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How to play as Caveira in Rainbow Six Siege
This defensive operator can make your life hell: here's how to play her and how to counter the threat.
Playing Rainbow Six Siege, it's impossible to ignore Caveira. Whether she's playing on your team or as an opponent, her influence is ever-present.
Despite many players accusing her of being cheap, she's actually a very difficult operator to handle, as her hit and run tactics require great map awareness and knowledge, solid aim and a good sense of timing to make sure it all lands.
So, should you want to engage stealth mode and take down enemies as Caveira, or know your enemy and how to beat her when you're breaching, here are our best Caveira tips and tricks to try and help you succeed.
What's the deal with Caveira?
Taina "Caveira" Pereira is an urban guerilla roaming the maps of Rainbow Six Siege and punishing attackers for losing focus, even for a second.
As a one armour / three speed operator, Caveira moves fast but can't take a hit. Couple this with her underwhelming capabilities in a stand-up firefight and players looking to take advantage of her toolset would be smart to keep moving and hitting attackers from as many different flanks as possible, trying to avoid getting pulled into a head to head scrap.
With that in mind, when playing as Caveira you should definitely try to pull back to safety if the situation turns against you, with the high close-range damage of your Luison pistol and SPAS-15 shotgun punishing players that chase you, and your Impact Grenades letting you vanish in a cloud of debris.
Caveira's gadget and ability
Caveira's gadget is her "Silent Step" ability, which can be activated at any time to allow near-silent movement. This lets Caveira flank and reposition without too much effort for up to 10 seconds.
After this stage, or if it has been deactivated manually, it will need to recharge before it can be used again. She'll also be pulled out of Silent Step if you pull out one of her gadgets, switch to your primary weapon or do anything except melee strikes, firing with the Lusion pistol or interrogating.
While Silent Step is active, Caveira can only use her sidearm and she won't leave footprints for Jackal to track with his Eyenox gadget. In fact, if her Silent Step is activated when Jackal scans her footprints, she won't be revealed.
In addition, Caveira can interrogate downed enemies, allowing her to reveal the position of all attackers on the map. This is real-time tracking, and is powerful enough that it can turn a round on its head. However, Caveira is totally helpless during this animation, and if she is killed before the animation is completed, the downed attacker can be picked up, making it a high-risk, high-reward manoeuvre.
To help with this, Caveira's Luison pistol will not instantly kill players who have been downed again or players hit by a headshot. While in Silent Step, Caveira's melee strikers are non-lethal, too. This can sometimes be a negative, so be sure to finish your incapacitated enemies if you're not planning to interrogate them.
Caveira loadout and best weapons
Primary
What you should carry for Caveira depends on your priorities: if you're looking to take advantage of enemies and get interrogations the you should carry the SPAS-15 shotgun. It fires quickly and allows you to sweep a room quickly and easily with an overwhelming amount of firepower, and can decimate an enemy up close.
If you want to have a reliable weapon for fragging, you'll want to carry the M12 submachine gun. It's a little better at longer ranges and can easily take down an enemy with a single round at long range if you're careful, something she can't do with anything else in her kit reliably. It's got a very slow fire-rate, but each round hits harder than most SMGs in the game.
Secondary
The Luison is lethal at close range
© Ubisoft
There's only one choice here, but it's a goodie. Caveira's Luison is a custom sidearm with stacks of ammunition and honestly fits the bill as her primary weapon despite its loadout slot.
Up close the Luison is terrifying and can take someone out with two shots at close range, although the damage dropoff is quite extreme and it will turn into a relatively ineffective dart gun from just a few metres away. To get the best out of this you'll want to be so close you can touch your enemies.
Take note: it's impossible to kill anyone with the pistol from standing, putting them into a down but not out (DBNO) state where you'll need to pump a few more rounds into them to wrap it up.
Gadgets
Caveira has access to both a bulletproof camera and Impact Grenades, but if you've got any sense at all you'll take the Impact Grenades because they allow you to quickly burst a hatch, get through a wall or even take out a chunk of floor or ceiling for a better firing angle.
Caveira is at her best with some utility and with her handheld explosives closeby, she's got everything she needs to be a real nuisance.
Caviera is at her best when she catches people unaware
© Ubisoft
Caveira tips and tricks
Map knowledge is absolutely crucial to make things work as Caveira. You'll need to know the location of every hatch and every staircase, with a clear idea in your head of exactly how quickly you can get back to the objective so that once your team gives you the call for help you can assist rapidly.
Similarly, stealth and surprise are everything. Don't go into rooms half-cocked, when you decide to barrel around a corner, you need to commit, take your shot and then get yourself out of there. You need to limit your exposure, because you'll lose sustained firefights. You should also avoid re-peeking enemies. In fact, if you are forced to pull back after downing an enemy, you can finish them off with an impact grenade at range, avoiding risk.
During the preparation phase, make sure you grab your armour and use your reinforcements, but do try to limit being seen by drones. Now is a good time to ask for any hatches you want opened or break them yourself. Breaking a hatch is loud and if you're not clutching a SPAS-15, it's resource intensive. This can give you more options to move later.
If the attacking team don't know a Caveira is in play, they're less likely to try and counter you specifically, so you'll get away with more. Don't stress if you get spotted, but don't clamber into your hiding spot while you're being watched by drones.
Caveira is a small operator: she can easily hide under desks or in corners. If you're going prone, watch your legs don't stick out and expose you. A good tip here is to use your impact grenades to explode the otherwise-indestructible chairs and you'll be able to hide under them and wait for ambush.
In the action phase you'll need to be patient. Don't worry if teammates die early, don't worry if the first line of defence folds quicker than expected, just keep your guerilla war going, hitting them on the flanks and try not to panic. Caveira shines when she pops up and punishes the enemy while they're focusing on the objectives, your perfect point to hit is as the enemy is focusing on a bomb-site take.
Don't get got: countering Caveira
Drone! Seriously, just drone. Countering a Caveira involves knowing where Caveira is and then applying force or locking off her rotation routes to limit her impact. Chasing a Caveira into an enclosed space can be bad for everyone, on account of her remarkably high damage output up close.
If you do spot a Caveira, buddy up. 90% of Caveira interrogations come from attackers trying to go lone wolf to the objective, as Caveira is perfectly built for picking off solo attackers.
Check everywhere. If you've hidden in a place as a Caveira, check it. If you've spotted someone hiding there before, check it. If there is a Caveira, she's hiding somewhere. You'll need to negate the threat posed by her before you push into the enemy objective. If this isn't possible, you'll need someone watching your flanks at the crucial pushing phase.
