Apex Legends Caustic abilities, tips and tricks
These Caustic tips and tricks cover each of his obnoxious abilities
Want to learn how to master Caustic and his abilities in Apex Legends? Caustic has always been a terror to play against in Apex Legends, particularly in indoor spaces thanks to his deadly Nox Gas Traps. But follow these Apex Legends Caustic tips covering each of his abilities, and you'll find that he can be a menace anywhere on the battlefield. Learn how to use his abilities to swing an unwinnable encounter in your favour as the Toxic Trapper.
On this page:
- Apex Legends Caustic abilities
- Caustic tips and tricks
- Caustic Passive tips: Nox Vision
- Caustic Tactical tips: Nox Gas Trap
- Caustic Ultimate tips: Nox Gas Grenade
- Apex Legends Caustic backstory
Apex Legends Caustic abilities
Caustic has access to three abilities: Nox Vision (Passive), Nox Gas Trap (Tactical), and Nox Gas Grenade (Ultimate). Caustic will be the bane of anyone who finds themselves caught in one of his traps. While many Legends prefer the open spaces that house the Apex Games, Caustic thrives indoors. He is a Defensive Legend alongside Gibraltar, Wattson and Rampart.
Caustic rarely sits at the top of the best Apex Legends characters tier list, but he is always a threat. His kit is painful and annoying, and often forces the enemy team to change up their gameplan during a fight. If you are all about inflicting misery on other players, you sadistic psycho, Caustic is the character for you.
Caustic tips and tricks
Let's start by looking at the general applications and some tips on how to get the best out of the scientist. We'll go into each of his abilities in more detail later, but here are some general tips to take into the Apex Games when playing Caustic.
- Be aggressive. Caustic is more vulnerable out in the open, so you need to close distances as quickly as possible. Go for flanks, find ways to turn the encounter into a close-quarters one where you can make good use of your abilities.
- Find any opportunity to use Nox gas. Always look for opportunities to use your Nox Gas well. You don't have to be indoors - simply placing Nox gas around a piece of cover while outside can be a game-changer.
- Use your Ultimate as a panic button if needed. I can't tell you how many times I've been caught in a situation where, as any other set of characters, my team would have died. But Caustic threw his Ultimate at his feet, blanketing the entire area in Nox gas, and we lived.
- Don't take a fair fight. Caustic's gas is a literal nightmare to play inside of. Wait until your enemies are incapacitated and use their confusion and disorientation to best them.
Caustic Passive tips: Nox Vision
Description: Allows you to see enemies through your gas.
Nox Vision is what allows Caustic to be so deadly inside his own Nox Gas. Aside from being immune to the damage and other effects of the gas, Nox Vision lights up any enemies that are currently being damaged by your Nox Gas.
Your Passive basically serves as another reason to rely heavily on your abilities to spread Nox Gas across every encounter, and then pick off enemies while they are damaged and vulnerable.
Caustic Passive tips:
- Nox Vision's highlighting effect only works while the enemies are in the Gas and taking damage; the moment they move outside the gas, the highlighting disappears.
- Your threat vision does not work on enemy Caustics, so be wary if you see evidence of another Caustic's work nearby.
- In many ways this works much like a Digital Threat sight attachment would, so if you find a Digital Threat sight, it's probably better suited for someone else on your team.
- You don't need to be aiming down sights in order for the highlighting to take effect on enemies.
- Sadly your vision is not extended to your teammates. Be careful when utilising the vision as your teammates will lack the critical information you have.
Caustic Tactical tips: Nox Gas Trap
Description: Drops canisters that release deadly Nox gas when shot or triggered by enemies. Cooldown: 30 seconds.
Caustic's Nox Gas Traps are what you really think of when you think of what Caustic brings to the team. These large canisters can be dropped a (very) short distance in front of you, and can be activated after a moment either by proximity (i.e. if an enemy is close enough to it) or by being shot, either by you, a teammate, or an enemy. Once activated, these traps will spray out a cloud of toxic Nox Gas around it.
Caustic Tactical tips:
- Nox gas deals pure health damage, bypassing shields completely.
- As of Season 10, Nox gas damage starts at 5 damage per second, and increases by 1 every 2 seconds, with no upper limit.
