raven-shield-2020/README.md

Instructions for playing Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield in 2020 and beyond.

Obtaining the Game

The game is frequently on sale for under $5 on Steam. This edition contains the Athena Sword expansion but not Iron Wrath. Iron Wrath is out of scope for this guide, but it adds 8 maps, 5 game modes, and 6 firearms.

Playing the Game

Essential Improvements

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

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 4th 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. 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://doesnotexist.xyz/servers.

Hosting a Server

VPS

This section will cover hosting a Raven Shield server with MarkMods.com.

Linux

This section will cover hosting a Raven Shield server with DigitalOcean Droplets. You can also use these steps with your own Linux hardware for self-hosted servers.

Windows

This section will cover hosting a Raven Shield server with Microsoft Azure. You can also use these steps with your own Windows hardware for self-hosted servers.