What You Need For Every Raid

Progression in Marathon is all about building a stash of increasingly better loot, but you can’t earn any without risking the items you bring into a raid. With Marathon‘s maximalist art style and dense gameplay systems, it can be hard to know what exactly you need in your loadout for any given raid. Below you’ll find a breakdown of Marathon loadout basics, laying out what you need, which items are nice to have, and what you’re better off scavenging for.

As a general tip, you’ll learn a lot by completing Priority Contracts, which are Marathon‘s main missions. These differ from Standard Contracts, which still offer enticing rewards, but don’t have any narrative component. The Priority Contracts are designed to ease you into Marathon‘s systems during this first in-game season, and they’ll give you a variety of loot so you can start learning what everything is for. That said, you still need to put together a loadout to start a raid and complete Contracts.

Marathon Loadout Essentials: Weapons, Ammo, Healing Items

There are three things you will want to make sure are in your loadout for every single raid, regardless of your goals therein: a weapon or two, ammo for said weapon(s), and healing items. If you’re pessimistic about your chances of exfiltrating, pick one weapon to bring, but I generally recommend having two for different circumstances. For instance, one for close range and another for fighting at a distance is always a good idea. Alternatively, bringing a weapon that uses Volt ammo can help you deal with UESC robots using shields.

The amount of ammo you bring is also dependent on a few factors, like the ammo type and the weapon you’ll be loading it into. As a general rule, semi-automatic weapons use less ammo, while fully automatic guns—LMGs especially—will chew through stacks. Two or three stacks of both ammo types is often a safe bet, or a stack or two more if you’re bringing just one weapon. Keep in mind that fighting every enemy you see is usually not the best strategy; ammo is scarce in raids, so you’ll want to conserve rounds whenever possible.

For healing items, you’ll want to make sure you have both Patch Kits and Shield Charges to replenish your health and shields, respectively. Each one has three variants of scaling potency, detailed in the following table.

Most often, you’ll want to bring at least a full stack (3x) of Patch Kits and a full stack (3x) of Shield Charges, the middle tier of each. These are supplied liberally by Contracts, and can be purchased from the Armory at reasonable prices. The caveat here is that the Depleted variants can be found frequently within raids—almost always pick them up and manage your heals; Marathon‘s Smart Heal feature does this fairly well automatically. Advanced Patch Kits and Large Shield Charges will become loadout staples once your stash has grown.

Depleted Patch Kits and Depleted Shield Charges cannot be added to your vault via exfiltration. Either use them or drop them for better loot; you will not be awarded credits for any in your inventory at the end of a raid.

In summary, your Marathon loadout essentials for every raid are:

• Weapon(s)
• 2–3 stacks of ammo for each weapon (4–5 if you bring a single gun)
• 3 Patch Kits
• 3 Shield Charges

Marathon Loadout Luxuries: Shields, Backpacks, Cores, Implants

After the essentials, the two most important items to consider in your Marathon loadout are a shield and a backpack. Their benefits are rather straightforward: shields give you more protection against damage, and backpacks provide more inventory space. Early on, you won’t always have access to both, but when you do have a shield or backpack, you’ll want to equip them.

Even without a Shield Implant equipped, you will have one block of shields above your health bar. Shield Implants increase the amount of shields you have.

Cores and Implants are similar; they can be very helpful, but aren’t strictly necessary. You can equip two Cores at one time, and three Implants (head, torso, and legs). Use Cores and Implants strategically with your other equipped items. For instance, if you’re only bringing the essentials, you may not want to risk losing a Core or Implant, or you may want to only equip one or two commons (gray-colored). If you’ve got a shield and backpack on, though, a full suite of Cores and Implants—or a few higher-rarity ones—may keep you alive and loot in your possession.

Common Cores and Implants are relatively plentiful in raids, so don’t feel obligated to always equip some beforehand—you can cobble together a better loadout while you loot. My personal strategy is to gradually strengthen my loadout across raids. If I start with only the essentials, I’ll add a few luxuries for the next raid, then run a full kit for the third raid, maybe upgrades for the fourth, and so on (provided I exfil, of course).

Items You Don’t Need To Bring Into Every Raid

While you’re still getting the hang of Marathon, there are a handful of items you shouldn’t load into a raid with, mainly certain consumables. There are a handful of Cleanse Consumables, like OS Debug, Mechanic’s Kit, etc., that will only take up precious inventory space. Some negate status effects, while others give you a temporary buff. Examples of the latter include Energy Amp (improves ability recharge rates) and Cardio Kick (increases Heat Capacity/stamina and Agility/speed), which are often helpful to just use as you find them.

As you progress further in Marathon and hone in on specific builds for each Runner shell, you’ll likely start to recognize when these can be particularly useful, and integrate them into your loadout. For the vast majority of raids, however, you’re better off leaving any you exfil with in your Vault. You can sell them when you get a surplus, or start bringing a stack once you gain access to larger backpacks.

As a final word of caution, you should always double-check your backpack for items taking up space unnecessarily. Don’t carry un-slotted weapon mods or unequipped Cores into a raid, because you’re just limiting the amount of new items you can pick up. The only things taking up inventory slots when you start a raid should be ammo and healing items. There’s a fairly steep learning curve to Marathon, but you’ll get the hang of things quickly if you’re diligent in always bringing the essential loadout items and doling out luxuries to yourself when possible.