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How do I heal in Rainbow Six Extraction? Injured and MIA status explained

Patch yourself up

Staying healthy is hard in Rainbow Six Extraction’s Hot Zone. Between Archaeans slapping you in the face, dangerous explosions and poisonous gas clouds, there’s all manner of parasitic perils out to get you.

To raise the stakes even higher, you can’t heal in the conventional way in Rainbow Six Extraction.

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Most of the healing supplies you find out in the field are temporary, while the injuries you sustain in battle have long-lasting effects on your roster.

Plus, should your health get reduced to 0 without getting revived, you will lose that character as they’re declared MIA until you can rescue them on a subsequent mission.

To run you through the ins-and-outs of the sometimes confusing mechanics, here’s how to heal in Rainbow Six Extraction, as well as how to restore the health of your injured characters and how to rescue MIA Operators.

How do I heal in Rainbow Six Extraction?

When you deploy on a mission, a fresh character has 150 health that does not diminish over time.

That’s made up of 100 base health and a 50 health bonus.

If you take damage, health is deducted first from the bonus and then your base health.

When your base health bar takes damage, that character is considered injured and will either have reduced health on subsequent missions until they’re healed, or won’t be able to be deployed at all.

To heal in the Hot Zone, you have to find medical supply caches which are white boxes marked with a white cross.

These restore 50 health per medkit. However, you cannot restore more health than the maximum of 200, and any health you restore in this way will gradually reduce over time.

If a character has taken base health damage and you heal with a medkit, they will still be injured after the mission, regardless of how much you restore.

There are two healing characters you can pick, Doc and Finka. Doc can fire a syringe to heal a small amount of health to a friendly character from a distance, while Finka's ability gives a small health boost to her whole squad.

How do I heal injured Operators in Rainbow Six Extraction?

The only way to restore health to injured Operators in Rainbow Six Extraction is to play more missions with a different character.

Once you complete missions in the Hot Zone, as you return to the main menu, you will be able to see how much health has been restored to your roster next to the amount of XP you gained during the mission.

Over time, injured characters will return to full health and be able to set out on missions again.

What does MIA mean in Rainbow Six Extraction?

If your character’s health is reduced to 0 in the Hot Zone and they’re not revived in time, they’re not gone for good.

When a character ‘dies’ they’re actually surrounded by stasis foam, captured by the Archaeans, and considered MIA until they’re rescued.

How do I rescue an MIA Operator in Rainbow Six Extraction?

To rescue an MIA Operator, you need to deploy into the same map as they were lost in.

One of your objectives during the mission will be to rescue your fallen comrade.

To do this, you need to:

  • Locate the Arch Tree and clear the area
  • Start to pull the MIA Operator out of the tree to wake it
  • Look for the nodes at the ends of tendrils sprouting from the tree and destroy them
  • Shoot the red pulses coming down the tendrils to weaken the tree
  • Continue pulling the Operator out

The nodes are usually in the same room as the tree, but can be hidden around corners or out of your line of sight.

Once you’ve pulled enough, the Operator will be released. You then need to carry them back to the extraction point to properly rescue them.

After the mission, they will still be injured and not ready to be deployed straight away, but continue to play with other characters and they’ll soon be back to full fitness.

If your top pick is down for the count, check out our list of the best Operators in Rainbow Six Extraction for an alternative.

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James Billcliffe avatar

James Billcliffe

Guides Editor

With 7 years' experience, James (he/him) suffers so you don't have to, creating expert guides for the toughest games and reviews for the biggest blockbuster releases. He has a Master's degree in Journalism and a BA in Linguistics that he never got a chance to flex until Wordle came along.
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