Rainbow Six Extraction brings the world of Rainbow Six Siege under extraterrestrial invasion. As Earth’s defenders REACT you’ll need to gear up and defend the invasion. The alien threat is known as the Archaeans and they’re here to wipe out humanity. Fight your way into certain containment zones in this punishingly challenging PvE experience.

If you’ve played previous Rainbow Six games, it’ll come as no surprise that Rainbow Six Extraction can be difficult. If you want to beat back the Archaean swarms and survive this extraterrestrial invasion, you’ll need to come prepared. So check out our beginner’s guide before you play.

 

Play Solo First

Rainbow Six Extraction is designed to be played in co-op, and it certainly is more enjoyable that way. But there is an option to go solo, which is a great idea when you’re just starting out. Think of solo incursions as a continuation of your training. It’s a chance to try out a variety of maps, objective types, and Operators at your own pace, without the pressure of having to support your team. Or people taking the Operators that you want to try.

 

Stay Stealthy

All hell is ready to break loose at any time in Rainbow Six Extraction, and stealth is your best bet for avoiding that and staying alive against the Archaeans. If you go loud, you could end up with several alerted Nests, which spawn more Archaeans and spread Sprawl, making it much more likely you’ll run out of ammo, get backed into a corner, and succumb to the Parasite menace. So stay stealthy meaning you should crouch-walk to avoid making too much noise, check around corners, stay out of enemy sight and equip a suppressor to at least one weapon.

By playing this way for almost every scenario you’re likely to complete your objectives undetected and walk out alive.

Being stealthy doesn’t mean not engaging in any combat though. Firing a gun or creating an explosion won’t trigger the enemy summoning howl. And some very powerful guns cannot be suppressed, but that shouldn’t be a problem if you just eliminate all the enemies around you. Explosions can actually be very useful for knocking down weak walls or luring Archaens to one location.

Unseen is undetected, even if you are making a racket.  

 

Prep Before Beginning Objectives

Rainbow Six Extraction is a thinking man’s alien shooting game. One tip to always keep in mind is that prepping is the better part of valour. Take the time to prepare before attempting to complete an objective.

• Clear enemies from the immediate vicinity.
• Destroy nests.
• Close open doors.
• Seal openings using the barricades in your inventory.  

If you are doing an objective like Sabotage, where you need to defend bombs, set up useful gadgets like mines and auto-turrets. For Specimen, where you need to lure Archaeans to a trap, clear the path in between. Starting work on an objective should be one of the last, not first, things you do.  

 

Eliminate Sprawl When You See It

The black goo all over the place is Sprawl. This slows down your movement and makes the Archaeans more lethal. But the good news is that it’s easy to remove, just shoot it. It’s best to remove Sprawl the moment you can because you never know when a fight is going to break out. It’s almost always worth spending the time and ammo to get rid of any Sprawl. In particular, any area around an objective should be almost completely cleared before you actually start completing your tasks.  

 

Recon And Mark Every Enemy

Rainbow Six Extraction is significantly more difficult if you don’t know where enemies are. So locating Archaeans should be the very first thing you do when you enter a subzone. Drive the recon drone around to spot and mark enemies. Throw scan grenades before entering rooms blind or use Operator abilities that detect movement. Whatever you do, make sure you’re collecting intel and moving based on that information.  

It’s also great to recon while you’re getting more familiar with the maps. Since the majority of your time in Rainbow Six Extraction is looking for things and probably getting lost in the process. This will happen less if you use the powerful recon tools available right off the bat.

Tip: Pulse has a Cardiac Sensor and if you equip him with the Recon Drone, you’ll find your objectives much more quickly and a lot less time wandering around in frustrated circles.

 

Use Your Map

You can wipe out all enemies on the map and still end up wandering around aimlessly looking for an objective. If you find yourself going around in circles in Rainbow Six Extraction, open up your map using the TAB key. This will show you all rooms in the current sub-zone, while also highlighting how many supply crates are hidden around the nearby area.

If you’re desperate for an extra health boost or more ammo, using your map is an easy way to know whether you’ll find the treasures you desire in the current sub-zone, or whether you’ll need to delve further into the chaos and hope for a resupply.

 

Check Out The Walls & Ceilings For Traps

When exploring in Rainbow Six Extraction, always check the walls and ceiling for any alien traps. Spores, mines, and sludge will appear on various surfaces, ready to blind, stun, damage, and kill any operators that walk nearby. In Extraction, one bad decision to sprint through a room or down a corridor could be all it takes to set off some traps, stunning your team and alerting any Archaeans in the area.

