Getting started
About ten minutes, most of it waiting for a server restart. One mod goes on your game box, and one credential connects it to Citadel. There is no third-party account to buy and no RCon password to hand over.
Each step below says what you should see when it worked. The usual reason a setup stalls is not a broken step but not being able to tell whether a step succeeded.
1. Sign in
Go to ops.citadel-hub.com and sign in. You can use Discord.
On first sign-in you name your organization — the workspace your servers, staff and tickets belong to.
2. Install @CitadelAdmin on the game box
It runs as a server mod (-servermod=@CitadelAdmin) and is server-side only,
so your players download nothing and never see it in the mod list.
If you run the Citadel Server Manager, it deploys and updates the mod for you on every server it manages, and this step is already done.
You should see: the server start normally, with CitadelAdmin in the startup
log.
3. Issue a Server ID and key
In the console, open your server, go to Metrics, and press Issue Server ID and key under Citadel Server Manager.
That mints a Citadel Server ID (cs_…, ours) and a key. It is the one credential
the Server Manager uses for events, snapshots, metrics and commands. Copy the
key now — we store only a digest and cannot show it to you again.
Use the ID we mint, not the instanceId from serverDZ.cfg. Every fresh DayZ
install ships the same one.
You should see: a cs_… Server ID on screen, and a key shown exactly once.
On a rented server (Nitrado, GPORTAL…)? You cannot run the Server Manager there — and you don't need it. The mod can talk to Citadel by itself: see Direct mode, then skip step 4.
4. Paste them into the Citadel Server Manager
On the game box, open the server's settings in the Server Manager, find Citadel Ops link, paste the Ops URL, the Server ID and the key, and turn it on.
You should see: within a minute, the server rail showing the mod version and "last heard from", the live map filling in, and rows arriving in Activity.
If the panel says "The Server Manager has gone quiet", the link is configured but nothing has checked in for a minute — that is a connection problem on the game box, not a setup mistake in the console.
5. Watch it come alive
The live map fills in as players connect. If the server is empty you will still see it listed as online with its map and player count — that is the sign it worked, not an empty screen.
You should see: the server marked online, and the roster populating as players join.
6. Invite Overwatch (optional)
One Discord bot, shared across every community on Citadel. You do not create an application or host anything.
Add it to your Discord,
run /connect there — you need Manage Server — and enter the code it
gives you in the console. Then set your killfeed, chat relay
and leaderboard channels per server, under Discord.
See Citadel Overwatch for what it does and how channels work.
You should see: the bot online in your member list, and your server listed in the console under Discord.
7. Automate perks (optional)
Keep your own store. Point its checkout at a signed webhook and Citadel grants priority queue, whitelist, or an LBmaster perk automatically — queued through restarts, retried until it lands, and never granted twice for one order.
See Perk fulfilment.
You should see: a command appear in the console with what the game server actually replied — not just that it was sent.
Stuck?
Open a ticket in our Discord and say which step and what you saw. That is almost always enough to answer it in one reply.