What To Keep & What To Drop

Extraction shooters can be overwhelming at first due to the sheer number of items in the game, and Marathon is perhaps more so because of its vibrant art style. It’s already hard enough to decide what to bring in your loadout, and once you get in a raid, there’s an endless debate over what to hold onto and what to abandon. Marathon‘s dense gameplay has a fairly steep learning curve, but there are some general looting rules to follow that will help you start out.

To preface the more granular tips below: don’t fall victim to gear fear. Especially since your vault is wiped at the end of every season, there’s no sense in hoarding high-rarity items for long. Once you get into the rhythm of Marathon, you’ll know what you’re running short on, and which items can be of use to you, and it’ll gradually get easier to find everything you’re looking for. But when you’re just starting out, there are some things you should make sure you pick up.

Marathon Items You Always Want To Keep

As a very broad rule of thumb, larger items are of more consequence. Weapons and backpacks often take up four or six inventory slots, while Cores and Implants take up two. If you have an open slot in your loadout, always equip these items when you find them, but they may be too large to carry in your backpack, especially if they are common (gray rarity). Following that logic, you’ll usually want to swap out equipment with higher rarities—gray for green, green for blue, and so on.

You will mostly find single-slot items, though, and there are a few you should prioritize:

• Ammo for your equipped guns
• Patch Kits to restore health
• Shield Charges to restore shields

The most important thing in Marathon is staying alive—the loot you pick up won’t matter if you get killed. If you have a backpack equipped, holding onto a few larger items, like rare Cores and Implants or good weapons you find, is a smart idea. Keeping your vault stocked for future raids is a never-ending task in Marathon.

Healing items and ammo are more commonly found on the edges of maps.

What you really want to keep an eye out for, though, is Salvage items. Their icon looks almost like a QR code (see the screenshot above) and are used for bartering and upgrades. Salvage is specifically sought by each of the game’s six Factions. In the Armory (where you buy items), each Faction vendor has a barter section at the top, where you exchange Salvage for items. For instance, CyberAcme will give you Shield Charges in exchange for Unstable Diodes, and Patch Kits for Unstable Biomass.

Salvage is also used for purchasing upgrades. You essentially have six skill trees, one for each Faction. Certain upgrades require a specific amount of Salvage, and some Credits, more often than not. Bartering with Salvage is way more cost-effective than buying items outright, so you typically want to keep Salvage over Valuables. In other words, Salvage is important for long-term progression in Marathon, because it helps you fill your stash and also unlock upgrades.

What Loot You Can Drop

Deciding what loot to drop in favor of other items is highly situational. With the above guidance in mind, the first place you should look when needing to clear inventory space is dropping common valuables. Your inventory has a button toggle to switch from item type icons to item values, and will show the full value of a stack.

Near the end of a run, it’s also important to remember that Depleted Patch Kits and Depleted Shield Charges cannot be exfiltrated—they will disappear after a raid and not award you Credits. This means they’re burning an inventory space if you hold onto them. You typically want to pick up some Depleted heals as you loot to restore chip damage, but they can be safely dropped for better items.

There are also a handful of Cleanse Consumables, like OS Debug and Mechanic’s Kit. Because these are very situational—they negate debuffs—they are also good options to drop in favor of more valuable loot. Certain Cleanse Consumables, like Energy Amp (improves ability recharge rate) and Cardio Kick (increases Heat Capacity and Agility) can simply be used on the spot to get a temporary buff, rather than held in your inventory. Anything you’re not going to barter with, sell, or bring into another Marathon raid can safely be dropped.