Welcome to Season 2

Today, we released a new Dev Insights video shining a light on the new content coming in Season 2. There's a new zone filled with new dangers and secrets, a brand-new defensive shell, a ton of new gear, and much more.

Check out the video for the first look at what’s coming in Season 2: 

Season 2 begins on June 2 and kicks off with an Open Play* Week from June 2 to June 9. During the Open Play Week, the full game will be available to play on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and any progress you make will carry over into Season 2. This will be a great time to invite your friends to crew up as everyone will be starting out on a clean slate.

When Season 1 ends, all the assets in your Vault and personalized Armory access will be wiped, and your shells will be reset to factory standards to put everyone at the same starting line. It’s important we give players a chance to explore the new season together and not have to worry about going up against fully kitted out crews right out of the gate.

Resets only include things related to gameplay progression; you’ll keep your achievements, non-seasonal Codex progression, and cosmetics.

For a full breakdown on how Marathon's seasonal reset works, please head here. 

Runners have had a profitable season on Tau Ceti IV, but their constant raiding has attracted the wrong kind of attention. Now the UESC is stepping up its efforts to keep Tau Ceti IV on lockdown and protect the secrets they’d rather keep hidden. 

As the UESC escalate their defenses, all of this activity on Tau Ceti IV is causing something else to awaken. The Anomaly is changing... and after the sun goes down, things get much, much stranger.  

Dire Marsh (Night) introduces a new kind of challenge to Marathon: How do you survive when you lose one of your senses?

When darkness falls on Dire Marsh, the things you thought you knew warp in the night. The Anomaly blocks your path, long sight lines are obscured in the dark, and you’ll want to be careful where you shine your flashlight—you never know what’s lurking in the shadows.

This new zone introduces new mechanics, new combatants, and locations to explore on Dire Marsh. It’s built to be slower-paced than Day Marsh and plays more like a survival horror experience, with slightly fewer players and extra environmental challenges with navigating the darkness and threats within.

Mastering the zone will require you to make use of the new equipment designed for surviving—and hunting—in the dark: 

• Flashlights, a new tool all Runners have access to on Night Marsh. 

• Vector rounds, a new type of mag which create pools of light where your bullets land, illuminating enemy Runners and combatants. 

• Vector grenades which highlight the environment and ping nearby enemies. 

• Darksight scopes, which highlight the environment around you after you ADS for a brief period; these are focused on traversal versus highlighting enemies. 

• Signal Flares which light up the environment and come in multiple colors.

The UESC have secured their resources on Night Marsh with advanced encryption. Kill UESC to gather their encryption certificates, or Certs for short, and hack into Network Towers across Night Marsh to gain access to their stockpiles of weapons, healing supplies, and other loot. The UESC has also locked down the exfils on Night Marsh, and you’ll need to collect Certs to activate exfils on the map.

You may have noticed staircases on Marsh that led to closed-off doors. Anomalous energy is flowing from Complex. What are the UESC hiding up there? Gather enough UESC Certs to open the doors and hunt down what enemies, mysteries, and powerful loot that awaits in the upper rooms of Complex Control.  

One of our takeaways from Season 1 is that we want to be more judicious with how we handle the amount of queues in Marathon. Between adding Night Marsh, Duos queue on a daily rotating map, and continued experimental modes, we’re conscious of the impact it could have on queue health and matchmaking.

To that, Dire Marsh and Night Marsh will both be available at all times for at least the first week of the season. After that, the maps will rotate availability with one another every 90 minutes.

You’ll be able to complete most of the existing Dire Marsh contracts on either zone, with a couple of exceptions. We’re also introducing some new Night Marsh exclusive contracts—MIDA and Traxus are both interested in learning more about what the UESC are hiding in the dark—which you’ll need to complete on Night Marsh.

If you unlocked and completed a run on Dire Marsh last season, you’ll have access to both Dire Marsh and Night Marsh when Season 2 begins (same rules apply for Outpost). Otherwise both Marshes unlock at Runner Level 3.

Season 2 introduces Sentinel, a new shell built for controlling space and defending areas. If you want to protect your team from a rocket drone barrage during a clutch final exfil or turn the tides on an aggressive team rushing you down, this is your Runner.

Sentinel's Prime ability Defender System deploys an automated laser platform which identifies and destroys incoming enemy grenades and missiles, as well as boosting weapon handling for all nearby crewmates. Keep an eye on how many charges it has left to destroy projectiles–it can’t block those rocket drone barrages forever.

Snare Mine, Sentinel's tactical ability, is a thrown proximity-triggered mine that will detonate into several Immobilizing submunitions. Bait enemies into your traps and lock them in place to finish them before they can escape.

Sentinel's passive trait Castle Doctrine grants increased resistances after taking splash damage, and faster weapon handling for close-range weapons when surrounded by enemies.

Prey Tracker, their trait ability, will activate a short range, motion-tracking system that allows them to see nearby moving targets on radar. Use this to gather a bit of extra intel on who or what’s moving around you, and set up your defenses accordingly.

