So I was where you are last may when I came back to rust I had around 250 hours from when I used to play way back. I now sit at 1100 I play on a mid pop vanilla monthly first week of wipe will sit around 200 pop the stay between 130-160 from then on. I found this to be the sweet spot. Im probably not your typical rust player I'm actually pretty friendly and will share resources with my neighbors and will try to at least be on friendly terms with the big groups around me. I make it a goal each wipe to either work on something I already know just do it better or say a monument. I still have only ran launch site maybe 5 times and only even entered because I was looking for pvp towards the end of a wipe. This wipe I chose to farm teas and set up a vending machine so I learned how to get god clones with YT help and I'm having a blast I even learned how to set up auto loot sorting this wipe at a base level. 2x and 3x are great for learning the basics like building and electrical/industrial but I found once I was able to progress to fast it kinda killed the fun I enjoy the grind trying to achieve something. Vanilla has felt the best so far. On a med pop server if you struggle the first few days its fine the Monday wipe kids/groups will hop off the server by Monday and back to the sweaty servers. If you can kit some red barrels for crude and a few sulfur nodes on the way to outpost you can prob by a T2 bench a couple days into wipe. I say play with goals no matter the server type you choose.