There are only two vehicles you can use in Rust to fly: the minicopter and the scrap transport helicopter.
The scrap transport helicopter requires a lot more resources to purchase, and it is also extremely expensive fuel-wise.
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This is why most players, especially solo players, will get the minicopter to help in their Rust adventure. However, this helicopter seems to be harder to control than one might imagine.
To fly a minicopter in Rust, all you need to do is hold down W to speed up the rotor blades and take off and use the mouse to balance the minicopter the way you want it to go.
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How to Get a Minicopter in Rust
On vanilla Rust servers, you can only get the minicopter from the Airwolf Vendor in the Bandit Camp for 750 scrap. You can also get the scrap transport helicopter at the same location for 1250 scrap.
Otherwise, you can head over to special modded Rust servers where you can spawn a minicopter for free.
How to Fly a Minicopter in Rust
The minicopter can be a very complicated vehicle to operate in Rust, and most players will usually fail and fall to their deaths, along with their really expensive copter.
To make sure that you understand how to properly fly a minicopter in Rust, we suggest that you search through the modded servers for special helicopter training servers.
There are a lot of servers that exist only for you to practice your flying, so just search through the modded servers with the phrase “copter”, and you will find a lot of possible places to learn.
To use a minicopter, you will first need to place some low grade fuel in its tank. The minicopter uses around 30 low grade fuel per minute and can only hold 500 fuel at a time.
This means that you can only fly the minicopter in Rust for about 16 minutes before having to do a refill. Luckily, you can refill the fuel while in the air by holding down Alt, looking to your left, and interacting with the fuel storage in the back.
Just drag some fuel from your inventory over the fuel storage to fill it, and you can continue flying indefinitely doing this. You will see how much fuel you have on the green gas indicator that you see while flying, from full (which means 100) to red (which means 50 to 0 low grade fuel).
Also, a minicopter decays in 8 hours outside and 48 hours inside a base, so make sure you have enough scrap when you come back online to fix it. Otherwise, you have lost hundreds in scrap for nothing.
Minicopter Controls
So, let’s first go through the controls. Pressing and holding W will speed up the rotor blades. This will usually help you increase your fly height or take off.
If you hold down the Ctrl button on your keyboard, the minicopter will not fly, and you can drive it around as you would a car. Use A and D to change directions and W to accelerate.
This can be very useful when parking your minicopter or preparing for take off. Use these controls to get your minicopter inside a garage to avoid fast decay.
Once you are in the air, you will control the forward or backward movement by moving your mouse. If you move your mouse forward, the minicopter will also lean forward. The same goes for backward movements.
Be careful since leaning too much to the front or back will end with you pummeling to your death.
You can also move the mouse left and right, which will lean your Rust minicopter to the left and right respectively. However, this movement will usually just ruin your balance, so just try to keep your minicopter straight.
Players can also change the direction they are facing while flying a minicopter by pressing the A and D buttons.
In general, to successfully fly a minicopter, you will need to practice slow movements first before trying to quickly fly from one monument to the other.
That’s everything you need to know about how to fly a minicopter in Rust!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.