Each new season of Marathon is an opportunity for us to take a holistic look at what’s working, what needs improvements, and where we can add new tools to the sandbox. With everyone’s Vaults empty, it’s a time we can take bigger and more swings across weapons, gear, and equipment. These changes can create space for new metas to form and keeps Marathon feeling fresh as you progress throughout the season.

Here are some of the highlights for what’s coming in Season 2.

Season 2 brings two new weapons to the sandbox.

KKV-9SD

First is the KKV, a new pistol-frame SMG with an integrated suppressor whose name may sound familiar to Marathon veterans. Its rate of fire is extremely fast, coming in at 1200 rounds per minute. Effective if you want to take down UESC units without other shells noticing you or if you are looking to mow down a Runner in a split second. It also a good counter to all the shotgun rushing we saw in Season 1, giving you new tools to combat this strategy.

The KKV also comes with a new built-in folding stock mod. Keep it closed for benefits when firing from the hip, or use your weapon action to unfold the stock and trade those benefits for ADS benefits. This mod can also be used by the new Battle Pistol.

D54 Battle Pistol  

A fantastic weapon for close encounters and 1v1 duels, the D54 comes with a red dot sight and fires full-auto three-round bursts. It’s a high-handling, medium rate-of-fire sidearm—think hybrid between the BR33 Volley Rifle and the BRRT SMG. A perfect companion for sniper rifles and other long-range weapons.

Both of these new weapons also synergize well with Sentinel, who receives benefits to close-range weapons when surrounded by enemies.

Rarities and Chips 

Season 2 also brings some changes to the rarity of weapons and new options in the Armory, with the goal of shaking up when and how you run into weapons throughout the season. This should give you a chance to try out other weapons more often and keep it from feeling like you have to use the same loadouts season over season. 

In addition to the new weapons and folding stock mod, we’re also adding eight new chips with Season 2. This includes: 

• Brain Freeze Chip: Precision downs and kills with this weapon create a small explosion that spreads Frost to nearby hostiles. 

• Alarmist Chip: After aiming down sights for a brief duration, projectile impacts create a terrifying proximity drone alert. 

• Scrapyard Chip: Defeating hostiles with this weapon has a chance to spawn depleted heal items or standard materials.  

We’ll share more details on the weapons, mods, and other balance changes before Season 2.

During Season 1 it was hard to tell what each implant did at a glance. They were named based on their stats, with a random perk attached, but what ended up mattering most to players were the perks, so the names ended up being confusing.

In Season 2, implants are now defined by their perk first and have fixed stats, with the name of each implant reflecting its perk. When you check your Vault or are quickly looting, it should be easier to tell them apart and choose which ones fit your builds.

All your favorite implants are still there, split between head, torso, and legs, and they still give a stat benefit that scales with each rarity tier, from gray all the way up to gold. With this update, some implants will now only exist at higher rarity tiers, as we want to balance the power of high-utility perks like Logic Bomb or Triage Cloaking Device with how easy they are to access.

One of our goals with seasonal updates is to improve and update the way you progress throughout the season so your climbs feel different each time. To that, in Season 2 we’re introducing a new system called the Cradle, which is where you’ll go to improve your Runner shell across the course of the season.

With the Cradle, you’ll empower the WEAVEworms that create your biocybernetic bodies to increase your Runner shell stats across six categories and unlock powerful perks.

The primary way you’ll progress your stats is by using the Matter Converter, which turns weapons, equipment, and other items into experience for your Cradle. The better the item, the more experience you’ll receive. Level up your Cradle to earn Energy, which you can then allocate to any of the six stat categories. Hitting certain breakpoints will unlock additional perks for your Runner shells.

You can reallocate your Energy to different stats at any time, with no penalties or limitations. Feel free to experiment freely and adjust your stats based on your builds, playstyles, and goals.

Your Cradle progression is shared across all Runner shells, and it resets at the start of a new season.

With the Cradle, you’ll have easier access to the stats you want to focus on whenever you want (no more needing to level up a faction to gain access to stats), you can change your focus any time, and everything will be on one page to make things easier to manage.

With all of the Runner shell upgrades in the faction progression trees being moved to the Cradle, we’ve been able to expand the Armory options, which should give you even more reliable access to weapons and items as the season progresses.

You can expect to see some new additions to the faction trees too. For example, each faction now has a unique family of implants (head, torso, and leg) which fits the playstyle of that faction. NuCaloric offers implants that help with healing and durability, while MIDA has ones more proficient in mobility or disruption.

We’ve also made some adjustments to schemas, which can now unlock specific Barter offers in the Armory.

In Season 2, we’re increasing the rate you make faction progress across the board. You’ll feel this through a combination of under-the-hood tweaks, adjustments to the requirements to level up each faction, and increased options and rates at which you earn reputation.

One of our goals with these changes is to make it so most players who regularly play can max out their faction upgrades and reach VIP rank during the season. This goes for players who love to crew up, as well as the lone wolves who prefer to run solo.

Here are a couple of changes you’ll notice when it comes to faction progression:

• Updated the requirements to level up each faction, reducing the time necessary to reach VIP in most cases.

