Server Rules

## **Zero Tolerance Policy**

Stormy Lagoon is committed to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all players, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, and/or any other aspect of their identity.

1. All players are responsible for reading and understanding the rules. Staff reserves the right to remove a player from our community when a player violates these set expectations.
2. All conversations that take place in public chats must be in the English language so that they can be properly moderated by staff.

## **Treat Others with Respect**

Stormy Lagoon should be a place where everyone can enjoy themselves. Keep everyone in mind when you do something, and avoid behavior that would make others feel unwelcome or uncomfortable. Basically, rule number one: don't be a jerk

1. Personal attacks and harassment targeting players or staff will not be tolerated.
2. Sexist, racist, homophobic, and broad, offensive generalizations about groups of people are simply not allowed.
3. Any word blocked by a filter is never allowed no matter how it's written, even if it gets around the filter itself.
4. You can talk about current events and real-world topics. However, if staff recognizes the topic is causing players to become uncomfortable, they may shut the conversation down.
5. You should take conversations regarding sensitive topics to direct messages, party chat, or off-server (Discord, etc), with people who want to be involved.
6. **Don't spam.** This includes excessive use of chat, caps, player-related commands, or any other medium.
7. Keep others in mind when talking in public chat. Personal and/or exclusive conversations are often better suited for DMs or party chat. Staff may direct you there if they feel your conversation is clogging chat.

## **Be a Good Neighbour**

Excessive and/or unnecessary claiming will result in staff intervention, and unused claims will be removed.

1. Follow the 100/50 claiming rule: You may claim up to 100 blocks beyond the furthest point of your build, and you must claim at least 50 blocks away from other players' claim borders.
	1. Creating a claim within someone's marked off area/town/within their walls will get your claim deleted. The *"at least 50 blocks away"* is a good rule of thumb (and enforced) but there's always exceptions to the rules. *Don't be a jerk.*
	2. Don’t claim unnecessarily large areas and don't claim land you don’t plan to build on within a reasonable time.
2. *Respect each other and their builds!* You may take resources from unclaimed builds, claim them as your own, or even completely remove them.
	1. When you decide you want to steal from an unclaimed build, I suggest checking if that player is active with /co inspect and /seen <player>. We're a friendly server.
	2. Claiming something someone else built is allowed, but if you're creating a claim in the middle of their settlement, your created claim will be deleted.
	3. Griefing something just to harass another player or have malicious intent, will get you banned from the server. But if you see something you want from an unclaimed build (i.e. a bunch of glazed terracotta, or hoppers) you can steal those. But respect the build as much as possible!
3. Do not leave an unneeded mess in the world (noob towers, lava castings, etc).
4. Do not break structures meant to be traveled on (railroads or ice roads); they should never be destroyed even if unclaimed.
5. Do not steal (or grief) from a claim you're trusted in, or from a player after they’ve died, or items dropped to another player that is not you, or from something recently placed down (like a shulker box at spawn).

## **Play Fair**

Everyone should be able to feel proud of their achievements on the server. This is only possible if everyone plays fair. One player cheating can diminish the accomplishments of everyone else!

### PVP:

1. Stormy Lagoon is a "PvP free" server. Never use any means of bypassing PvP protection such as player traps, lava, fire, explosions, mobs, and pushing players into deadly items.
2. Do not attempt to trick players into PvP, fight without other players’ consent, or spawn kill players.
3. In the case of a formally agreed-upon PvP battle that can be proven to staff, neither party can abuse exploits that may give them the upper hand. “Combat logging” and going between PvP enabled and disabled zones or toggling /pvp during combat are examples of this.
4. If you're known to PvP with your friends and break all of the PvP rules with them consensually (WITHIN the group of friends, all willingly), then your report on when something happens is void. **Loss of items due to tomfoolery within said group will not not returned.**

### Scamming & Bidding:

1. Do not attempt to trick or scam others during item trades or economy transactions.
2. Do not bid on an item you do not plan to buy (in-game and in #player-market on Discord) - if you offer to pay more for something that someone else has already made an offer on, that is considered "bidding" and all bids are final!

### Alternate Accounts:

1. Alternate (“alt”) accounts are generally not allowed. We may approve their use on a case-by-case basis.
2. Using an alt account to bypass a punishment can result in a longer ban.
3. You are responsible for the activity of your account, as well as any consequences brought forward from breaking our rules.
4. Please notify the staff team if there are multiple people who play on Stormy Lagoon in your household, so there are no questions about whether you are different people or one person using alt accounts. This makes our job easier and means we don't have to bother you about it in the future!
5. You must be the *legal owner of your Minecraft* account or have permission to use it by the legal owner.

