Marathon Contracts Guide

You've woken up in a biomata Runner Shell: essentially a rented robot body: on a planet that managed to catastrophically fail at being a colony. The UESC (United Earth Space Council, your primary bullet sponge) has flooded the ruins with combat drones and humanoid robots. Six megacorporations are very interested in the wreckage. None of them are interested in your survival specifically, but they'll tolerate you as long as you keep completing their to-do lists.

Those to-do lists are called contracts. They are obtained through faction agents: mysterious representatives of each corporation who somehow have time to assign you quests from what appears to be a corporate org chart drawn in crayon. Completing contracts earns you faction reputation, credits, and assorted loot: which you will desperately need the next time you sprint into a firefight you could have avoided.

PRO TIP: Unlike most of your gear, faction progress does not reset between seasons. So unlike your dignity after dying to the same UESC patrol three times, your reputation is permanent. Invest wisely.

There are two flavors of contracts: Priority Contracts, which gate your entire story and faction progression behind them, and Standard Contracts, which are the game's way of asking you to do something dangerous for a modest amount of reputation points. Both reward you with loot, and both will send you directly into situations where other players will also be trying to claim that loot. Welcome to the extraction shooter experience.

Contract Types Priority vs Standard: A Taxonomy of Suffering

Priority Contracts

Priority Contracts are the narrative spine of Marathon's progression system. They don't just reward you with loot: they unlock your ability to access other factions entirely. Think of them as mandatory corporate onboarding. Technically voluntary. Functionally compulsory.

The first two you'll encounter are the Welcome to Tau Ceti contracts for CyberAcme. Completing both of these opens the floodgates for a wave of Liaison Contracts: one for each of the five other factions. Every Liaison Contract is prefixed with "Introducing:" and serves as a faction job interview you cannot decline.

Priority Contracts are not just "better bounties." Skipping them means you cannot push faction ranks further. Repeating Standard jobs will earn you reputation at a glacial pace, but it won't substitute for Priority progression. Do the Priority Contracts. That's not a suggestion.

Liaison Contracts ("Introducing: …")

Liaison Contracts are a special sub-category of Priority Contracts that serve one purpose: unlocking a new faction. Each one involves doing something thematically appropriate for that faction: sabotaging UESC comms for MIDA, injecting a suspicious Necrotic Sample for Sekiguchi, or getting shot at for the enjoyment of Arachne. Once completed, the faction opens its doors and you can start accumulating reputation with them.

Standard Contracts

Standard Contracts are the workhorse content. Tasks like delivering Salvage to DCON, using your Prime ability a certain number of times, or defeating a quota of UESC enemies. They repeat. They respawn. They are the gaming equivalent of corporate email. Do them anyway: consistent completion is how you push reputation caps between Priority milestones.

The Six Factions | Your New Corporate Employers (You Didn't Apply)

Six factions operate on Tau Ceti IV, each with its own agenda, its own contract style, and its own unique way of making your runs more interesting or significantly more fatal. You start with CyberAcme unlocked. The rest require completing Liaison Contracts: because the corporations of the future still gatekeep their vendor loot behind bureaucratic onboarding.

RECOMMENDED ORDER: Start CyberAcme → push NuCaloric for shields (survival = everything at low TTK) → then Sekiguchi for ability cooldowns on your Shell → Arachne for melee/weapons → Traxus or MIDA based on your playstyle. Faction upgrades don't reset seasonally, so patience has genuine compound value.

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Welcome to Tau Ceti [1/2]Priority

• Defeat 3x UESC in Perimeter (single run)
• Scan FTL array at any UESC radio tower in Perimeter (single run)

Your corporate onboarding document. Head to Perimeter: the game's training wheels zone: shoot some robots, scan a tower. Rewards 180 faction reputation. Do not skip this. Every faction unlock chains from here. Treat it as the handshake you can't not shake.

Welcome to Tau Ceti [2/2]Priority

• Sabotage a UESC comms antenna in North or South Relay (Perimeter)

Still in Perimeter. Find North or South Relay: the major contested POIs on the map's edges: and sabotage a comms antenna to unblock faster-than-light communications with Sol. You're performing IT support for an interstellar corporation. 90 reputation. Completing this alongside Part 1 unlocks all Liaison Contracts simultaneously.

Introducing: TraxusLiaison

• Hack a UESC terminal at Intersection, Complex, or Bio-Research (Dire Marsh)
• Acquire Shipping Manifest from UESC Commander
• Scan the nearby stacked shipping container before it's transported

Your introduction to Dire Marsh: the game's action-focused swamp nightmare zone. Hack a terminal, the UESC sends a Commander to kill you, kill the Commander instead, take their manifest, then race to scan a shipping container before a drone carries it away. Time pressure, elite enemy, race mechanic: all in one contract. 270 reputation. Traxus respects efficiency.

