I was about to log out of Rust when someone in chat I'd never seen speak before said "free base at the top of O12" (coordinate on the map).
I ask if he's leaving for good. He says he's moving to Japan tomorrow to be a helicopter pilot. Other players congratulate him. There's 7 people online total.
I happened to have a horse with full stamina and lived only a couple minutes away at full gallop. I have no armor, or substantive weapons, but I try for it anyway.
I find his base. A massive stone building with a hole where the one entrance door should be.
Inside is an outer ring that goes around a cube-like inner core of the building. Around the ring a row of smelters contently simmer away, their output being sent to a series of pipes that go inside the cube. I check them and find they've finished their jobs, just burning out the final bits of fuel.
Inside I find it: the most expensive refineries in the game humming away, hooked up to a solar power grid so they'll run until the server is wiped on Monday. They cast just enough light for me to see the helicopter pilot, nude on the floor. Your character goes to sleep when you log off.
Clearly what has happened is Helicopter Caleb signed on as soon as this server wiped on July 1st and began making special teas that give you more loot. He then proceeded to grind. The dozen or so crates in the base are all full. He didn't just have rare items, he had multiples of them neatly stored.
He knew he was moving. He said he'd been training for the job for a year. He still grinded the ever-loving fuck out of this particular server. If I had unfettered access to the resources in his base without needing to stop I still wouldn't figure out how to properly leverage it all before wipe.