### AFK:

1. Bypassing the automatic AFK system is prohibited (examples include auto clickers, AFK pools, etc.). Lost items from AFK-deaths are not returned.

## **Hacks and Mods Policy**

Any hack or mod that gives you an unfair advantage in the game is not allowed.

1. Most vanilla exploits are allowed – unless they give you materials you are not supposed to have (such as duplication glitches, including TNT duping ).
2. Exploiting any non-vanilla features (our plugins) is prohibited. ⁠#create-a-ticket to report the exploit immediately!

### We allow modifications in the following categories:

* Mods that improve client performance (Optifine)
* Minimaps, as long as it doesn't show anything you can't normally see (caves, dungeon locations, etc)
* Aesthetic modifications that do not give you an unfair advantage or change gameplay (Shaders)
* Inventory management systems, such as automatic organization (Mousetweaks)
* Mods for recording gameplay (ReplayMod)
* The Litematica mod (auto-build and easy place features are prohibited)
* Armor and status HUDs (as long as info shown is accessible in vanilla)
* Changing gamma (Full-bright)

## **Reducing Lag**

It is up to everyone in the community to help keep lag to a minimum. There are many factors that cause lag and you can read about them in ⁠Reducing Lag. If you have any questions about your farm design or how it may work on the server due to anti-lag measures, please feel free to reach out to a staff member or #create-a-ticket on discord.

1. If we find something on the server that is causing a problem with lag (such as large animal farms or grinders) we hold the right to shut it down or request you to change them.
2. We have a system in place to restrict the number of mobs that can be in a certain area. Please do not try to circumvent this system.
3. Mob grinder holding chambers must be 1x1 blocks in size. Few exceptions listed below!
	1. Magma kill chamber may be up to 3x3.
	2. Hoglin kill chamber may be up to 2x2.
	3. Enderman kill chamber may be up to 3x3.
	4. Ravagers during pillager raids must be killed automatically and the kill chamber should still be 2x1 for the rest of the mobs..

## **Don't Impersonate Staff**

Do not impersonate staff members or portray yourself as one when you are not. It is fine to share the rules with others, but please do not try to force others to follow them - reach out to a staff member if you need help.

1. Do not mini-mod. If a staff member is already helping a player please don't interfere. We appreciate players trying to help out other players but if staff is already helping it can cause confusion. You can remind players of the rules, but remember that you cannot enforce them or punish players.
2. Do not make "official" Stormy Lagoon products or events. If you make something related to Stormy Lagoon please make sure it's clear that it is not an official Stormy Lagoon thing. We cannot moderate unofficial things and cannot be responsible for what happens related to them!

## **No Self Promotions**

Creators are awesome! Creators leeching off of others to promote their own work are not.

1. You may share content you've posted on your Youtube in ⁠#chit-chat on our Discord, as long as:
	1. It's Stormy Lagoon related. Whether it's a past recording uploaded to Youtube, a Tiktok video, or a livestream - should be SL related!
	2. You are not using our services merely as a means of promoting your own content. We may deny an individual from promoting their work if we feel this is being abused.
2. Never promote other Minecraft servers, Realms, or Discord servers in any of our public chats.
3. Staff might allow you to discuss something you did on another server if you don't mention it by name or it's effectively known by every Minecraft player (think Hypixel). You may share this type of content in a private message, but only if the recipient requested the information first.
4. Use /localchat or another means of private/group chatting to communicate with your audience on the server. Someone watching your stream should not be responding in global chat to what you are speaking about on stream. Please inform your viewers on this rule!

## Disputing Rules and Punishments

If you would like to dispute a moderator’s decision, a punishment you’ve received, or one of our rules, please contact us privately. We understand that things can get frustrating and sometimes a discussion is necessary to make sure we are doing the right thing, but we don’t want a potentially sensitive discussion to interrupt everyone else who is playing.

* Please help us keep things peaceful and reach out by #create-a-ticket.
* If they deem it necessary, staff can impose stricter, temporary rules than those written here to control a situation affecting player enjoyment.
* If you feel this power is abused feel free to contact us, however you still have to follow the rule once you're made aware of it.
* Please remember our rules only apply to our services. We cannot enforce our rules nor control what others do outside of our services, on their own private Discord servers, private messages, streams, etc.