Arokhs Lair – A Drakan fan site

Hi guys the multiplayer dedicated server has been retired as its not economical to keep it going anymore. Hardly anyone plays the game now and to have a PC sat there 24/7 wasting electricity isn’t viable. Furthermore there are constant issues with windows 10 and now it keeps dropping off the network. I’ve tried to fix it but short of a total reinstall I’m stumped at what else I can do. It just seems to be a constant stream of issues. I’m sorry but it’s not worth my time and money investing in it further.

However if you have your game patched with the community patch you can host a game and it will still register with the master server. Other players will be able to see your server via the in game browser. If you have any questions about that please visit our discord server. Link in the menu bar above.

I have changed the community patch installer to be packaged inside a password protected .zip file as Microsoft Smartscreen filter sees the file as malware and prevents downloading the file. I have submitted the file to Microsoft to be removed from their database but they refused. The patch is being recognised as malware because it is not a signed application but as this is community made this isn’t really possible to get it signed. Other AV companies have removed it from their blacklists but Microsoft refuse to budge. The password for the community patch .zip is arokh.

Just a quick heads up. As you all know this game is no longer being sold and copies are only generally available on eBay or if you are lucky second hand game stores. The developer; Surreal Software are defunct but the game is still owned by Sony and therefore still copyrighted. It is not abandonware and sites hosting the game for download are doing so illegally. However some players have resorted to downloading from dodgy websites and we can confirm that the version that is on myabandonware does NOT work so if you have tried to get this working you will find that some files are missing and some are much larger in file sizes than the original legitimate files. Alarm bells should be ringing there!

Unfortunately the only way to get Drakan OOTF is keep hunting on eBay. Beware copies tend to sell for silly money! Drakan: TAG is more readily available though and is easier to find.

I’ve been through the site and updated any dead / broken links as a forum user mentioned that the link to download single player maps no longer works. I have updated this and they are also available from the drop down menu (hover over Order of the Flame) also I have updated the description of the Community Patch which replaces the 445 patch enabling game compatibility with Windows 10 amongst many other fixes. This also installs a selection of single player and multi player maps. Current supported languages are English, German and Spanish. Thanks to our Discord members for the German and Spanish translations.

Yangez93 has made some changes to the “Bloodland” map which had some bugs which caused a game crash. This has now been fixed and added to the map pack so if you find the game server is running this map you will need to update your player made map pack by downloading it from the downloads page.

Secondly there is a Drakan tournament taking place this weekend (19-20th June 2021) where three ground maps are played on the 18th followed by three air maps on the 19th. For more information please join our discord server if you want to take part.

Thirdly, this website has been blacklisted again for hosting malicious files; as some of you know MalwareBytes and other anti malware software incorrectly identify the game files as malware. This has caused the site to be de-listed from Google and blacklisted by several web browser protection software. So if you have McAfee or MalwareBytes browser guard enabled you won’t be able to download any files from this site. Please disable or bypass it until this issue is resolved. You can also download the map pack from our discord server if needed.

Lastly the comments now work properly. This was because of a change in WordPress since version 5.5 causing older themes to not display the comments even though they are enabled. A simple line of code change in the site theme was required and all working now.

I received a takedown order notice for this site as it was identified as spreading malware. It turned out to be a few files (the Drakan 10th anniversary patch and the memory allocation tweak patch) that have been on this site since 2013. However several antivirus programs now identify these files as viruses / malware and as no-one has taken any notice and is linking directly to files on this server it is been mis-identified as a malware host. Someone has been emailing with a direct link to the memory allocation patch and it has been found on several foreign forums.

I have removed these two files even though they are identified as false positives. I can understand why though as they alter the memory location where the .exe files are stored. They are mostly obsolete now anyway so it’s no real big issue but I will be going through the logs and seeing which files are being directly linked to and will try and stop this from happening. This will obviously stop people downloading any game patches directly from links in discord etc so moderators please direct users to the downloads page on this site rather than the files themselves.

