Marathon Patch 1.05 Guide: WSTR NERF

Patch 1.05 is Bungie's way of telling you they were watching. They saw you rushing someone with the Wester from across a hallway and two-tapping them through a full shield loadout. They saw Thief mains hovering like vultures during exfil animations, yanking loot from runners who thought they were safe. They saw the Marathon economy exploit Rook farming money through sponsored kits. And they wrote it all down. Politely. In patch notes.

This patch is a significant one. It does not simply fix some floating tripwires: though it does that too, because apparently tripwires were floating in overflow hallways like sad balloons, and someone decided that was below acceptable game design standards. More importantly, 1.05 introduces the groundwork for Cryo Archive, restructures the item economy, adjusts weapon balance, repairs several ways the game was actively lying to you, and sets the table for Marathon ranked mode holo tags: a whole competitive layer that will arrive shortly after this patch.

Bottom line: If you built your entire playstyle around the Wester shotgun or Thief exfil theft, this patch has opinions about your life choices. Everyone else gets to breathe slightly easier.

New Content

Three New Implant Perks

Bungie added three new world implant perks locked exclusively to the Marathon Cryo Archive map, which is the new zone unlocked through the ARG: and which is not fully accessible just yet because the ARG apparently requires additional steps that nobody has figured out. There are keys. There are terminals. There is mystery. The perks themselves, however, are already documented:

• Covert Recovery: While in smoke, self-repair speed increases and healing consumables are used faster. Essentially a free upgrade for anyone who was already planning to hide in a cloud of smoke and hope for the best.
• Preloader: Landing a knife kill grants a small amount of tactical and prime ability energy. A delightful incentive to stab people with intent, rather than the usual accidental knife panic.
• Panic Response: At low health, using a healing consumable grants cardio kick effects for a short duration. Medkit as stimulant. Medkit as survival instinct. Medkit as the moment you suddenly remember you actually want to live.

Three New Weapon Mods: Also Cryo Archive Only

• Punishment: Significantly increased damage against Redacted combatants. A new faction or enemy type presumably unique to Cryo Archive. Nobody knows what they look like yet. They are, fittingly, redacted.
• Testament: Aiming down sights for a short duration massively increases range and aim assist. For patient people. Both of them.
• Hurricane: While airborne, increased stability and greatly reduced accuracy penalties. Finally, a reason to be in the air that is not just Thief grapple chaos.

Weapon Changes

The WSTR Gets the Memo

The Wester shotgun damage falloff Marathon adjustment is the headline of this patch, and rightfully so. The Wester combat shotgun was performing like a weapon designed for players who believe personal space is a myth invented by victims. You did not need to be close. You just needed to close the gap: which, conveniently, took about half a second: and then the gun did the rest of the emotional damage.

Whether this is enough to dethrone the Wester from its current position of omnipresent dominance remains to be tested. The falloff change is real. The aim assist reduction is real. But this is a gun that people were using to win fights they had no business winning, and reducing a generous cone still leaves a cone. Monitor accordingly.

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Assassin

Assassin got a cosmetic fix so their smoke puck correctly changes appearance based on runner shell type during Shadow Dive. Monumental. Groundbreaking. The smoke puck now matches the outfit. Fashion-forward even in extraction shooters.

Thief: The Main Event

The Thief pickpocket drone exfil exploit is gone. Specifically: pickpocket drone can no longer loot players who are in the active exfil animation. Previously, you could park Thief nearby, wait for another crew to begin their exfil, and then simply steal their loot from the animation state like some kind of extraction scavenger with no moral compass. This was, charitably, an unintended feature. It has been unfeaturized.

Additionally, high-speed grapple moves could affect network stability, which is a polite way of saying that going very fast was causing you to briefly become untethered from reality. That has been addressed. The undocumented grapple cancel tech: where you grapple into the ground to avoid cooldown: was notably absent from these patch notes, which means either it was quietly fixed, it is still in the works, or Bungie has decided it is acceptable and Thief players should simply know about it. The community will be investigating this with scientific rigor.

Triage

Fixed an issue where being near max heat could prevent players from using the battery overcharge ability. You were at peak temperature and the game refused to let you overcharge. The irony is sufficiently painful that this fix was overdue.

