Rainbow Six Extraction: How to kill a Sludge without it dividing

In Rainbow Six Extraction, a Sludge is a particularly aggressive glob of the Sprawl that can be found spreading throughout every Hot-Zone. Because the Sludge is a low-level adversary, it spawns more frequently on the Moderate Threat Level, but its sightings are always random, so you may have to try a few incursions before you see one.

The Sludge is the topic of the fourth set of Study objectives in the San Francisco region, Caustic Buddies, and one of those objectives, Keep It Clean, requires you to kill a Sludge without it separating. You've definitely seen Sludge by this stage in the game and noticed that it always divides when damaged, so you're probably wondering how you can stop it from dividing. It's simple once you know-how, as with a lot of things in Rainbow Six Extraction.

While bullets fired from rifles, pistols, submachine guns, and light machine guns will all cause a Sludge to split, a well-aimed, close-range, direct shot from a shotgun will kill it dead before it even considers becoming a threesome. So, if you want to finish this course, choose an Operator who has a shotgun. Make sure you get up close to the Sludge and aim down sights to get it exactly in the middle. A shotgun shell may split if it receives a glancing hit.

If you don't want to take a shotgun and prefer to pick off targets from a distance, you can also kill a Sludge with an explosive to prevent it from dividing. We discovered a Sludge on the ceiling and set three Claymores underneath it (just to be sure), then fired it with a pistol once to make it fall. For a visual, step-by-step account, see the series of screenshots below. It was excessive, but it worked. You could also use a Fragmentation Grenade, Nitro Cell, or Arc Mine, although each is more powerful than the previous.