Marathon’s first full seasonal reset is right around the corner. Bungie has confirmed that Season 2: NIGHTFALL begins on June 2, bringing a new Night Marsh zone, a new Runner shell, new weapons, and a Runner shell stat customization system called The Cradle. We’ve been watching Marathon’s first few months play out as a steady stream of patches to try and address the player count slide that started just days after launch. Season 2 is the first real test of whether Bungie can pull Runners back in with new content rather than course-correcting on what shipped in March.
Before NIGHTFALL drops, Update 1.0.9 lands next Tuesday with a clear “go crazy, the slate’s getting wiped soon anyway” energy. Locked room keys are now guaranteed to drop from Wardens for the remainder of the season, and map events like Intercept, Lockdown, Warden spawns, Convoy, and Anomaly will be guaranteed on every run. UESC presence is also scaling up across Tau Ceti IV, with new Warden encounters at Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and Outpost POIs, plus increased UESC dropship flyovers and crash sites that Runners can loot. Bungie is also teasing a new threat coming to Dire Marsh and Perimeter that it isn’t quite ready to detail.
The most interesting change in Update 1.0.9, though, is a complete rework of how Key Templates function. Bungie has been pretty open that the current system hasn’t been fun, since getting downed and losing your key has incentivized passive play, where Runners hide on the map until they can exfil. For the rest of Season 1, Templates will be Compromised rather than Fragile, meaning Runners will hunt for Matter Fixatives that drop from Commanders and other enemies to charge their keys. The big shift is that keys can no longer be destroyed mid-match and can now be looted off other crews you take down. There’s also a new chance for Deluxe keys to drop from every wall safe, which is a nice secondary loot incentive for anyone who’s been ignoring safes because they didn’t feel rewarding enough.
Bungie is also giving Cryo Archive, which it self-deprecatingly calls the “lose everything factory,” some extra love before the reset. The map will be available every single day from May 21 through the end of the season, and Bungie is mailing out a free Cryo Archive Sponsored Kit daily during that stretch so players don’t have to dip into their own gear to run it. For the ranked crowd, Marathon’s competitive queue gets a sendoff with Cryo Archive: Ranked from May 24 at 10:00 AM Pacific (1:00 PM Eastern) to May 28 at 10:00 AM Pacific (1:00 PM Eastern), serving as the grand closure to Season 1’s Ranked queue.
Speaking of Ranked, end-of-season rewards are based on the highest rank reached during Season 1, not where you happen to finish. Emblems scale from Bronze Runner all the way up to Pinnacle Runner, and the bigger rewards (the Glacial Impact Destroyer Shell style at Gold III, the Toolkit Stryder M1T weapon style at Platinum I, the Glacial Strafe Bully SMG style at Diamond I, and the Expanse Repeater HPR style at Pinnacle I) are all permanent unlocks once claimed. Ranked titles like Gilded Survivor at Gold I and Ascendant Survivor at Pinnacle I work a little differently. They carry over for one additional season after the one in which they were earned, so the Season 1 Gilded Survivor title can still be displayed in Season 2 but doesn’t automatically follow you into Season 3 unless you climb back to Gold I again.
As expected, the reset itself is going to wipe a lot of progress. Runner Level, Ranked Level, Faction Level and Upgrades, credits, all inventory and Vault items, and most Priority Contracts are all going. What’s safe: cosmetics, Codex challenge progress (outside of Runner and Ranked levels), Rewards Pass progress, LUX and SILK balances, Cryo Archive Subroutines progress, and faction access (so no need to repeat Liaison Contracts). Any unclaimed gear and equipment reward packages will reset, which means anyone sitting on a backlog of unredeemed packages will want to claim them before June 2. Cosmetic items, including styles, titles, and emblems, will autocomplete at the end of the season and be available in Season 2 automatically.
To soften the reset, CyberAcme is dropping Sponsored Kits based on each player’s final Runner Level. Hitting Level 10 unlocks an Enhanced CyberAcme Sponsored Kit, Level 25 unlocks another, Level 50 unlocks a Deluxe CyberAcme Sponsored Kit, and Level 75 unlocks a Superior CyberAcme Sponsored Kit. They’re additive, so anyone who hits Level 75 walks into Season 2 with all four kits waiting in the Codex.
Honestly, NIGHTFALL is going to be one of the most important moments in Marathon’s run so far. Bungie has been responsive throughout Season 1 with patches addressing UESC difficulty, adding ranked mode just two weeks after launch, and rolling out solo player improvements with Update 1.0.6, but a new zone, a new Runner shell, and a customization system is a different kind of pitch. It’s the first real chance Bungie has had to bring lapsed Runners back with something genuinely new rather than fixes to what’s already there. Full reveals are coming the week of May 25, so we’ll find out a lot more about The Cradle and what Night Marsh actually looks like in just under two weeks.
