Marathon started over for every player on Tuesday. The Nightfall Refresh sent credits, gear, Cradle enhancements and Faction upgrades back to their defaults, a reset Bungie presents as a way to put everyone on the same start line and get the in-game economy moving again.
Update 1.1.9.2 is the opening stage of Bungie's Marathon roadmap, which runs through December and March. Symbiosis arrives December 8 as the first permanent PvE mode.
Cryo Archive returns in Week 2 on Thursday, October 15, and now closes on Mondays instead of Sundays; Vault Breaker, the gentler Cryo Archive queue, comes back in Week 3. Sponsored Queues run Thursday through Monday each weekend, cycling Perimeter, Marsh and Night Marsh over three weeks until Symbiosis ships. Everyone who owns Marathon also gets a free NuCal-inspired Reward Pass with no time limit, and Outpost stays closed until Thursday.
Balance changes are aimed at the current meta. Bungie reworked the Repeater HPR and Hardline PR, dialed back the Magnum and DRRVSH, and made Recon's Echo Pulse less oppressive in fights against other teams. It also retuned the game for solo players, so encounters with the UESC should punish a lone runner less.
Symbiosis has the longer feature list for Marathon. Per Bungie, it adds a larger Perimeter shaped by a spreading fungal ecosystem, a Runner shell named Bishop built for fast melee bursts, a Team Deathmatch mode, a new onboarding flow, and a social space with a firing range. Bungie has not yet explained how the PvE mode plays and says a deeper look will arrive before launch. A connected PvE, PvP and PvEvP structure follows in March, along with a refactored Cradle, a quest system, new enemies and a new zone.
A wipe eight weeks before the game's first permanent PvE mode is a bet on player goodwill in Marathon. Returning players start from zero, so a free pass and a predictable weekend rotation have to keep them logging in until December 8.