Rook

Rook no longer requires a runner level to unlock. You can play Rook at level zero. This is presumably to let new players get into the runner immediately without working through the unlock grind: a quality-of-life courtesy that also removes the sponsored kit death exploit, since Rook no longer generates free surplus kits on death. Two problems, one patch note.

Economy & Vault

Your Vault Is No Longer a Nightmare

Consumables and ammo salvaging grenades now have larger stack sizes in the vault. This sounds unremarkable until you actually open your vault after the patch and realize you now have room to breathe, store, and make actual decisions about inventory management rather than spending every post-run session deciding which healing item you hate the least. Dome shields, previously refusing to stack at all, now stack up to five. Grenades can reportedly reach numbers in the twenties and thirties. This is objectively a better world.

Filter tabs for keys and backpacks have been added to the vault. Sponsored kit filters may also be present. The vault, for the first time, has opinions about organization and is sharing them. This is welcome. Overdue. And somehow still not as fast as clicking things should be, but perhaps that particular torture will be addressed in a future patch.

The drag-and-drop system for weapon mods has been fixed. You can now drag a mod from a weapon into your backpack or vault, and the mod will be removed and stored: not the entire weapon. This is a small change. It is also the kind of small change that makes you wonder why it required a patch to correct, and then you stop wondering because the answer is software development.

Contracts & Map Fixes

Contracts That Actually Work Now

The coordinate data pad contract required both data pads to be at the cache location before loot is revealed. Previously, having any crew member at the location was sufficient: meaning a Thief could grab neither data pad, teleport to the cache, and claim loot that their teammates earned through the misguided virtue of actually following the objective. This has been closed. You now must physically bring both pads to the location. Cooperation is mandatory. Your Thief speedrun is over.

Marathon ranked mode guide: here is what you need to know before queuing, losing your holo tag to someone better than you, and questioning every decision that led to this moment.

Ranked mode requires runners to select a zone, assemble a loadout meeting minimum gear and key requirements, and purchase a holo tag: a mandatory entry pass that also contributes to your crew's target score. The score target must be met or exceeded by the value of loot exfiltrated during the run. Miss the target and you make zero rank progress. Fail to exfil entirely and you lose rank points equal to your crew's combined loss penalty. Marathon ranked mode does not believe in participation trophies.

Zones rotate weekly. Holo tags stolen from defeated runners not only contribute score but also provide capacity to exceed the crew's score target: meaning killing ranked players is both a moral victory and a mechanical advantage. The game wants you to hunt. Plan accordingly.

Rewards arrive from the Codex as you progress. Some cosmetics unlock immediately on first reaching a rank. Others are awarded at season's end based on your highest rank achieved. The season does not care about your current rank: only your peak. So climbing once and then collapsing spectacularly is a viable, if humiliating, strategy.

Consumables and ammo found in-run will not contribute to your score. Only looted high-value items count. Do not bring out an armful of bandages and expect rank progress. The ranked system finds your medical supplies unimpressive.

A non-exhaustive list of changes that are genuinely good and that nobody will fully appreciate until they stop experiencing the problems they fixed:

• Players cannot activate exfil beacons while downed. The crawl-to-exfil era is now official. You will need to survive, or your crewmate will need to carry both the extraction and you.
• Decreased camera shake from incoming melee and knife attacks. Getting knifed used to feel like someone put your head in a washing machine. Now it merely feels like a bad day.
• Post-run spectator timeout increased from 30 to 120 seconds. You now have two full minutes to watch the person who killed you continue to succeed. Enjoy this gift.
• Fixed finisher being used on players completing a self-revive, re-downing them. This was as evil as it sounds. It no longer exists. A small concession to basic decency.
• Hacked status effect reduced in intensity and glitch crawl speed. The screen is now merely unpleasant rather than completely unreadable. Progress.
• Fixed AI freezing in place and then teleporting to deal massive damage. The AI was buffering. It now buffers less. Your cause of death will be more honest.
• USC spawn animations now play associated audio. You will hear them coming. Whether you do anything useful with this information is entirely your problem.
• Lowered the range at which you can hear other players in combat. The soundscape is slightly less chaotic. Use this moment of quiet to reflect on your positioning choices.
• Loadout banner warning when full of items. The game will now tell you, gently, that you have no room for anything else and that continuing to loot is philosophically pointless.
• Rook runner level requirement removed: playable at level zero. New players can jump straight into Rook. They will still die, but now they can die in style immediately.