Cloth decides more of your wipe than most players realise. Miss the first 30–100 cloth and you are suddenly short sleeping bags, bandages, your hunting bow and the low grade fuel that moves you around the map. That early delay snowballs: the fresh spawn who falls behind here spends the next hour recovering tempo.
Later, cloth stops being a spawn resource and becomes sustain — syringes, armor pieces, teas, and decent trade material once your base is stable. Cloth has no crafting recipe, so every point must be taken from the world. Here is every source, ranked by what it actually yields.
Every cloth source ranked
| Method | Cloth per hour / cycle | Setup cost | PvP risk | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| River hemp runs | 200–400 | None | Low–Medium | Solo, early wipe |
| Recycler cloth loop | 300–500 per trip | None | Low | Solo or duo, mid wipe |
| Animal farming | 150–300 | Bone knife | Medium | Snow or poor-hemp areas |
| Indoor hemp farm | 1,300–1,500 per harvest | High | Low | Groups, late wipe |
| Optimised 3x3 farm (GGGYYY) | 3,600–3,900 | High | Low | Late wipe, everyone |
Short repeatable routes beat one huge greedy run every time: less dead space, faster resets, and you can bank your cloth before the area gets hot.
Exact animal cloth values
Skin the corpse with a bone knife or other cutting tool — a hatchet or pickaxe noticeably reduces the yield.
| Animal | Cloth |
|---|---|
| Tiger | 70 |
| Bear / Polar bear / Panther | 50 |
| Wolf | 35 |
| Crocodile | 30 |
| Stag / Horse | 25 |
| Shark | 20 |
| Boar | 10 |
| Chicken | 6 |
| Scientist | 5 |
You also pull animal fat (for low grade fuel) and bone fragments from the same corpses, so hunting stacks three resources at once.
Recycle values that matter
One recycler trip converts road junk into a serious cloth pile.
| Item | Cloth returned |
|---|---|
| Tarp | 60 |
| Snow jacket / Bed | 36 |
| Jacket | 30 |
| Hoodie | 24 |
| Rope | 18 |
| Sewing kit | 12 |
The Outpost glove loop. Tactical gloves cost 40 scrap at Outpost vending machines and each pair recycles into 5 sewing kits — roughly 200 cloth per pair. No combat, repeatable indefinitely, and it works identically on PC and console. Run it mid wipe when scrap from monument runs is piling up: convert excess scrap into cloth rather than sitting on it.
High-yield barrel locations for the recycler loop: Oxum’s Gas Station, Supermarket, Abandoned Cabins, and the road network between Outpost and Bandit Camp. Run them at low population hours.
Biome matters more than effort
| Biome | What actually works |
|---|---|
| Temperate / forest / rivers | Highest natural hemp. River curves and sandbars hold dense clusters; forest edges near water respawn consistently. 15-minute loops for 200–400 cloth. |
| Snow | Zero wild hemp. Hunt wolves, bears and deer with a bone knife, or recycle rope, tarps and gloves from snow monuments. Build an indoor hemp farm immediately. |
| Desert | No natural hemp. Large cactus gives 3–5 cloth, a standard cactus about 10 and a tall cactus about 15 — pair cactus routes with barrel runs. |
| Jungle | Hemp spawns inconsistently. Check cliff edges and valley floors, hunt bears and boars with a bone knife, and avoid deep jungle where density is lowest. Prioritise rocky transition zones. |
The 3x3 hemp farm
The late-game answer. Once it is running, your base prints cloth on a timer.
Required components
- 9 large planter boxes (each holds 6 plants, planted in 3-row configurations)
- Ceiling lights, or solar panels wired to lights
- A water source: water pump, water barrel or sprinkler system
- High-genetics hemp seeds (G, GG or GGG quality)
By scale
| Setup | Cloth per harvest | Cycle time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 planter box | 150–180 | 50–60 min |
| 3x3 farm | 1,300–1,500 | ~1 hour |
| Optimised 3x3 with GGGYYY clones | 3,600–3,900/hour | — |
Harvest every 50–60 minutes. Indoor farms work in any biome including snow — build the grow room with a dedicated electrical circuit, and protect it with reinforced walls and airlocks, because raiders will target cloth production specifically.
On genetics: clone a good plant early so you stop rolling the dice on random seeds every harvest. One GGG-quality plant can populate an entire room through cloning. For traits, take Y for yield and G for growth; avoid W-heavy seeds, which demand constant water management for no real gain.
Five mistakes that waste your cloth time
- Skipping recyclers. Rope, tarps and gloves are worth hundreds of cloth. Recycle road junk — do not drop it.
- Wrong tools on animals. Hatchets and pickaxes cut your cloth yield. Carry a bone knife.
- Farming dead loops. Hemp respawns need time and distance. Rotate between several river sections instead of circling one.
- Roaming with 300+ cloth. Stash surplus near your route — a death with a full inventory costs you the whole farm run. Cloth dropped on the ground despawns in about 20 minutes, but inside a box or container it lasts.
- Never cloning. A single GGG plant can seed your whole farm. Not cloning means re-rolling genetics forever.
What cloth actually gates
Beyond the obvious bandages and sleeping bags, cloth gates real armor through sewing kits — the Metal Chest Plate — and it is an ingredient in C4. Your entire day-one survival kit (bandage, burlap clothes, sleeping bag, hunting bow) is almost entirely cloth, which is why it is the first resource to chase.
Related guides
- How to Get Scrap Fast — funding the tech tree
- Rust Tech Tree Guide — what to spend it on
- Best Base Designs — protecting the farm
- Monument Loot Tables — where the recycler loot comes from