Discord for Rust, ARK and DayZ servers: wipes, support and rules

If you run a Rust, ARK or DayZ server, you notice quickly: the game runs on the game server, but the community lives on Discord. That's where players ask when the next wipe is, report cheaters, argue about raids and appeal bans. Without structure, all of that ends up in the main chat or in your admins' DMs.

In this guide you build a Discord server that takes work off your game server's team: with clear rules, scheduled wipe announcements, tickets for support and cheater reports, a fair process for ban appeals and applications for new admins.

What a survival community server needs

Survival servers have a few quirks other communities don't:

• Wipes: In Rust, the map and often blueprints are reset regularly. Players plan their week around it. ARK and DayZ servers also reset after updates or seasons.
• Cheaters and rule breaks in the game: Most reports aren't about Discord but about the game. Your team needs the player name, server, time and evidence.
• Bans in the game and on Discord: Anyone banned in the game wants to complain. That should happen in an orderly way, not in the public chat.
• Several servers: Many owners run a vanilla, a modded and an event server, each with its own rules.

What Discord offers by itself

Discord alone already gets you some of the way:

• Announcement channel: Wipe info and updates belong in a channel where only the team writes. On community servers, other servers can even follow it. More in the guide on the announcement channel.
• Rules channel and rules screening: New members accept the rules before they can write.
• Forum channel: good for suggestions or bug reports with a tag per server.
• Server events: for event wipes or community raids.

What Discord can't do: post messages on a schedule, manage private support cases or collect applications. That's what you use Lizbot for.

1. Write clear rules

Write two blocks of rules: one for Discord and one for the game. The game rules should cover the team limit (solo, duo, trio, max 4), how you handle cheats, macros and exploits, forbidden building styles, rules for offline raiding if your server has them, and what happens with toxicity in voice chat. State the penalties right away, for example "Cheating: permanent ban on all servers".

How to structure rules so people understand them is shown in the guide Discord server rules. A penalty guide helps your team hand out consistent penalties.

2. Schedule wipe announcements

No question comes up as often as "When's wipe?". Schedule the answer instead of typing it every time. In the dashboard, open Automations, go to the Scheduled messages page and click Message.

• Channel: your wipe or announcement channel
• Send on or First send: date and time
• Repeat: Once, Hourly, Every 6 hours, Daily or Weekly
• Text: up to 2,000 characters, with an embed if you like

If you wipe every week on the same day, one weekly message is enough, for example "Wipe today at 8 pm, server back at 8:15". There's no dedicated rhythm for wipes every two weeks or once a month. In that case, create a one-time message for each of the next dates. A reminder the day before and another one an hour before has proven useful.

So only interested players get pinged, create a role like "Wipe ping", make it mentionable and put it into the text as <@&role-ID>. Members pick it up through a role menu, and a separate role per server makes sense. Scheduled messages are included in every plan. All the details are in the guide Schedule a Discord message, the idea behind ping roles in the guide Ping roles in Discord.

3. Tickets for support and cheater reports

Support via DMs to individual admins goes wrong sooner or later: nobody knows who's handling what, and evidence gets lost. With Lizbot's tickets, a player clicks a panel and gets a private channel or thread with your team.

In the Tickets module, create categories like these in the Categories & panels tab:

• General support: questions, connection problems, lost items
• Report a cheater: with questions for player name or Steam ID, server, time and a link to the clip
• Ban appeal (game): for bans on the game server
• Report a bug: for errors on modded servers

For each category you set up to five Questions when opening, as required fields if you like, and choose support roles. That way cheater reports only reach your anti-cheat team. The Free plan includes one panel and five categories, Pro and above unlimited, plus a target time for the first response from Pro. Lizbot keeps transcripts for 30 days on Free and for a year on Pro. How to set everything up is covered in the guide Set up a ticket system.

4. Handle ban appeals fairly

There are two kinds of appeals:

• Ban in the game: Lizbot has no access to your game server. For these bans, use the ticket category Ban appeal (game), where your team reviews the case.
• Ban on Discord: Anyone banned on Discord can't open a ticket anymore. For that, the Moderation module has the Appeals tab. With Allow appeals, banned members get a link to a web page in their ban DM where they can appeal. Your team decides in the dashboard or with a button in Discord. A Wait time after rejection stops people from writing again every day.

Note in your rules channel how long appeals take and that cheating bans aren't up for discussion, if that's your policy. It saves a lot of arguing.

5. Find admins through applications

As your server grows, you need admins and moderators for different time zones. With Lizbot's application forms you ask for playtime, admin experience, availability and time zone. Applications land in a review channel where your team votes and asks follow-up questions. Under On acceptance you decide which roles are added. For team roles with permissions, Assign by hand is the safe choice: Lizbot then reminds your team to give the role themselves. The Free plan includes two forms, Pro five, Studio unlimited. More in the guide on the application form.

6. Moderate Discord itself

Discord gets heated after a raid too. Lizbot's AutoMod filters insults, invite links and spam. Warnings, timeouts and bans run through moderation with a case file, so your team sees who has caused trouble before. The word filter with word packs is included in the Free plan.

Practical tips

• One channel per server: Keep wipe info for vanilla and modded separate, each with its own ping role.
• Give wipe times with a time zone: Many players are from other countries. Discord's dynamic timestamp <t:timestamp:F> shows everyone their own local time.
• Ask for evidence: Without a clip or screenshot, a cheater report stays a suspicion.
• Never handle appeals in public chat: Always point people to the ticket.