Rainbow Six Extraction — How to beat the Protean in Gateway

Rainbow Six Extraction has several Archaean enemies that you’ll need to take out. However, there’s one that’s truly special as it presents a boss encounter. Here’s our Rainbow Six Extraction guide to help you defeat the Protean boss in the Gateway mission objective.

Note: We’ll have a Rainbow Six Extraction guides and features hub soon, so stay tuned.

Rainbow Six Extraction guide – The Protean boss in the Gateway mission

The Gateway mission in Rainbow Six Extraction will only appear as the third/final objective in a level. Moreover, it’s not always guaranteed due to other objectives that are part of the pool. You can try to increase the difficulty to somehow get it to appear. As far as I can tell, it will only show up if you pick Cautious difficulty or higher, not Moderate.

Once you do manage to reach that last portion of the level, you’ll find a device that has created a wormhole. Before interacting with it, make sure your character is in tip-top condition and that you have a lot of ammo.

When you’re ready, press the button on the device and stay within the radius. You’ll be teleported to another zone and the boss will aggro as soon as you get close to its area.

Now, the Protean boss in Rainbow Six Extraction is just like an Operator, which means you’d notice familiar abilities. However, the parasite has mutated it, giving it new powers in its arsenal.

As of this writing, I’ve only encountered the Sledge variant, and I’m not yet sure if there are others. Also, the arena will have lots of sections filled with Sprawl, which causes you to move slower while the boss has faster movement speed. Here are its abilities:

• Hammer Blows – Its regular melee attack is a hammer swing that deals moderate damage.
• Lightning Hammer – A blue/white glow will emanate from the Protean. After a short charge time, it will smash the ground with its hammer and send a shockwave that travels along a frontal cone.
• Teleport – The Protean will disappear for a few seconds before reemerging close to where you are.
• Summon – At around 50% health, the Protean will be inactive, but it will summon waves of mobs to your location. I suggest finding a defensible spot and hunkering down, taking out foes as they get close enough.
• Eruption – When low on health, the boss will periodically charge up and create an explosion around it.

The Protean boss in Rainbow Six Extraction can soak a ton of damage, and you’re going to need a lot of bullets. Even shotguns only drop a sliver of its health (this is while playing solo, so I can only imagine how it’s further scaled when you’re with a group).

Still, a good way to cheese the encounter is by heading to the left side of the arena while facing the terminal/spawn point. You’ll see a flight of stairs that you can climb, as well as a ledge that you can drop down from. The idea is to kite the Protean as you loop around. Whenever it teleports or does its Lightning Hammer, just drop down the ledge, allowing you to avoid damage. Continue shooting it as you make your loop and keep this up until it’s dead.

Lastly, in terms of skills, you’ll want the healing capabilities of either Doc or Finka in case things get too hectic. Alibi’s Prisma decoys can also distract it, though I haven’t tested Ela’s Grzmot Mines if they can stun the target.

Rainbow Six Extraction is available via the official website, the Epic Games Store, and Xbox Game Pass.