This should prevent the site from being taken offline but if the site disappears you know why. If this does happen I will appeal the decision.

It has been a few weeks since the last MP event, so we planned to arrange another MP event. We played 23th August 2020. Because of timezone some of users played before these matches. There are couple changes for MP including shorter time of one round( before there was 25 minutes) we change for 15 minutes as it should be enough and we’ll be sure that we could play on more maps instead be bored on one map. We played mixed maps: QoD, ground, air and additional fan made maps. On Drakan Discord we’ll introduce on #faqs-and-multiplayer-rules some updates MP rules soon, this channel has been updated mostly for FAQs. Also please, if you have ideas for next maps, also let me know, we’ll try to make next multiplayer maps for next MP matches, make sure you have recent new MP map pack, if you have problem with installing it, also let us know.

Thank you for playing, it was really fun to play. Players: YanGez, Melber, Jav95, Jage and Rev. It was quite short and we have some difficulties because game crashes probably reason was server issues. Teekus already made changes for server so for next MP matches should be everything OK

Recently in 28th of July 2020 there were Multiplayer matches where played 9 players! It was really high number of players in comparing to previous matches after Drakan revival project. Noone expect that server will be full that would host for maximum 8 players.

Players:Teekus, [LGC]Arthrebi, [LGC]retolo, Jav95, Melber , Szymana, Blaczumba, [LGC]Loliburta and me YanGez

According to moderators approval, for won matches title of Combat Master {CM} awarded for Jav95. Jav95 is with us quite long, since August 2018, he was also very good player before this event. Because map list was approved and considered as balanced, Jav95 used his combat skills, intelligence in game and of course strategy in ground maps that made him winner of these matches. Of course, he has to defend his title, if there will be player that wants to get Combat Master title, he has to win in duel map both ground and air. We wish that new ranks will encourage other players to arrange new MP matches, and above all players will have fun.

There is still title {SDM} stands for Supreme Dragon Master, but actual owner of this title Mechanist is inactive in Arokh’s Lair forums and in Drakan Discord Channel, we hope that someday he’ll return, let leave this title to him. Combat Master {CM} rank is of course newest innitiative of moderators of Arokh’s Lair

For more info, join our Drakan Discord channel
https://discord.gg/nCMrU4p

Screenshots:

As many of you know from our Discord community Yangez93 has been hard at work making new multiplayer maps for Drakan which are a bit different to the normal maps and make a nice change. These are now considered final versions and will be running on the multiplayer server from today. So if you want to join the server for a match you will need to download and install these maps even if you already have these on your computer. They have been updated in the last couple of days and if you don’t update your copy of the game you will get an error when joining the server or when the level changes you will be kicked automatically.

They can be found on the MP downloads page or direct link here. Please note that the file name is subject to change should any bugs be found and maps need to be updated. It was easier to put all new maps into a single download so that once you have installed the community patch any additional maps since the CP’s final release can be downloaded all at once. To install extract and copy the multiplayer folder to your drakan install folder overwriting any files if prompted.

Note that this only applies to the UK server (ID Arokhs Lair CP153.01 in the server browser) at the moment. The Poland server (ID Arokhs Lair www.arokhslair.net) may get updated in the future but if / when this happens it is unknown.

Speaking of the community patch, this is now considered final and since it’s developer has gone AWOL and we have no source code it won’t be getting updated with new maps.

The forum software has been updated to the latest version which now enables me to use a more advanced captcha system which seems to have stopped the flood of spam registrations we were getting recently. Unfortunately visitors from China still have to pass an additional captcha check as there was just too many spammers hitting the forum and overloading the server.

This also means the theme for the forum has been changed. Visitors will see the standard PHPBB theme until they register and log in where it will switch to the site theme. I’m still working on fixing this.

Also the discord link has been updated as the old one seemed to have expired despite me setting it to never expire. So if you couldn’t join our discord server before, try again and it should work.