Introducing: MIDALiaison

• Defeat UESC across Tau Ceti IV
• Smash glass across Tau Ceti IV (any map)

The anarchist faction's job interview is: shoot robots and break windows across the entire planet. Rewards include 2 Deluxe Chem Grenades, 2 Deluxe EMP Grenades, 2 Enhanced Flechette Grenades, 2 Enhanced Grenades, 3 Unstable Lead, and 1,000 Credits. This is the most on-brand corporate onboarding in human history. MIDA wants you to cause property damage. You will comply. 180 reputation.

Introducing: SekiguchiLiaison

• Inject the Necrotic Sample in southern Flight Control (Outpost)
• Scan your shell in southeastern Orientation (Outpost)

Inject a biohazardous sample into a UESC facility, then scan the body that just injected it. This is Sekiguchi Genetics' idea of a welcome packet. Takes place in Outpost: the smallest, most vertical, most UESC-saturated map in the game. Worth the trip: unlocking Sekiguchi opens Shell ability cooldown upgrades that fundamentally change how your runs feel.

Prime TimeStandard

• Use Prime ability (single run)
• Defeat 5x hostiles: Runners++ (single run)

Use your Shell's ultimate ability. Kill five enemies. The "++" notation means Runners count double: so hunting other players is the efficient path. CyberAcme politely reminds you that murdering your colleagues is an approved contract completion strategy.

Deconstructed IStandard

• Deliver 8x Salvage to DCON (single run)

Collect Salvage and deposit it at a DCON (Deconstruction Node): an unmarked crate on the map that extracts materials without requiring you to physically exfil. Eight pieces in a single run. DCON transmats your materials automatically; check the map for their icons. This is the standard extraction loop distilled to its purest form. Loot. Deposit. Repeat.

Marathon refers to its maps as zones, because calling them maps would be too honest about the fact that you're about to wander into a contested area and get shot. Three zones are available at launch; a fourth: Cryo Archive: arrives in Season 1 as a raid-like endgame event aboard the UESC Marathon vessel itself, which has been orbiting the planet this whole time judging you.

Perimeter

Colony outskirts. Flat terrain, long sightlines, spread-out POIs. Five squads max. The gentlest introduction to dying. Key POIs: North Relay, South Relay, Hauler, Overflow, Station. Most CyberAcme and NuCaloric contracts start here. TADs spawn throughout and reveal nearby enemies when activated.

Dire Marsh

Former farming sector, now ground zero of the Anomaly: a suspended field of floating rocks and storage containers with zero explanation. Six squads. Underground tunnels connect buildings, guaranteeing surprise encounters. This is where Traxus sends you. Action-focused, visibility-compromised, constantly dangerous.

Outpost

A functioning UESC base with scan drones, tripwires, and weather hazards. Smallest map, maximum verticality. Built around The Pinwheel: a corkscrew building described by Bungie as a "clusterf*ck when you're fighting." Best loot in the game. Nowhere to hide. You will be heard. Sekiguchi sends you here for your first contract.

MAP PROGRESSION LOGIC Perimeter → Dire Marsh → Outpost mirrors faction difficulty. Unlock CyberAcme/NuCaloric on Perimeter, push Traxus/MIDA in Dire Marsh, complete Sekiguchi/Arachne in Outpost. The zones escalate in UESC density, squad count, and loot quality simultaneously.

Things the Game Expects You to Know

TADs: Target Acquisition Devices

TADs are scattered across all maps and, when activated, reveal nearby enemies on your minimap. They also contribute to CyberAcme reputation. Find them. Activate them. Know what's about to shoot you before it shoots you. This is the highest-ROI action available in low-intensity map exploration, and it costs you nothing but the time to walk to a box.

DCON: Deconstruction Nodes

DCON terminals are unmarked crates on each map that allow you to deposit contract materials without exfiling. Drag the required item into the DCON inventory and the delivery registers automatically. Critical for any contract requiring material delivery: you don't have to survive to the extract point for these objectives. The game is being kind. It won't last.

Heat System

Heat is your stamina gauge. Spent on movement abilities and Shell skills. Overheating limits your options and can result in rapid death. CyberAcme's upgrade tree directly addresses Heat Capacity and Heat Sink mechanics: another reason to invest in them first. Managing Heat is the difference between a Runner and a cooling corpse.

Exfil

Successfully exfiling: reaching an extraction point and leaving the zone alive: confirms your contract progress, salvage, and credits. Dying without exfiling means you lose your gear. The game has no sympathy. The factions have no sympathy. DCON helps you lock in material deliveries mid-run, but for everything else: get out alive or start over. Fun!

Faction Reputation Sources

Beyond completing contracts, most factions also reward reputation for: successful exfils, activating TADs, looting faction-specific valuables, participating in Intercept events, and completing secured resource objectives. Crewmates share reputation when objectives resolve: even if they don't have the same contract active. Team play has mechanical incentives. Use them.