Knox Static: rules and how the server works

Rules

PvP is off, and so is griefing. Don't burn, wreck or empty anything other players built or claimed. If you're running from a horde and end up near someone's base, keep going and take it somewhere else. (Logs can't show where zombies walked, so this one only ever gets a warning.)
Safehouses. One per group. A claimed safehouse and everything inside it belongs to its group: stay out unless they invite you. A safehouse whose members haven't logged in for 14 days is released, and what's inside is free to take after that.
Outside a safehouse. Cars, generators, crops and animals that are clearly someone's are theirs too: parked or kept at their base, inside their fence, plugged into their house, or a car with their things in it. Anything left out on the road or in town is fair game. If you're not sure, leave it.
Roads stay open. Don't wall off or block roads, bridges or the way into a town.
Town buildings stay standing. Don't burn or sledgehammer buildings nobody has claimed. Taking doors, windows or furniture for your own base is fine.
Story places belong to everyone. Places from the radio story can't be claimed. Take what's lying around if you need it; the story's own things come back. Don't strip or burn the building.
No cheats, exploits or duplication. If you find a bug that helps you, report it on Discord. Using it gets you removed.
Chat and names. English in global chat. No slurs, harassment or hate, and no character names like that either.
One account per person.

Safehouses can only be claimed in homes. Police stations, gun stores, hospitals and other public buildings can't be claimed, so their loot stays open to everyone.

If something goes wrong: a warning first (a message box on your screen), then a kick, then a ban for repeats or anything serious. Every ban is written down with the reason and can be appealed on Discord. If someone finds a gap in these rules, we add a line and announce it. Nobody is punished for something that wasn't a rule when they did it.

Deaths from lag, desync or a rollback aren't refunded. That's a hard line to judge fairly, so we don't try. Skill Recovery Journal is the safety net.

Nothing is spawned by hand, for anyone, and that includes rebuilding a griefed base: what's lost stays lost, and the griefer is dealt with. Rewards come from rules everyone can read (like "one map per part delivered").

How the server works

Never wiped. The world started on (launch date) and keeps going.
Near vanilla. Standard Apocalypse settings, PvE, English chat. Four Workshop items, downloaded automatically when you join: Skill Recovery Journal with its two small libraries, and Knox Static, our own mod for the radio story. Because of them the server shows as modded in the browser.
Power and water go off for good on in-game day 14, and the clock stops while nobody is on.
Changes for a world that never resets: zombies slowly come back to places nobody has been to in a while, loot slowly refills in towns, and corpses and rotten food are cleared sooner so the server stays fast. Days are the default 1.5 real hours.
Where you start: Muldraugh or West Point. That's where most people are, and where the story is.
Restarts at 06:00, 12:00, 18:00 and 00:00 Vienna time, with a countdown in chat.
QSL cards. Ray sends a card, by way of Dale, when you earn one: helping him, being up at three when the radio does something strange, a long life, being among the first to reach a place from the story. They're keepsakes, worth nothing in the game, and the website keeps the list (Dale's book) even after a death.
Death. Write your skills into a Skill Recovery Journal, and your next character can read them back. Everyone who dies is listed on the website, with how long they lasted and where they fell.
The radio. Tune any radio to 96.6. Something new airs there every week, and the latest broadcast repeats every in-game evening at 20:00. Every broadcast is kept on the website (a few late-night ones appear a week later).

Who runs it

Knox Static is run by an AI: Claude, made by Anthropic. It writes and runs the radio story from a written plan, reads the server logs to run events and count progress toward shared goals, and moderates by the rules on this page. A person hosts the machine and pays for it, but doesn't run the server day to day. Claude doesn't chat in game; warnings arrive as a message box, everything else is on Discord.

How bans work:

Only what's written here counts. A warning comes first unless it's cheating or something serious.
Nobody is banned on a hunch. A ban needs evidence in the server logs (who opened what, who was where, chat), and the reason and the evidence are written down.
Appeal on Discord. The appeal is looked at again against the logs and answered within a day. If the logs don't show it clearly, the ban is lifted.

Updated 2026-10-28 22:47