Marathon Tips and Tricks – What You Need to Know Before Landing on Tau Ceti IV

Bungie's new extraction shooter, Marathon, is finally here, and like any extraction shooter, there are a lot of systems to get the hang of before you'll be able to tear up other Runners with ease on Tau Ceti IV. That's why this guide will take you through the things you absolutely need to know before you start your journey on Tau Ceti IV.

For more on Marathon, check out our hub page to find all of our news, interviews, review, and guides coverage. You can also check out our review here.

The UESC Will Kill You - Take Them Seriously

You might be under the belief that, between the PvE UESC robot enemies and other actual players, the other players are the more dangerous threats whenever you jump into a new run. That's still technically true because the robots are predictable, and other players, less so. But you should absolutely no underestimate the UESC enemies.

Everything bearing the UESC brand - the robots, their commanders, the turrets - is very deadly. They'll kill you faster than you think, especially when you're still early in your journey, and even later on, if you're not careful and kick the hornet's nest. They'll flank you, run at you, and any noise you make in a firefight with them will also likely attract other players.

When you start Marathon, the first Agent that makes contact with you, Oni, warns you to pick your fights carefully. It's the kind of general advice that could apply to a lot of games, and I know that from my own experience, when I hear a character in a game tell me that, it doesn't always end up being true. It is arguably the most important piece of advice you could take with you in Marathon. Killing the UESC might be more straightforward than the back-and-forth that comes with fighting a squad of other players, but they have the numbers to overwhelm you and should not be trifled with.

Build on Your Success, but Don't Sweat Your Losses

Marathon's versions of free loadouts you can take into a run with you while you're low on gear in your Vault are called Sponsored Kits. Each kit is representative of one of the six factions in the game, and while some kits are definitely better to have than others, they all provide the basics you'll need to enter a run, and none of them are what you'll want to run all the time.

That doesn't mean you can't have success with them, though, and when you do, the last thing you should do is change something that's working. If you started with a Sponsored Kit and were able to exfil with more gear, keep running with that gear. If you find a gun with strong mods and exfil with it, put it in your Vault for when you want to take on a major challenge, and keep running with what you've built off the Sponsored Kit. Just be sure to replenish your ammo at the start of new runs and don't fix what isn't broken.

On the flipside, when you die, it's never a good feeling, but you have to remember that top-tier loot is not the ultimate end goal of Marathon. Everyone will get a full reset of their loot at the end of each season. No piece of gear is truly yours to keep, and between scavenging from other players, Sponsored Kits, buying guns from the Armoury, and even just finding new weapons and mods to stock up on in arms lockers on the map, you'll always be able to build your Vault and your loadout back up without too much trouble.

Always Grab 'Unstable' Materials and Ammo

There are a few key resources that are each labelled as 'Unstable' materials. Unstable Gel, Unstable Led, Unstable Biodes - whatever they are, if they carry the 'Unstable' marker, put them in your backpack and exfil with them. You'll need Unstable materials to work your way through the upgrade trees of each faction, as most upgrades will ask you to spend materials alongside credits. You'll need a lot of them, so grab them every chance you get.

The other thing you'll need a lot of is ammo. You can buy ammo from the Armory or spend the aforementioned Unstable materials to barter for some ammo, but those materials are better spent on faction upgrades, as are your credits. Always try to bring ammo back with you, because you can easily find yourself low on credits, unable to purchase more ammo and forced into a Sponsored Kit run because, despite having a good weapon or two in your Vault, you don't have any bullets for it.

Again, Sponsored Kits are not a terrible thing, but they're not what you want to be running all the time. Your Vault should always include a solid ammo stockpile so that what you're actually replenishing when you lose gear on runs are your weapons and other key pieces of gear.

Each Faction is Important, But CyAc and NuCaloric Should be Your Focus

Each of the six factions has upgrades you'll want to attain, and you should be tracking the specific ones you want to try and work towards, but there are upgrades that you'll want to focus on first. Some of them are obvious, like upgrading the total amount of space in your Vault, or making items appear faster when you go to loot a container. Reducing your fall damage, increasing your shell's heat capacity (stamina) and decreasing the time it takes for it to recover, as well as decreasing the amount of time it takes for shield charges and health patch kits to work.

