Protect your Discord server from raids: which hurdle actually holds

Why this goes wrong

Almost every server gets its entrance built during the quietest week of the year, and that is exactly why the decision comes out wrong. In calm times every hurdle looks excessive, so you take the lowest one, and half a year later it is still there while the server has long outgrown it and turned up on public lists. The second mistake sits in the order of work. Put the panel up before the channels are closed and you give away the window in between: whoever walks in during that time is inside unchecked and stays that way, because nobody checks backwards. The third one only shows up on the bad night. A raid does not measure how finely your filter is tuned, it measures how fast your team can act. If nobody knows at that moment who is allowed to press which button and where the evidence belongs, half a night costs you what ten calm minutes would have settled beforehand.

What to decide first

Decide first how expensive your entrance is allowed to be. In a circle of friends who all know each other anyway, every extra question is wasted time. There the invite is the real gate. As soon as you advertise in public it flips: strangers arrive daily, and the hurdle has to cost more than a throwaway account is worth. The strictest of the three levels leads out of Discord onto a web page, and that costs you real people, above all on a phone and anywhere someone has no appetite for signing in somewhere else. Budget for that loss instead of ignoring it. Second decision: what does a minimum account age buy you? It makes cheap volume expensive, because a fresh account costs nothing and a bought one costs something. Against a hijacked account that has existed for half a year it does nothing. And it hits precisely the newcomer who got Discord on the day they wanted to join you.

Step by step

1. Close the channels before you touch anything else. Whoever strolls in while you are still building will never be looked at again.
2. Hang the write permission on a single role instead of on every channel separately, so you can take it back in one place when it counts.
3. Pick the level by your audience: the less anyone knows the people arriving each day, the more friction you may ask of them.
4. Look up how many joins your loudest perfectly normal hour has produced so far, and set the raid threshold above that number rather than below it.
5. Settle in advance who is allowed to act at night and which channel the evidence goes to; both belong somewhere findable in a hurry.

The mistakes almost everyone makes

The most expensive mistake is a threshold set too tight. A giveaway, a shout-out from a partner, a video that happens to be running, and suddenly more people arrive in a minute than usually arrive all day. If the limit sits too low, the bot throws out exactly the people you advertised for, and it asks nobody first. The second: the action left half configured. Choose a holding role and then forget which role it should be, and you get no reaction at all, deliberately built that way, so an unfinished setting cannot throw anyone out. Do not rely on noticing it, though. The third has no menu: whoever the entrance rejects wrongly can no longer reach you, because the only route to you was the server. So name a second route in the message that goes out with the rejection. And the fourth sits in the panel channel itself: it is the one room unchecked visitors see, and if writing is allowed there, you have built the attack a stage that every newcomer walks onto first.

Frequently asked questions

In a private circle the invite is the real filter; there every extra hurdle costs more than it brings in. What matters is not the member count but how many strangers arrive per week. As soon as you show up on lists or advertise, that calculation flips and the entrance is allowed to be uncomfortable.

No, it is a second lock, not a first one. It makes cheap volume useless, because fresh accounts by the dozen cost nothing. Older accounts are traded, and a hijacked account is as old as its rightful owner. On its own it therefore only stops the casual attempt.

By the gap between arriving and arriving. Compare over a few weeks how many people join and how many of them ever show up in the chat. If those two drift far apart, you are losing them at the door and not to boredom. Nobody will complain about it: whoever does not get in does not write to you either.

Stop turning knobs. Take the write permission away from the role that carries it; that silences every channel at the same moment. Afterwards you look in peace at which time window the joins fell into and work through the accounts one by one. Anything you rearrange in the middle of the noise you will not understand the next day.

Which level suits a small server?

In a private circle the invite is the real filter; there every extra hurdle costs more than it brings in. What matters is not the member count but how many strangers arrive per week. As soon as you show up on lists or advertise, that calculation flips and the entrance is allowed to be uncomfortable.

Is a minimum account age enough on its own?

No, it is a second lock, not a first one. It makes cheap volume useless, because fresh accounts by the dozen cost nothing. Older accounts are traded, and a hijacked account is as old as its rightful owner. On its own it therefore only stops the casual attempt.

How do I notice that my hurdle is too high?

By the gap between arriving and arriving. Compare over a few weeks how many people join and how many of them ever show up in the chat. If those two drift far apart, you are losing them at the door and not to boredom. Nobody will complain about it: whoever does not get in does not write to you either.

What do I do while a raid is running?

Stop turning knobs. Take the write permission away from the role that carries it; that silences every channel at the same moment. Afterwards you look in peace at which time window the joins fell into and work through the accounts one by one. Anything you rearrange in the middle of the noise you will not understand the next day.