Rainbow Six Extraction: How to Unlock Harder Difficulties

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction is a cooperative shooter that requires players to unlock the harder difficulties before they can be played. Rainbow Six Extraction starts players out on the easiest difficulty, which still requires the tactical use of the game's various operators. Once other players are added into the mix, Rainbow Six Extraction can provide a unique experience for every mission, especially once the difficulty settings have been unlocked.

Bringing the series to a PvE experience that limits teams to having three operators per mission, Rainbow Six Extraction hopes to ease players into the experience by keeping the difficulties temporarily locked. Once new difficulties are unlocked, each mission in Rainbow Six Extraction can have its difficulty changed when being set up by the party leader. The difficulties available are under the "Threat Level" section of the menu, and the different mission settings in Rainbow Six Extraction are Moderate, Cautious, Severe, and Critical.

Related: How Rainbow Six Extraction's MIA System Works

Despite sounding like it would be the easier difficulty in Rainbow Six Extraction, Cautious is actually the first increase in difficulty that players can experience. The Severe and Critical settings are the two difficulty settings unlocked in Rainbow Six Extraction, and they're unlocked in that order as well. As friends play together in Rainbow Six Extraction, they'll want to choose a more difficult setting that everyone can enjoy. Additionally, the party leader should be whoever has the preferred difficulty setting unlocked.

More difficulty settings in Rainbow Six Extraction can be unlocked by increasing the React Milestone levels through the Moderate and Cautious missions. After players reach Development Milestone 7, they'll unlock the Severe difficulty for their Rainbow Six Extraction missions. The Critical difficulty setting is unlocked in Rainbow Six Extraction once Development Milestone 11 has been reached. To increase Development Milestones, players need to finish quests and defeat enemies. The easiest way to reach Development Milestones quickly is by taking on more challenging missions sooner in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction.

These are the features of each of the difficulty settings in Rainbow Six Extraction:

• Moderate: Operators are between levels one and three, no Parasite Mutations are present, and missions have only a few lower-level Archæans.
• Cautious: Operators are levels three and above, the Parasite Mutation Risk factor is at 50%, an average level of lower-level Archæans appears, and there is a 50% increase in objective XP.
• Severe: Operators are levels six and above, the Parasite Mutation Risk factor is at 100%, a full Archæans ecosystem is in place, and there is a 100% increase in objective XP.
• Critical: Operators are levels eight and above, the Parasite Mutation Risk factor is at 100%, a full Archæans ecosystem is in place, and there is a 200% increase in objective XP.

Rainbow Six Extraction will feel familiar to Siege players who experienced the limited-time mode called Outbreak, so experienced players may be ready to start on the Cautious difficulty sooner rather than later.

Next: Rainbow Six Extraction: Every Type Of Archæan

Rainbow Six Extraction is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, and PC.