hemp grows naturally near rivers and in temperate biomes — look for tall green stalks with white-pink flowers, knee to chest height. Each plant gives 10 cloth + 1 Hemp Seed when harvested. Pick everything you see in your first few hours; the seeds are what unlock farm scaling later.
Set up a Large Planter Box
Once you have wood and Hemp Seeds, place a Large Planter Box (200 wood, T1 craftable). A Large Planter holds 9 hemp plants simultaneously and fits exactly within a 1×1 foundation. Add a Sprinkler above and a Ceiling Light + Heater inside the room — controlled conditions push growth speed and yield.
Get the genetics right
Each hemp plant has 6 random gene slots from G (Growth Rate), Y (Increased Yield), H (Hardiness), W (Water Intake) and X (Null). The standard farm target is GGGYYY (3G/3Y) for the fastest grow + highest yield combo. With Y-genes optimised, a single plant can yield up to ~70 cloth instead of the wild 10. See our crossbreeding simulator for the path to GGGYYY clones.
Hunt animals on the way to your farm
Boars, deer, wolves, bears, chickens and horses all drop cloth when harvested with a Bone Knife or Stone Hatchet. Boars are the best ratio at ~25-30 cloth each, deer give ~15-20, chickens ~10. Skin every animal you kill — it's free cloth on top of food and fat.
Loot abandoned cabins on wipe day
Each abandoned cabin scattered through the forest contains 1-2 barrels and a crate that respawn cloth (~30-60 per cabin). Wipe-day cabin clears typically yield 200-400 cloth in 20 minutes. They reset on a 20-minute timer so they're worth circling back to.
Detailed walkthrough
On a fresh solo wipe, your cloth priority looks like this. Within the first 30 minutes you want enough cloth for a sleeping bag (30 cloth) and some bandages (5 cloth each). Pick every wild hemp plant you walk past while scouting — by the 30-minute mark you'll have 50-100 cloth and 5-10 Hemp Seeds. By hour 1, place your Large Planter Box and start the first 9-plant grow cycle (~3 hours real-time at default conditions, faster with G-genes). While the farm cycles, hunt animals and clear 2-3 abandoned cabins for the second batch of cloth — the cabins specifically reset every 20 minutes so they're worth circling back to. By hour 4 you should be on your second planter harvest and your cloth supply is essentially solved for the rest of wipe. The shift from "need more cloth" to "have enough cloth" happens around the 250-cloth-stored mark, when you can comfortably bandage every fight, swap clothes after deaths, and keep a sleeping-bag respawn pile ready.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Skipping the seeds. Every wild hemp gives a seed alongside the cloth. Throwing seeds away or recycling them means you can't scale a farm — always bank them.
- Using Small Planters when Large ones fit. Smalls hold one plant; Larges hold 9. The cost difference is trivial (Larges are 200 wood) — never plant hemp in Smalls except for tea berries.
- Farming outside without conditions. Outdoor planters work but are slower and weather-dependent. Indoor farms with sprinklers, lights and heaters grow at full speed year-round.
- Killing animals with the wrong tool. A Stone Hatchet on a boar gives ~30% less cloth than a Bone Knife. Always swap to a knife before harvesting.
- Letting plants overripen. Hemp gives the most cloth at the Ripe stage. Leaving it past ripe into Dying loses yield. Watch the planter UI and harvest on time.
Pro tips
- Clone don't reseed. Once you have a GGGYYY plant, take a clone at the Sapling stage instead of replanting from seed. Clones inherit identical genetics — re-seeding rolls the dice again.
- Stack hemp planters in tight rooms. Four Large Planters fit perfectly in a 2×2 layout and share one Sprinkler + one Ceiling Light. Quad-planter rooms are the standard cloth-farm footprint.
- Use Y-gene Bear Pie food. The food stat from Bear Pie boosts farming work-time efficiency — pop one before your harvest run for a small but free yield bump.
- Cloth tea doesn't exist — there's no farming tea that boosts cloth specifically. Don't be fooled by old guides. Yield comes from Y-genes and condition control, not consumables.
Frequently asked questions
How much cloth does a hemp plant give in Rust?
10 cloth per wild plant + 1 Hemp Seed. A planter-grown plant with optimised Y-genes (4Y or higher) can produce up to ~70 cloth at the Ripe stage. A Large Planter holding 9 ripe Y-optimised plants yields roughly 500-600 cloth per harvest cycle.
How long do hemp plants take to grow?
Roughly 3 hours from seed to Ripe at default conditions with all environmental factors green (light, water, temperature, soil). G-genes speed this up significantly — a 6G plant grows in ~1.1 hours; a standard 3G/3Y clone grows in ~2 hours. Outdoor plants are slower and biome-dependent.
Where's the best place to farm hemp?
Indoors, inside your base, in a 1×1 or 2×2 room with a Large Planter Box, a Sprinkler ceiling-mounted above, two Ceiling Lights and a Heater. Indoor farms have controlled conditions and grow at full speed regardless of the surrounding biome — outdoor farms only really work in temperate biomes during the right seasons.
Is killing animals or hemp farming better for cloth?
Hemp farming wins long-term — passive, renewable, scales with farm size. Killing animals is fine early-wipe before you have a planter but caps out around 100 cloth/hour with active hunting. A 9-plant Y-optimised farm produces 500+ cloth every 2-3 hours with no active input.
What's the best gene combination for hemp?
GGGYYY is the universal answer — 3 Growth slots speed up the grow cycle, 3 Yield slots maximise cloth per harvest. Some farmers prefer 6Y for max yield with slower grow time, or 6G for faster cycles when running multiple staggered planters. GGGYYY balances both.
How much cloth do I need for a starter base?
Roughly 200-300 cloth covers your first sleeping bag (30), 10-15 bandages (50-75), basic clothing (50-100) and a T1 workbench (50). Anything beyond that is comfort and progression — once you have a planter going, cloth becomes effectively unlimited.