The best Marathon faction upgrades add noticeable boosts to your stats to help you during runs and make some of the best gear in the game easier to access. Many upgrades are worth getting simply because they unlock essential consumables and Implants in the Marathon Armory, so being able to buy some core loadout gear, or even get it for free, can take the sting away from losing your gear. Although only some of the factions are worth heavily investing in, so here are the faction upgrades that I strongly recommend and how to unlock them at all.
Best faction upgrades in Marathon
Overall, I've found the Marathon faction upgrades from CyberAcme, NuCaloric, and Sekiguchi to be the most useful early on, with good improvements that will improve your Marathon Runner Shell's capabilities, and essential Armory wares to ensure you can go into any run stocked up – bear in mind that Marathon Schemas can give you more Armory options too. But all the Marathon factions have something to offer, so here are the best upgrades to prioritize for each faction when you start ranking them up:
Best CyberAcme upgrades
- Expansion: Increases vault space, which you will run out of quickly.
- Informant.exe: An early-game boost to the value of data cards, helping you get more Credits.
- Carrier and Carrier+: Unlocked Enhanced and Deluxe Backpacks for purchase in the CyAc Armory respectively. Backpacks are quite hard to find unless you're looting other players.
- Scavenger.exe: Increases Loot Speed stat, revealing items faster when looting a container.
- Heat Sink.exe: Increases Heat Capacity stat, so that you can sprint and slide more before overheating.
Best NuCaloric upgrades
- Safeguard, Advanced Shields, and Safeguard+: These three upgrades are arguably the most useful in the game, giving you access to free regular Shield Charges and Advanced Shield Charges every day, which helps reduce the amount of Credits you spend on these vital healing items.
- Restore, Advanced Patch, and Restore+: As above, these upgrades are also very important, granting access to free regular Patch Kits and Advanced Patch Kits every day too.
- Shielded: Unlocks Enhanced Shields in the NuCaloric Armory, letting you always go into a run with at least a green shield.
- Recovery.exe: Increases the rate at which healing consumables restore your health and shields.
- Self-Revive: Allows you to purchase Self-Revives in the Armory. These are hard to find during runs, unless you're looting them off other players, so being able to buy them freely is a huge help.
Best Traxus upgrades
- Enhanced Heavy Submachine Gun: Unlocks a Bully loaded with Enhanced attachments in the Armory, which is a solid initial loadout weapon.
- MIPS Sniper: Unlocks the Longshot Sniper Rifle in the Armory, and snipers are some of the best weapons in Marathon right now, while also being quite rare.
Best MIDA upgrades
- Flex Matrix.exe: Increases the Agility stat, increasing your Runner's movement speed and jump height.
- Survivor, Graceful, and Sprinter: Adds to the Armory the Survival Kit, Graceful Landings, and Bionic Leg Upgrades Implants respectively, all of which are very solid Implants to pack in your loadout.
Best Arachne upgrades
- Hard Strike.exe: Increases quick melee and knife damage. As our Marathon tips mention, your knife is surprisingly powerful and great for keeping noise to a minimum, so any boost to damage will help a lot.
- Cutthroat.exe: Increases your Finisher Siphon stat, increasing the amount of shields you regenerate after performing a finisher on a Runner.
- Reboot.exe: Increases your Revive Speed stat which speeds up reviving teammates and using Self-Revives.
- MIPS Shotgun: Unlocks the WSTR Shotgun for purchase in the Armory, which is one of the best guns in the game.
Best Sekiguchi upgrades
- Core upgrades for whichever Runners you play the most: Every Runner Shell has their own upgrade in the Sekiguchi upgrade tree which unlocks two Enhanced Cores for them in the Armory, allowing you to easily fill your loadout with useful Shell-specific Cores.
- Tac Amp.exe: Increases your Tactical Recovery stat, which reduces the cooldown time of your Tactical and Trait abilities.
- Head Start.exe: When you start a run, your Tactical ability starts half charged which can really help if you get into a fight early on in a match.
- Harvester and Capacitors: Adds to the Armory the Energy Harvesting and Augmented Capacitors Implants respectively, which are both good to use if you want to use your shell's tactical or prime ability more often.
How to unlock faction upgrades in Marathon
The process for unlocking faction upgrades is split into two stages as every faction has a faction rank and salvage requirement. Faction upgrades cannot be purchased at all unless you meet their rank requirement, so you need to earn reputation to increase your faction rank sufficiently. The main way you gain reputation for a faction is by completing their contracts, but there are specific ways of gaining reputation which are laid out in our Marathon Factions guide. Some upgrades also require a previous upgrade to be purchased before they become available too, so hitting a specific rank isn't always the only prerequisite.
Once you unlock an upgrade for purchase by reaching the required faction rank, you then need to pay for it using the listed Salvage items and Credits to gain its benefits. If you don't have enough of what's needed, you'll have to complete runs and scavenge for what you need – make sure you track the listed Salvage so that you can easily see where to get to get it on the map!
Furthermore, as you buy more of a particular faction's upgrades, you'll also start unlocking capstone upgrades for that faction, but these are completely free. Capstone upgrades generally include things like increased reputation gains for that particular faction, improved starting gear for Rook, and access to Advanced Sponsor Kits and better gear in their Armory menu.
However, you need to be aware that these are seasonal faction upgrades too. The start of a new season in Marathon also includes a total wipe of all your faction progress, meaning you'll have to rank up and unlock upgrades all over again, but there might also be new upgrades to unlock.
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