The mid season update is HERE! Bungie released Marathon patch 1.0.6 today, which is by far the largest and most impactful update to the game so far. We break down the most important changes below!
Recon Shell Buffs
In theory, Recon should have always been a very solid Shell to play. Being able to Echo Pulse and ping all the enemies around you as well as having a spider bot Tracker Drone that chases enemies down for you is an amazing kit - but in practice it underperformed. The Echo Pulse pings were impossible to distinguish between UESC and enemy Runners, and the spider bot’s pathfinding resulted in it rarely finding the mark. Bungie took notice, and has updated Recon with the following changes:
- Echo Pulse
- The visibility of the pulse wave has been reduced for enemy Runners, making it harder to tell when you’ve used the ability
- The pulse pings now distinguish between UESC and enemy Runners
- Signal Jammer, which used to block pulse pings completely, now make you appear as UESC instead
- Tracker Drone
- The bot’s tracking strength and turn rates have been improved
- The bot’s travel speed while it is searching for a target has been reduced to help prevent the bot from overshooting tight corners/doorways and missing its mark
- If the bot can no longer reach its target for whatever reason, it will now attempt to find a new target instead
These are great improvements to the Shell and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it's play rate take a meaningful jump up in the coming weeks!
C.A.R.R.I.
Also known as CyberAcme Runner Reinforcement Initiative, will reward Runners with CyberAcme commendations for any of the following:
- Helping Crewmates complete contract objectives
- Completing contract objectives as a solo Runner
- Successfully exfiling as a Rook
These Commendations can be used in the C.A.R.R.I. Armory to buy Salvage Crates that will grant you either a random stack of Salvage items or Reputation Packs that provide Faction Rep. Salvage Crates will refresh daily while other C.A.R.R.I. offers can only be purchased once.
This is a nice change to add an additional boost to progression speed, especially if you have been struggling to exfil with materials needed for Faction Upgrades. In addition to C.A.R.R.I., Runner and Faction reputation gains have been increased for solo players across the board, and contract reputations gains have been increased for all players.
New Equipment, Chips, and Implants
Bungie is adding fresh items to the game!
- Equipment:
- Depleted Self Revive kits can be found during Solo runs and allow you to revive if you go down - cannot be extracted
- Added the Mercy Kit which allows you to revive downed enemy Runners and all Rooks will spawn with one. This opens the door to interesting alliances once things cool off after a firefight!
- Chips:
- Common Enemy - damaging enemies causes them to take increased damage from other Runners for a short duration
- Pocket Change - reloading quickly after a kill or a down drops ammo of the weapon’s type
- Exit Buddy - downing or killing an enemy grants your and nearby allies increased movement speed for a short duration
- Implants:
- Group Therapy - using a medical items grant you and nearby allies a stacking bonus to your Self-Repair Speed for a short time
- Herd Immunity - defeating hostiles grants you and nearby allies a stacking bonus to Hardware and Firewall stats for a short time
- Fight Club - striking hostiles with a melee or knife attack grants you and nearby allies a stacking bonus to Melee Damage for a short time
- Divebomb - when you damage an enemy with explosives, you and nearby allies gain a large temporary boost to Agility
- Evasive Maneuvers - when your shields break, you and nearby allies gain increased sprint speed and Heat Capacity for a short time.
11 New Deluxe Unique Weapons
Bungie has added some Unique weapon drops to both Perimeter and Dire Marsh that drop from Showcase encounters. These uniques are similar to the Prestige Uniques found in Cryo Archive Locked Rooms, but have a power level more aligned with deluxe (blue) weapon counterparts.
This means that each Unique comes with a “specially designed sweetener that can only be found on that version of the weapon” which is really freakin’ cool. It’s always nice to find a blue weapon drop during a match, but to find weapons that are completely different than any possible mod combination that you can put on standard weapons is awesome. It will make boss fights and looting so much more suspenseful and way more accessible than them only existing in Cryo!
Much Much More…
There is also a long list of weapon balancing changes, mod updates, bug fixes, new skins, rewards pass updates, and improvements that can be found in the full patch notes, but we covered what I think are the biggest and most fun updates above!
This update fixes a lot of community complaints, and so far the feedback seems to be overwhelmingly positive. I can’t wait to hop into the game and check everything out!
See you on Tau Ceti!