Marathon’s Mid-Season Update Encourages Mentoring And Attempts To Add Balance

It’s patch day, and the Marathon Mid-Season Update is live now. Marathon’s first mid-season updater is focusing on progression and balance updates, while also introducing the new C.A.R.R.I. protocol, earnable Arachne shell styles, an expanded Rewards Pass, buffs to the Recon shell, and some more stuff too. 

While the general patch notes focus on balance, the real standout is how much has been done to Marathon in this patch to help facilitate player growth and make it easier to stick with the game. With investment in a mentoring feature that rewards people for playing together, the expansion of contracts, and the ramp-up time to get used to the game pushed to Level 12, it’s easy to see how Bungie is navigating to make a welcoming community regardless of the skill gaps between players. 

We’ve pulled together some of the highlights from the Patch notes shared by Bungie below, but for much of the more finessed updates and full quality of life info, you can head to Bungie’s patch notes here. And believe me, there are a lot of notes to go through. 

Marathon Mid-season update highlights

General gameplay updates:

• ONI has launched the C.A.R.R.I. or CyberAcme Runner Reinforcement Initiative, a new protocol that rewards both solo Runners and coordinated Crews for completing contract objectives and exfiling together (scroll for more info)
• CyberAcme Commendations are a new material earned by helping crewmates complete contract objectives, completing contract objectives as a solo Runner, or successfully exfiling as a Rook. Extra commendations can be earned when you exfil with other players outside of your Crew.
• Stay Together has been added, a new end-of-run experimental feature that allows you to stay with the Runners you just successfully exfiled with by creating a new Crew with them, and only one needs to be successfully exfiled to win.
• Rewards Pass has been refreshed for both the Free and Premium tracks. As a result, we are adding four new Runner Shell styles, a WSTR Shotgun style, and a profile emblem to the Season 1 Rewards Pass:
  • Premium Track: Thief, Assassin, Destroyer
  • Free Track: Recon, WSTR Shotgun, Profile Emblem
• Updated the Perimeter (Beginner) new player map to now be a solos-only map that remains available to players until Seasonal Level 12, and now the map presents a reduced risk of encountering other Runners.
• New and existing players under Seasonal Level 12 will also have access to new optional CyberAcme contracts tailored for the beginner experience to help with their first steps in Marathon.
• When the final exfil is active and there are less than 10 seconds remaining, the timer for other exfils will be reduced to match the remaining session timer.
• Proximity chat is now in Marathon, with the “toggle to open” proximity chat option for players

Weapons, Shells, and Equipment updates:

• Recon shell buffs to improve enemy identification, tracker drone behavior, and more
• New weapon chips and implants that provide crew-wide buffs, expanding tactical options for coordinated play
• New Mercy Kit, a utility item that allows players to revive downed enemy Runners
• New Depleted Self-Revive utility item, available in solo only
• Adds earnable Arachne faction styles through the Codex
• Expands high-value loot pools with new Deluxe-tier unique weapon drops in Perimeter and Dire Marsh encounters

What is CARRI protocol?

C.A.R.R.I. stands for the CyberAcme Runner Reinforcement Initiative, and in Marathon it is a limited-time protocol that rewards both solo Runners and coordinated crews for completing contract objectives and exfiling together. With rewards tuned to help newer and mid-progression players while still offering benefits to the Cryo Archive veterans, the core of this is about rewarding playing together, and at least from the outset looks to have a similar positive impact as, say, FFXIV’s mentor system. 

Players can earn CyberAcme Commendations for their successes, then spend this new material at the C.A.R.R.I. Armory for rewards such as a rotating selection of weapons, Salvage Crates that grant a random stack of Salvage, Reputation Packs which grant reputation for their associated faction, and more.

Marathon is available now on PC (Steam), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.