Playing Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield in 2020 and beyond

Obtaining the Game

Raven Shield, released March 18 2003, is frequently on sale for under $5 on Steam. This edition contains the Athena Sword expansion but not Iron Wrath, which can be downloaded separately (see below).

For novelty purposes, there are also single-player and multi-player demos still available for download, also released in 2003.

Community Resources

• Discord

Playing the Game

Essential Improvements

1. Borderless Gaming will run the game in a fullscreen window, allowing you to instantly alt-tab. You can download it from Github for free.
2. Check the PC Gaming Wiki for any tweaks you might want to perform.

Single-Player

You can now play the campaign, a custom mission, or a training scenario. To unlock all maps in custom missions, press ~ at the main menu and enter the command unlockall.

Multi-Player

On September 4 2016, Ubisoft shut down the authentication servers for Raven Shield. We use OpenRVS to point our clients at a new set of authentication servers so we can still play the game together.

1. Download the latest version of OpenRVS from RVSGaming.org.
2. Open readme.html to read the documentation.
3. Copy openrvs.ini, OpenRVS.u, R6ClassDefines.ini, and Servers.list to <YourGameDir>\system\.
4. You will need to update system/R6GameService.dll in order to remove another place where the game makes outbound calls to Ubisoft servers. There are two ways to update this: either run Chriswak's R6GameService_Patcher (source) or replace system\R6GameService.dll with the prebuilt copy from this repo. If unpatched, the game will hang any time it tries to reach Ubisoft servers during regular gameplay.
5. (Optional) Edit Servers.list to choose which servers are displayed when RVSGaming servers cannot be reached. The names in this file are for reference; the in-game server name will be retrieved from the server. You can force the usage of this file by editing openrvs.ini and changing the value of ServerListURL to an invalid URL, such as http://127.0.0.1/servers.
6. Launch the game and set your Internet connection speed to T3 in the settings menu.
7. Join a server and party like it's 2003!

Athena Sword

Athena Sword (March 9 2004) is an expansion which adds 19 maps (including 8 designed for multiplayer), 4 game modes, and 7 weapons. In the Steam version of Raven Shield, Athena Sword is installed separately in your Steam Library.

Note: Installing Athena Sword in Steam may overwrite <YourGameDir>\system\R6ClassDefines.ini. Be sure to install OpenRVS after installing Athena Sword.

To play offline:

1. Launch Athena Sword from Steam
2. Click 'Settings' -> 'Custom Game' -> 'Athena Sword' -> 'Activate'
3. To revert, activate 'Raven Shield' instead.

Iron Wrath

Iron Wrath (June 9 2005) is an expansion which adds 18 maps (including 8 designed for multiplayer), 5 game modes, and 6 weapons. In order to add Iron Wrath to a Steam installation, follow these steps:

1. Download Iron Wrath's unpacked files here.
2. Copy IronWrath and IronWrath.mod to <YourGameDir>\Mods.

To play offline:

1. Launch Raven Shield from Steam
2. Click 'Settings' -> 'Custom Game' -> 'Iron Wrath' -> 'Activate'
3. To revert, activate 'Raven Shield' instead.

Custom Content

See CUSTOM.md

Hosting a Server

See SERVERS.md