If you see spores or mines on the floor, simply shoot to destroy them before continuing to move. If one of your teammates runs into some spores, you can shoot or melee them to knock the spores off. There’s no friendly fire in Rainbow Six Extraction, so you don’t need to worry about harming your allies.

 

Look / Break Through Destrcutable Walls

This isn’t very obvious when you first start playing Rainbow Six Extraction but you can shine your special UV Flashlight to reveal enemies on the other side of destructible walls. This allows you to take them out from another room with no one being the wiser. You can even shoot small holes big enough to toss your recon drone into, allowing you to scout a room with relative safety. This is an easy way to know what’s waiting in the next room and allows you to orchestrate a tactical breach-and-clear that consists of a few easy headshots and very little noise. After recon, you can use explosives, Sledge’s hammer, or shotgun blasts to the studs to break down that wall.

Certain abilities and pieces of equipment will also allow you to scan rooms and find hidden enemies. The Scan Mine, Recon Vapor Device, and Recon Drones allow you to scan Archaeans and nests, marking them for your team and allowing you to coordinate a plan of attack. If you want to use different equipment, like mines and ammo satchels, then consider using an operator like Lion, who can use his ability to scan any nearby Archaeans.

 

Choose Your Operators Carefully

Team composition is crucial in Rainbow Six Extraction. When selecting your operators, make sure you discuss strategy with your team. Operators tend to fill certain roles, so using a variety of roles in your team will ensure you’re ready for anything. For example, Tachanka, Jager, and Ela are excellent defensive operators, with various turrets and mines that they can deploy to defend objectives as the Archaean swarm attack. Having one of these on your team is critical for certain objectives, but a team consisting of just these operators may quickly run into trouble.

Instead, you should build a team that has many strengths. Consider pairing a defensive operator with a support character, like Rook or Doc. For your third slot, you could use Hibana or Sledge to create new paths and cut through the map to find objectives quicker.

A well-balanced team is more likely to be able to survive any encounter, and there are plenty of ways to combine the best operators and find a winning squad.

 

Complete Studies to level-up fast

While the game’s difficulty ramp will reward improved XP rewards at every new milestone, your best bet to level up your overall career and individual Operators will be Studies. These are Extraction’s map-specific in-game challenges. Each map has several pages of challenges, and each page features three Studies. You’ll need to complete an active page before unlocking a map’s subsequent page until eventually you’ve completed them all. When trying to level quickly, it’s sometimes a better idea to complete Studies at more manageable difficulties than playing a harder map where you may not have any challenges available.

Sometimes your Studies will call for killing particular types of Archaens, like Tormentors, Spikers, and Breakers. You may have a hard time finding them if you’re on the wrong difficulty. The game’s four difficulty modes include different pools of enemies. With the harder difficulties opening up more and more enemy types to players. Be sure that you’re raising that difficulty if you need to locate specific types of enemies.

 

It’s Okay To Extract

If you find yourself suffering lots of damage or major casualties at the hands of the Archaeans, don’t forget that extracting is always an option. It’s literally the name of the game, even though extracting early may feel like a defeat. You don’t need to have a perfect run every session and sometimes you’ll need to leave before entering the last sub-zone. It’s always better to leave early and bank some XP rather than pushing and losing your operator to the Archaeans.

When an operator goes down in Extraction, they’ll get covered in a foamy substance that protects them from death. If they get left behind or if you go down the operator will become MIA. This will cause you to temporarily lose any XP they’ve earned. Make you lose REACT progression milestones and blocking the use of that operator until you rescue them.

You can run the mission again to rescue your operator and recover any lost XP. However, if you fail a rescue mission, you will lose 30% of the lost XP permanently. If you’re trying to level up quickly or unlock new operators, you’re going to miss that XP you worked so hard to earn. So when in doubt remember you can extract.

 

Rainbow Six Extraction

Rainbow Six Extraction is out today on January 20th, 2022. It’s available to download across all platforms including PC via Ubisoft Connect and the Epic Games Store, along with PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. It’s also out on Xbox Game Pass for those that already have a subscription or want to get it for this game.

Players who buy Rainbow Six Extraction gain access to two Buddy Pass Tokens. These tokens can be sent to two players, allowing them to play the full version of the game for 14 days. This gives your friends a chance to try it out without having to spend any cash. Once the 14 days have elapsed, the trial will end, but your progress does carry over to the full version if you decide to make the purchase.