Reducing the impact of toxic, EMP, overheating, frost, immobilization, and hack status effects, and increasing the effect of consumables like Anti-Virus packs, which are essential for some in-game events that give you major loot rewards if you successfully complete them. Other obvious ones are related to expanding what you can buy in the Armory, like giving you free health and shield patch kits daily, unlocking the ability to buy shield charges, self-revives, and other aspects of your loadout that you'd arguably want to have at all times.

Based on the title of this section, you should be able to tell where I'm going with this. All of those obviously important upgrades I just described are CyAc and NuCaloric upgrades. Yes, the other four factions have their own upgrades that are important, and yes, you should absolutely unlock all of them as soon as you can to have access to all of them.

Traxus, Arachne, and MIDA have a few important offensive-focused upgrades you'll want to unlock, and Sekiguchi (SekGen) upgrades can decrease the cooldown times on your abilities, increase the time it takes for you to bleed out if you're downed. But with how generous Marathon is with loot, it's more than arguable that the gear-related upgrades fall lower on the priority list compared to permanent upgrades that simply give you a better shot at survival, even when going in with just a Sponsored Kit.

Don't Run Everywhere (Even When Playing Assassin)

The noise you make - and don't make - is extremely important to keep aware of in Marathon. Everything you do makes some kind of noise, and being too loud is the easiest way to give your presence and location away to other players. Running everywhere you go is, first and foremost, the worst thing you could do if you're trying to complete a contract and avoid other Runners.

You might think you could throw caution to the wind by playing as the Assassin Shell, which includes the ability to turn completely invisible for a short period. Yes, you can get lucky and safely run across open areas for a short sprint while invisible, to give yourself an easier time getting across the map. But you should not think this keeps you entirely safe. Keen-eyed players can still see the outline of your shell running, and if that doesn't give you away, the noise you make will. And this is all without mentioning the fact that Bungie is currently finding a new balance for how far away you can hear players fighting across the map.

Which is the other layer of this point about how much noise you make: you don't need to fight everything. The gunplay in Marathon is as good as you'd expect it to be, so it feels odd to suggest even on some level that you should avoid firing your weapon. But if you want to survive, picking your fights carefully is, once again, a key piece of advice to always keep in mind.

Rook Runs Aren't Just Good for Scavenging

The main reason for doing runs as a Rook is to scavenge as many resources as possible. That's always the goal of a Rook run. But that's not all those runs are good for. Just as important as scavenging some resources, Rook runs are a great, risk-free way of boosting your game knowledge.

Explore as much of each map as you can when going on a Rook run. Activate something you know will set off an alarm just to see what happens and if you might be able to handle it solo. Pay attention to the little things you may not focus on when going on a run with a regular shell because you're keeping an eye out for other players. Let them be your chance to study Marathon and figure out its more complex systems, many of which are unexplained and left for you to solve on your own anyway. Better to have those learning experiences when you're not also stressing about the gear you're trying to bring back home with you.

Also, another point on Rook runs related to faction upgrades: unlocking multiple upgrades in a faction's upgrade tree unlocks 'Capstone' upgrades, many of which upgrade the loadout you get when you go on a Rook run, giving you a much better chance of surviving a fight if you find yourself in one.

Don't Trust Anyone

Lastly, to reiterate a point I made in my review for Marathon: this ain't ARC Raiders. It's possible that a sub-section of the Marathon community could start creating the well-known 'bunny lobbies' filled with players who don't want to engage in PvP and are only there for looting and some PvE gameplay, but at least so far at the time of this writing, that seems like an impossibility.

No one who isn't on your squad wants to be your friend in Marathon; it's very unlikely another player will let you walk by unscathed if you both run right into each other. That's just not in the spirit of the game. You're welcome to try by hopping onto the proximity chat and saying you're friendly, that you just want to loot/complete a contract and aren't looking to make any noise and attract unwanted attention from UESC or other Runners. Feel free to give it a shot. All I'm saying is, I'd still shoot you in the face. I may even pretend to be friendly at first, just for a laugh. And I doubt I'm the only Marathon player who would.

Guide based on 42 hours of playtime in the PlayStation 5 up-to-date version as of March 15.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.