Tau Ceti IV is brutal, but these 5 tips will ease the pain.
After the first full week of Marathon, players have already discovered it isn’t your typical FPS. No arenas, no big flashy killstreak effects—just you, your guns and your wits. That means always checking your corners and looking before you loot. While you may have good aim and already know how to minimize your own noise profile while listening out for others, there are many important systems and functions in the game that it never explains to you unless you go looking for it. These Marathon tips will tighten up your runs and have you extracting like a pro.
1 – Marathon is an RPG.
Marathon is a slick and stylish FPS whose low time-to-kill (TTK) allows for a wide variety of skill expression. However, it is as much of an RPG as it is an FPS, so make sure you know your stats and how they affect your gameplay. Stats such as Loot Speed are self-explanatory for those with a few runs under their belt but others, such as Firewall, are a bit less obvious. These are subtle layers that, once understood, can lead you to identifying an enemies’ weakness in order to exploit it. For example, shells with a low Firewall stat mean a single EMP or hacking attempt from a Thief can take that player out before a fight even starts.
You can view each of these stats in detail on the loadout screen by hovering your cursor over each one. Each Runner Shell has unique base stats which can be altered by using the various Implants you can equip to your character. The Vandal has the highest Agility stat, for example, making her faster than the other shells by default. Be sure to experiment with different loadouts using different Shells in order to find the play style that works for you.
2 – Weapons aren’t important, Mods are.
Marathon has a suite of weapons that are all grey-colored in their rarity, meaning none of them are particularly special on their own. However, the mods and attachments change everything about them, including the rarity level of the gun. This means that weapons you find off of UESC AI enemies and other players that are of varying rarities actually get that power from the attachments that are equipped to it. Every gun is good, but one packed with mods will always be better.
Knowing this will make your priorities while looting in the field simple if you’re looking to improve your favorite weapon, as Tool Boxes and Munitions Crates are great sources of these power-ups. Pulling mods already attached to guns you find is a bit of a pain, however, as you’ll need to equip the weapon while in the field and remove each one individually and likely toss the gun they came from out of your inventory afterwards. If you can spare the bag space, then extract the whole gun and pull the good stuff off back home.
3 – Don’t overlook consumable items.
The small items taking up one square of inventory space in Marathon are easy to toss out when you open that shiny new gun or valuable salvage. However, most of these are consumables and some can win fights before they happen if you know what they do.
Cardio Kicks, Signal Jammers, OS Debugs and other items offer long-lasting boosts to key stats such as Firewall, Hardware and Agility. Signal Jammers in particular block you against pings, thermal vision scopes and other radar/detection effects that can win fights on their own. Most of these items can be especially useful against other players if you get the chance to use them just before or during a firefight.
4 – Maximize your faction reputation gain.
While the game doesn’t exactly point it out, reputation can be earned by engaging with various elements of the map during a run. Most players stick to completing contracts and while it is the most visible form of progression, reading about each Faction on the Agent screen will tell you which activities and loot nets you additional reputation points with them. NuCaloric reputation can be earned by simply harvesting Shimmerleaf and calling Supply Drops during a run, for example.
Additionally, teaming up with friends and completing contracts rewards the entire group with reputation gain upon run completion. If you have a team of consistent players to play with, try syncing up your contracts to the same faction and watch the points pour in as you complete each one. If you all commit to the same faction contracts and activities on the map, extracting could mean two whole levels of reputation gain.
5 – Always grab Data Cards.
Money is important in Marathon. You need it for upgrades, to buy gear discovered through Schemas you find and more. However, picking up random junk and coins with the intent to sell them off for profit is a slow road to riches. Focus instead on grabbing the various data cards scattered around the map. These are usually found outside of containers on desks, chairs, and the ground which instantly send credits to your main account without the need for extraction.
Data cards also don’t take inventory space so you can freely grab each one you see. You can upgrade the amount of money you get from cards in the CyberAcme tree which makes these even more valuable.
In Marathon, understanding the systems behind the scenes is just as crucial as wiping each team from the map. It’s awesome to drop enemy players or bosses and grab the loot but you still need to store it, have the money to upgrade your skills and be at the right level with each faction to get the most out of each run. Each run is packed with unseen opportunities—if you look hard enough.
Is Marathon for everybody? We don’t think so, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
