Seeing our favorite members of the Six team is great but it isn’t that great when they are dead. Rainbow Six Extraction introduces a feature similar to the one in Watch Dogs: Legion when your active character can die and it will affect gameplay. To see what will their death cost us and how to deal with it let’s answer a question: what happens if an operator dies in Rainbow Six Extraction?
Operator MIA
In the field, just like in Siege, you can get downed and then K.O-ed. Knocked-out operators aren’t literally dead but they are unable to move and will require extraction. If you are playing with a group, your allies can carry you to the extraction zone and rescue you. On the other hand, if you were left behind or simply played solo, the operator will be marked as MIA (Missing in action)
If an operator is MIA they will not be available to play in upcoming missions and will withhold all the XP they earned. So if you earned 20000 XP and went up a Milestone using a certain operator, it will appear as you never did. You will keep the rewards you earned, but you will just need to earn XP again to level back up.
Or you can take another operator and go on a mission to rescue the missing one. But you may ask: what happens if I die on a rescue mission and end up killing all the operators in the game? Well, we never went to all lengths to try and get all the operators killed but if you are struggling, make sure to go on a mission on the lowest difficulty possible. It is really easy to save the operator there as the game doesn’t care if you pick a harder one.
Rescuing the Operator
Once one of your operators is missing in action you will get one attempt to rescue them. You will see an appropriate marker on a location/map the operator died. Marker is also displayed on the “Quick Play” mode, in case you need help rescuing it and want to play Co-op. But because of the adaptive difficulty, I’d highly recommend going on a rescue mission alone.
The mission will play out the same way. Three objectives with one of them being the MIA: Operator. Rescue objective works just as in VR tutorial mission. You will find a tree with the operator stuck in it. Pull out the operator, occasionally letting them go and shooting the energy flowing through the branches to loosen the tree’s grip. Number of branches depends on the difficulty and the squad size. While solo the branch number is three, in squads it’s five. This is why it’s recommended to go solo or with friends.
Your rescue attempt only counts when you try to pull the operator out of the tree. You can skip the objective, go on other missions in other locations and nothing will happen as long as you don’t touch the tree.
Fail to Rescue
Here’s what happens if the tree gets the upper hand and you fail to rescue the operator. Even though Ash will say “We will find another way to rescue them”, it’s not true. As soon as you extract, the MIA operator will return to your operator list list but with a few consequences.
You will lose 30% of the total XP you earned on this operator. Remember those 20000 XP? You will get back only 14000 XP. And that affects your milestone progression and the operator’s personal progression. As you can see my Sledge is now Level 3 circled in red. That’s because before going MIA he was Level 4. And now the appropriate advancements and perks are lost. The same goes for milestones, but the rewards will remain available.
The exception, in this case, is if the operator’s level is 10. When an operator hits level 10 his advancements are going to be saved. No matter if you managed to rescue them or not. Reaching Level 10 is not too difficult if you stick to playing one operator. But you also need to be extra careful not to get yourself killed. But one way or another, now you know what happens if an operator dies on the field in Rainbow Six Extraction, so stay safe out there!
