Your server is already running.
Here’s what to do first.
Nothing to install, nothing to boot — it came up the moment you paid and it’s sitting there empty, waiting for a name. The card on the right is the entire list. Five short steps below and it’s yours.
# already done for you server running backups nightly, off-site # yours to do name Settings → name it password Settings → set one address top of the console → Copy backup take one → download it mods optional — read step 5 first
You can skip all of it and just play. None of it expires.
The five minutes
Open your console — there’s no install step
Your server started itself when the order went through. A host that hands you a stopped server is handing you homework; we’d rather hand you something that’s already up. If it says Running, that’s it — people can join right now.
Your console lives at console.acidnodes.com — same login as billing. Open it in another tab and keep this one open beside it; the rest of these steps are things you do in there.
Name it and put a password on it
Settings tab. The name is what people see in the server list; the password is what keeps strangers out. Change them, hit save, and the server restarts itself to pick them up — that restart is normal and takes under a minute.
Leave the password blank and anyone with your address can walk in. That’s a real choice some people want — just make it on purpose.
Send people the address
It’s at the top of the console with a Copy button next to it. Paste that into your group chat — that’s the whole invite. A couple of games use a join code instead of an address, and where that’s true the console shows the code in the same spot, because it’s the thing you actually need to hand someone.
Take a backup, then download it
We keep a nightly restore point off-site automatically, and you get named copies of your own that we never overwrite or expire. That part needs nothing from you.
The bit that does: download one to your own machine. It costs nothing and it’s unlimited. It’s also the only copy that doesn’t depend on us still being here — and we’d rather you have that habit than trust any host, including this one, to be your only copy.
Mods — optional, and one of them is hard to undo
Nothing is pre-installed. Your server is stock, exactly as the game ships, and it stays that way until you decide otherwise — we don’t make that call for you.
Most mods are a toggle: on, off, on again, no harm done. One kind isn’t, and it’s worth thirty seconds before you click it:
The console says the same thing when you go to install it, so you can’t hit it by accident. It’s here as well because reading it before you’ve levelled a character is the only time it’s useful.
Why it works this way
A few decisions you’ll bump into, and the reasoning, so they don’t look arbitrary.