If you enjoy using devastating area of effect attacks, our Apex Legends Caustic guide will tell you everything you need to know about the mean man with a mask! Caustic is a tricky character to use with a lot of quirks, but he can be especially deadly in close quarters! He gets much more powerful towards the end of the game as the amount of available real estate shrinks. If you play cautiously and keep yourself aliove, you might be able to dominate the end game!
Apex Legends Caustic guide | Tips and Tricks
The first and most important tip to understand is this: at the moment, Caustic’s gas also damages your teammates. It makes sense, after all—he’s the only one with a gas mask on that’s set up to keep him safe from his particular brand of deadly fumes. That said, it’s not the most intuitive gameplay and you might not discover this until your teammates are getting hurt in battle.
Caustic effectively acts like a zone control tank. You can deploy gas at chokepoints to cut the enemy off. Alternatively, you can drop some of your nasty green stuff into a small room and laugh as the enemy runs around in a panic.
Don’t forget that while the gas does damage, it also severely hampers visibility. It makes it awfully easy for you to toss in some regular grenades after the fact to do damage in the confusion.
If you take away one thing from our Apex Legends Caustic guide, it’s this: Caustic’s Nox Gas Canisters are not indestructible. An enemy can shoot them at the base to disable them. Don’t leave them out in the open or an enemy in the know will simply shoot them and disable them.
Nox Gas Canisters can also block doors. It’s pretty hilarious to trap enemies in a room, but you also have to remember that doors can be kicked down with melee. Not a lot of players do this, but as time goes on and more get familiar with the game, this technique will become less and less effective. Even now, you probably will only get a handful of people you attempt it on. On the upside, when it does work, it’s amazingly funny.
Apex Legends Caustic guide | Caustic abilities
Nox Gas Trap (Tactical Ability)
The Nox Gas Trap is exactly what it says on the tin: a trap filled with Nox Gas. If an enemy happens to walk near it, it will activate and blanket the immediate area with deadly gas that does damage over time. You can also shoot it to activate the gas trap manually.
Unfortunately, enemies in the know can also shoot your Nox Gas Trap to disable it. That’s why you should rarely (if ever) place it in a super-obvious position. Deploy your traps in choke points and small rooms, but make sure to tuck them away in corners or other blind spots so enemies don’t see them until it’s too late.
Finally (and perhaps most hilariously), the Nox Gas Trap can be used to block doorways. There have been a few instances where players have gotten stuck in a room thanks to a clever ambush. Just bear in mind that players can kick down doors with melee and most of the better players already know this, so this particular cheeky tactic will rarely work.
Nox Vision (Passive Ability)
A character that sprays around a bunch of gas also puts himself at a visibility disadvantage. Thankfully, Nox Vision allows Caustic to see through his gas. Players who are being affected by your deadly chemicals will appear as a green outline within the gas cloud, making it super easy for you to shoot them.
The important thing to note is this: your team can not see into the gas cloud. Only you have Nox Vision. Be careful with your placement of Nox Gas Traps and the Nox Gas Grenade—you could very easily make the situation difficult for your teammates just as much as it is for your enemies.
Nox Gas Grenade (Ultimate Ability)
Like most of the initial round of Legends, Caustic has a single-minded focus on doing one thing and doing it well. In his case, it’s pumping out more deadly gas that a trucker at Taco Bell. With that in mind, his Nox Gas Grenade Ultimate Ability is the purest form of his destuctive power: he’ll simply toss out a hand grenade that pops a massive cloud of gas.
The Nox Gas Grenade can be used in a few different ways. Using it to clear out a room is keen, but it’s so much the better if you can keep people trapped inside and let the damage over time kill them. (Don’t forget that you can block or obstruct doors with Nox Gas Traps, and it isn’t exactly easy to see them in a haze of green smoke.)
It can also be used to cut off a retreat. If a player hits a Nox Gas Trap, they might immediately turn around and run. You can throw your Nox Gas Grenade in front of them and cut them off—or at the very least, force them to run through more gas.
Apex Legends Caustic guide | Best team comp for Caustic
At the moment, Caustic has what is perceived to be a critical flaw: his gas currently hurts his teammates as well as his enemies. That being the case, you’re going to want to have teammates who can mitigate the damage from his gas or stay away from it entirely.
Having Lifeline on his team isn’t a bad idea. You’re going to probably want someone on board who can survive in the gas herself for a bit (thanks to her Drone of Compassion healing ability) and who can pick up your third teammate if they wander into the gas like a dummy. I’d go as far as to say that she would be essential here, at least until they decide to change the gas doing damage to teammates (if they ever do).
As for the third teammate, anyone who can move fast and do decent ranged damage would be helpful. Pathfinder would make for an excellent choice, if only for his ability to grapple out of the way of nasty gas clouds, as would Bloodhound’s tracking abilities amid clouds of poisonous gas. Gibraltar or Bangalore would also be good picks, especially for the combo potential: you could drop your deadly airstrike ultimate right on top of the gas cloud and wipe a team out in one go. Best of all, they won’t see it coming.
