Playing Drakan for the first time. A few questions

[CynicMimic]

I used to watch my dad play this game when I was 9... As someone who regularly still plays 90s and early 00s games, I'm kicking myself that I somehow waited 20 years to bother trying this one myself. It's mostly great and deserved so much more praise than it received, but it seems like it's been completely forgotten. I'm going to finish this and emulate the sequel straight after. Anyway I've just got past the Grotto and into the Islands area, and I have a few questions about items and abilities.

~ What is the point of the ice crystals? It seems like they give me a shield but it's not protecting me from anything.

~ What are the benefits of using the different dragon powers over just the basic fire power? I have a poison attack and now an ice attack, both of which seem less effective than just spitting fireballs and blowing flames when enemies get close.

~ Is there a list somewhere of the different combos you can use in combat? I've noticed if I press left, up, and attack, I do a stab motion. And back, up, attack makes me do a twirl and slash. What else is useful? Also, is blocking ever worthwhile? I'm finding it easier to circle around enemies and jump away rather than block anything.

[Arokhs Twin]

Hi there, welcome to the forums and nice to see someone else enjoying this game.

To answer your questions - the ice crystals are supposed to freeze any enemies which come close but the effect is not very good and often you have killed your enemy with your sword by the time they freeze. I never used them either as they are indeed a waste of time and inventory space.

As for the dragon powers, the ice and magma is definitely more powerful than fire especially the secondary attacks. The poison not so much; again I didn't use that much. Magma comes in handy for the harder enemies towards the end of the game although it has a slow recharge time.

There are combo attacks as you have found out which are listed in the manual. I didn't have a copy of the manual on this site so I've added one which you can find on the downloads page or direct link here. https://www.arokhslair.net/downloads/Drakan_Manual.pdf

Blocking does help but the combos will allow you to jump away or do more powerful attacks. It's all about timing in this game.

Hope that helps.

[CynicMimic]

You uploaded that just for me? Thanks, and for the tips and advice, I'll have to experiment some more.

[yangez93]

Nice that you decided to to play Drakan, game still has community, there are developed fan made patches, mods, map makers still creating levels and there are still organizing multiplayer matches. Nice if you'll join Drakan discord group https://discord.gg/k8DUNnS . In other topics there are patches such as AiO Patch by UCyborg or Community Patch by Mechanist, take a look.

Yes,as Arokhs Twin mentioned, ice crystal aren't very handy, it supposed to freeze enemies and when you have ice weapon you have to change to other(no ice) to be able to kill freezed enemy, quite strange.

Lightning weapon is good for air enemies. Poison is powerful in multiplayer matches (when poison bullet hit the dragon it takes much of hp), not very useful in single player. Magma is the most powerful weapon, in multiplayer QoD maps (Queen of Death) is main weapon of dragon and in other air maps when some of player will pick it up. Problem is secondary fire weapon attack, it is bug that makes Arokh invincible, it is technical issue of renderer, I don't know what is cause of that, I suppose is has to do with increased number of FPS

I recorded only tutorial movie with skull splitter combo, take a look: https://youtu.be/ir3kxu8NP84 I haven't occasion for record tutorials for other combos, in Discord channel there are many of members that could learn you how to use them in practice. I need to find combos manual, I'll upload there.

[CynicMimic]

I'm not usually big on multiplayer but I tried to join the only server in the list, which I think is the server for this community. It said "your level files do not match the server files." Is there a map pack I should download? I'm based in Australia though so I think my ping will be shocking.

I'm using the official 455 Patch combined with the AiO patch 2.170, and I've wrapped the game in dgVoodoo which seems to improve my framerates, which were bad when I started, and lets me add 4xMSAA. Now that I've reached the Islands level though I'm getting some big framerate drops again. I'm using a decent laptop... Though it only has an integrated GPU (Vega 10), it's usually fine at maxing out games that are 10 years old or more.

Edit: Reducing the Max Fog level to 100 sorted out my framerate issues.

[Arokhs Twin]

Hi you need to install the community patch which will fix the issue of files not matching the server.

[yangez93]

Yes. It requires recent Community Patch not AiO however Community Patch doesn't include recent AiO. It assures that every player will has the same version and no problem with connecting server, it includes MP maps, fixes and as you mentioned includes dgVoodoo wrapper