  • This includes a pass on the amount of materials required to unlock faction upgrades, so hopefully this time you’re not craving Biolens Seeds and Alien Alloys as much.

• Standard Contracts will grant significantly increased faction reputation, so they should help much more with progression.

• Added new ways to earn reputation, including adding reputation gain to Enhanced (green) valuables and a small amount of reputation for defeating UESC.

Unlocking everything a faction has to offer will still require time and successful exfils with valuables and materials, but it should feel more like a staircase where you take one step after another, not like a wall you must climb.

Contracts remain a great way to earn the favor of factions, and we’ve been working on some improvements for Season 2. Our goal is to shave off the rough edges, chill down a bit on the heavy traversal and the “in a single run” requirements, and reformulate Priority Contracts so they don’t feel like a blocker to your progress.

Priority Contracts will be more focused on granting loot rewards rather than being hard requirements for reputation. Priority Contracts are also no longer gated behind faction reputation levels.

We’ve also refreshed Standard and Liaison contracts to shave off some of those rough edges. Reminder that if you’ve completed the Liaison contracts and unlocked a faction in Season 1, they’ll be unlocked for you in Season 2.

Cryo Archive contracts are also getting an update. Having every contract require opening a vault made it difficult to make any progress on a run without taking in a key and risking it all. In Season 2, we reworked these to set more achievable goals that can be progressed over multiple runs and to help teach Cryo softshells the mechanics of the ship, with the seventh contract still requiring you to take down the Compiler.

Overall, we want the experience of completing contracts to be more organic and enjoyable. We’re also working on some changes to streamline contracts to make them less linear in how they roll out to you over time, which we’ll share more about in the future.

Last season, we introduced experimental queues—including Duos Queue and Sponsored Queue—as a way to test the waters with different ways to play Marathon. We’ve loved seeing the participation and hearing your feedback in Season 1, and we’re going to continue that in Season 2, including explorations with more PVE content. More details to come!

We’re also adding Duos Queue in Season 2 with a rotating daily queue for Perimeter, Dire Marsh, Night Marsh, and Outpost. The rotation is part of us being more judicious with how we handle our matchmaking divisions in Marathon, and we’ll continue to evaluate your feedback on Duos (and all of the new content) as the season progresses.

Ranked will return in Season 2 on June 14, with all new rewards across the board.

We’re also making some high-level changes to help simplify Ranked and improve matchmaking times. This includes combining the Low and High Stakes modes into a single queue with a 5,000 Loadout value minimum. Players must also now bring a Holotoag that matches their current rank.

We’ve also made some other additions so progression is a bit faster and to ease a bit of gear fear:  

• Progression has been adjusted and should feel faster across all ranks.

• Win/loss point progression will be influenced by the average rank of the players in that match compared to the player.

  • If you play against people above your rank and lose, your loss won't be as big. If you win against them, though, the earnings will be higher.

• There is a new daily Ranked Sponsored Kit that contains a loadout appropriate for your rank—the higher your rank, the better the gear.

• Players can earn Arachne reputation by exfiling with a Tag Chip.

We’ll be making more improvements to Ranked as Season 2 progresses, including a new system that will make it harder for ill-intended players to coordinate and team up across runs.

Cryo Archive will continue on rotation during Season 2, with the first chance to play on June 11, right after Ranked. Reminder that any of the Cryo Archive Subroutines you unlocked during Season 1 will carry over to Season 2.

In addition to all of these changes, we also have a bunch of QoL updates coming in Season 2, with more to come as the season progresses.

• Increased Vault space: a fully upgraded Vault can now hold up to 512 grid spaces of items.

• Added the ability to batch select items in your Vault.

• Added a loot filter where if you select a slot you’re missing on your loadout, it’ll filter only the loot you can equip in that slot.

• Simplified and streamlined the lobby UI, so that you can get into a run faster and more intuitively. This includes combining the Loadout and Vault menus.

• Players can access select UI screens during matchmaking, including factions, the Codex, settings, and more.

• Added new PC and console cursor speed settings.

• Added new privacy settings with name obfuscation and a matchmaking timer offset.

• Additional game security features to speed up detection of cheats and reduce their effectiveness.

• Implemented a round of CPU performance improvements, as well as adding support for frame generation on PC. Performance optimization is an ongoing priority for us, and we anticipate further improvements in future updates.

• Improvements to our network technology to reduce the rate of disconnections, particularly for players outside the United States.

At the start of Season 2, we’re opening the gates to Marathon so everyone can experience Season 2 and the many changes made throughout Season 1. Grab your friends and crew up as everyone kicks off the season on a clean slate*.

Marathon’s Open Play Week takes place from June 2 to June 9 and includes the full game on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Any progress you make during the Open Play Week will carry over to Season 2. Marathon will be on sale around the start of Season 2 for Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. As a reminder, for those who already own Marathon, Season 2 gameplay content will be available for no additional cost.

We’ll be back with more information including patch notes before Season 2 goes live on June 2. Good luck in your final days of Season 1, and we’ll see you for Season 2 next week.

*Gameplay requires internet access and paid-for subscription on console (sold separately)