Get ready, operators! Rainbow Six Siege: Operation Shifting Tides is live

The Fourth Season of the fourth year of Rainbow Six Siege–Shifting Tides – has been live on the Test Servers for a while, and one of the most exciting things about the test is that it included testing the stability of South African servers. We’ve given it a go, and the experience is pretty damned great (except when people are hurling abuse at you, because boy are some people toxic). Now Shifting Tides is live proper on all platforms–but that doesn’t mean that the local servers are. From what we know, they’re still being tested, so haven’t gone live alongside the new content. That said, the plan is to roll the servers out once testing is all done and Ubisoft can ensure a smooth local experience.

The content, however, is live. As you might recall, Shifting Tides makes some changes to the game, by adding new operators, changing up some maps and adding new features. There are also changes to the core of the game, with a newly implement limb penetration system. Certain weapons will penetrate limbs to different degrees:

“The first, we’ll call “none”. Simply put, any shot with these weapons does not go through limbs, or torsos, or anything else. The weapons concerned here are most shotguns, and secondary SMGs.

The second, or “simple”, is reserved for one target only. Bullets from these weapons will go through arms and legs to hit more valuable body parts. Face to face with an opponent and shoot through their arms? If you’re lined up with the head, it should be a headshot. The weapons include main SMGs, assault rifles, pistols and LMGs.

The third, dubbed “full”, is the most you could hope for. Shots from these bad boys will go through an Operator and hit other Operators behind them for 30% reduced damage for each additional penetration. Pull out your BOSG.12.2, TSCG12 and sniper rifles, and see if you can take down more than one opponent at once!”

There’s also a new prompt for rappelling and a decrease in the price of older operators.

Shifting Tides adds two new operators, fleshing out the game’s already diverse cast of characters. The first is the game’s first African operator, in Wamai. He’s a Kenyan defender, whose Mag-NET System can attract and detonate enemy explosives and projective gadgets, rendering them useless – or tactically using them against his opponents.

The second operator is Kali, a private military contractor who has a mean sniper rifle that’s able to breach barricades and bore through hatches with a single shot. He’s also got an under-barrel gadget that destroys gadgets on both sides of breakable surfaces. In addition to the new operators, Shifting Tides also includes a newly reworked version of the Theme Park map, which changes a few details of the area. For starters, the arcade entrance is barricaded, the bomb sites have moved and the east and west section have been completely reworked.

It’s live right now.

Last Updated: December 3, 2019