- The Nox Gas Traps take a moment to inflate after being placed, during which they can be shot and destroyed.
- While you can have up to 6 traps placed at a time, you can only hold 3 charges of the ability. However, you can pick up unused traps to regain a charge.
- The main part of the Nox Gas Trap is bullet-proof, and can therefore be used as (somewhat effective) cover in certain situations. However, you can shoot the bottom red section of the trap to destroy it entirely.
- These Traps are the only significant form of non-weapon damage available to any character at the beginning of the game, so take advantage of it early on when dropping in popular and confined areas.
- You can use these Traps to block doors from opening. Even if an enemy kicks open the door, they'll still be gassed - unless they blow it open with a grenade and then shoot the trap's base.
- It's a good idea to place down a trap and shoot it yourself after it's inflated, rather than relying on enemies to get within its detection range. The "detection range" of the canisters (beyond which an enemy would trigger the Trap) is half that of the actual Gas radius.
- You should attempt to place these traps so they are not immediately visible, or enemies will just shoot the bottoms of them to destroy them. Place them around corners, in bushes, etc.
- Nox traps can act as ways to check your back. If you place them as you move from location to location, you will be notified if an enemy sets one off behind you, allowing you to adjust your plans accordingly.
- Be mindful of your teammates. They won't be hurt by your Nox Traps, but they will be disorientated and don't have Nox Vision.
Ultimate ability: Nox Gas Grenade
Description: Blankets a large area in Nox gas. Cooldown: 3 minutes.
Nox Gas Grenade is exactly as you'd expect from the name; you throw a grenade, and it explodes on impact into a large cloud of Nox Gas, about twice the diameter of a regular Nox Gas Trap. The gas from the Ultimate deals the same damage as the Gas Traps: 5 per second to begin with, and increasing by 1 every 2 seconds.
Caustic Ultimate tips:
- Caustic's Nox Gas Grenade damage does not stack atop the Nox Gas Trap damage.
- The duration of the Ultimate is 15 seconds, and the Ultimate cooldown is 3 minutes.
- This Ultimate ability is an extremely powerful panic button. If you're caught in a very bad situation, throw the grenade at your feet and blanket yourself and your team in gas. It often saves your life.
- One excellent aggressive use for the Nox Gas Grenade is if you are up against a team with a Bangalore, and they're hiding within Smokes. Throw your Gas Grenade in the Smoke, and it'll cause chaos inside the clouds of fog and smog, flushing them out into the open.
- Throw down the Grenade on yourself while reviving a fallen ally for some added protection.
- The Gas Grenade is extremely powerful in the very final circles if the match lasts that long. Wait until everyone is forced to move, then drop the grenade and try to stay alive.
- The Gas Grenade can be intercepted by Wattson's Interception Pylon just like a normal grenade, so be careful.
Apex Legends Caustic backstory
Caustic's story starts in about as mundane a place as you might expect in the Titanfall universe - pesticides. However, as you might expect from his whole vibe, things got a little twisted.
Alexander Nox was a talented scientist working with Humbert Labs. There he developed powerful gases that protected crops that sustained the Outlands. As ever though, his interest in these gases started to... twist.
Where once he used dead tissue to test gases, Nox eventually decided he needed live subjects to properly study. This, obviously, didn't much please his employer, which after a confrontation, ended in the lab being burnt to the ground.
Caustic, the resourceful little guy, found a way to further his research too in the most unlikely way - by joining the Apex Games. There he is able to observe the effects of his experiments all in the name of bloodsport. Lovely.
Caustic interestingly also has a paternal relationship with Wattson, though that has become strained in recent seasons. Caustic tried to gas an entire city, but through some trickery, Wattson was able to stop him and bring him under control. Caustic is now trying to win back her trust, though, understandably, trying to wipe out a metropolitan area is a pretty big sin to come back from.
And that's everything we've got for now on Caustic. He's a tricky Legend to master, for sure, but I've seen some truly skilled Caustics before, and believe me, they can really ruin your day. There's no better time to start learning this buff-as-a-truck character, so why not take the plunge into the Nox Gas, and find out all his strengths for yourself?
For full details and opinions on all of the characters together, take a look at our Apex Legends characters guide for everything you need.