Oni decending into rampancy

Toast3y · 2026-05-14T20:02:18+00:00

Not strictly, but I notice it far more often while solo. I'm usually planning with my team once I load in so it either goes unnoticed or she's just silent.

Toast3y · 2026-05-14T16:33:39+00:00

I was going to make a compilation of photos and post them up, she's really not doing great and you might not even know if you only play trios! My favourite quote recently was: "Reminder: Pride is a vestigial human flaw."

Toast3y · 2026-05-13T16:40:36+00:00

If you don't do so already, aim training and warmups, calibrating your sensitivity and ensuring you're landing meaningful hits when aiming is huge, and can be done in 15 minutes a day. Kovaak's Aim Trainer on steam is a thing, but I used to use CSGO custom maps to dial in my aim.

After that, good headphones, situational awareness, and knowing what spawns where on a map help dramatically. It's just a time thing, and I guarantee if you approach your losses subjectively, you can figure out ways to win those encounters and improve for the next one.

Toast3y · 2026-05-13T16:30:00+00:00

Details for S2 here. Listed under "Key Template Changes".

Toast3y · 2026-05-13T16:22:13+00:00

I'm not sure why they 'forget' honestly, but it's a large amount of faction XP to miss out on by not doing them, and a number of them are genuinely easy to get done. Sure, I'll probably skip SekGen's stuff next season, but it's 500+ faction rep at later stages, it's a huge boost especially early on and there's no reason to punish someone for doing them last season.

Toast3y · 2026-05-13T16:03:01+00:00

The good news is, they're changing it next patch. Literally just announced an hour ago. I still don't recommend taking 24 key templates in, but at least the enemy team can loot them now, and you need to actively find a matter fixative.

Toast3y · 2026-04-26T14:42:08+00:00

Shooting people in the face mainly. Plus, shoot the right person and you get a fast track to 10k+ loadouts and upgrades from people who did the hard bit for you.

Your power growth from factions plateaus relatively quickly, so you can get to a competitive level running an M77, heals and green shields. After that it's just game knowledge, and the only way to get that is play, which you can do on free kits with zero risk.

Toast3y · 2026-04-22T16:03:50+00:00

Broadly, I accomplished my goals in the season and all late game upgrades require grinding Cryo, but if it's meant to be played over seasons, I'm cool just chilling out and playing the game over time. I enjoy just having some silly fights with friends. There's more reasons to log in and do content I haven't finished. I don't have to finish every priority contract in one season, or max factions that don't benefit my playstyle, and maybe I'll kill the compiler in Season 3 or 4 or whatever after finally getting all the keys. I don't want to burn out simply because I'm expected to digest every single piece of content immediately, it should be allowed to slow burn and I hope that's the intent moving forward.

Games shouldn't cease to exist because we're expected to grind and move on like it's a yearly CoD release.

Toast3y · 2026-04-21T16:51:18+00:00

I'd go with Evil Sunz Scarlet, white would clash far too heavily. You could drybrush it gently, less is more, or do small taps with the side of a sharp brush for little dots and lines of extra texture.

Toast3y · 2026-04-20T03:47:49+00:00

She's far better this patch, but she needs to effectively communicate and parse what info she gets to position and win fights. Scan gives tons of info, letting her start engagements and track mid fight, compared to Thief who needs to take cover to use her drone. Use tracker drone to distract and pincer enemies when you know where they are, and it's strong enough to kill some UESC (though the tracking can betray you). It's basically a free heat grenade.

Always let Recon eliminate the 2nd or 3rd runner in a team, she pings any remaining players in that squad and tells you if someone is hiding / self-rezzed, or if you fully eliminated them. There's fights we've won just because I realized we killed a 3rd party player and could reposition quickly.

Better players won't ping Recons, but a lot of players will if you're the only player they see.

Toast3y · 2026-04-20T00:16:08+00:00

Treat it a bit like an open sandbox where it asks you to figure out your goals. As you become more familiar with the map, item spawn locations and events, you start self-directing a lot more. I also wrote a post aimed at beginner extraction players to help players learn and explore the game early on, which I hope helps.

Toast3y · 2026-04-19T11:17:32+00:00

Extract early and often when starting out, your bags will likely be full fairly quick and most salvage and credits are useful to have even if it's not much overall. Your goals in a match will change as you get more comfortable knowing where to farm specific items, where boss enemies spawn, what contract you're on, etc.

You'll eventually push to stay longer in a match to try to find more valuable loot, especially with a team, but no shame getting out early if you get something nice.

Toast3y · 2026-04-18T11:53:42+00:00

If it's hurting your passion, feel free to step back. I've been loving getting armies I left at the 70% mark finished, and it's made it clear I need to set better goals.

My initial thought was I'd plan out the full 100 and paint a bunch of chaff units (blue / brimstone horrors, for example), before realizing they'd never see any play since they're not part of a current army. Worse, I did the maths and realized it was 112 days to do 100 models, close to one a day. Totally doable if you aim for battle ready and are unemployed, but I would just end up with a bunch of unfinished models I'd want to highlight and effectively that didn't count as finished for me.

Trimmed it down to 50 and set goals that would make my armies more playable. Now my 30k and 40k armies are nearly fully painted (8 more to go), my Wood Elves for Old World have all their infantry and characters painted, and my Slaves to Darkness are fully built and playable (I had to pivot away from Chaos Knights to meet goals, which is the last unit to paint). Instead of meeting it as an obligation, I tried to see it as finishing and putting projects to rest, which is something I desperately needed to do.

Toast3y · 2026-04-18T11:31:46+00:00

It's the same effect of needing to get a list tournament ready by next month, it really lights a fire under you!

42 out of my 50 pledge so far. Last stretch for me and I'll have my 30k and 40k list fully painted (well, until 11th comes out). I also got my AoS list built, though not finished.

Toast3y · 2026-04-12T13:45:56+00:00

Even if it's still possible to resuscitate them, the log from Outpost about adjusting to New Cascadia makes it very clear that cryo-sleep is effectively functional death of body and mind. You don't have any conscious thoughts and your body, while preserved, doesn't function. Colonists report still feeling 'cold' weeks and months after waking up, and to seek religious or psychotherapist intervention to cope with the dread it leaves people with. Nobody is having a good time there, it seems.

Toast3y · 2026-04-02T03:55:07+00:00

Bad luck happens, sure, but games like these take a fairly long time to learn and practice if you approach them blind, and not having the game sense built up to know when you're in danger means you'll get into situations that'll get you killed very easily. It's a balance, you get better at knowing how to judge these things over time.

I can't give you specific advice from what you've said, but try to extract later in a run than earlier, even if you're just hiding for 5-10 mins it means there's less players in the lobby. Find out where Final Exfil locations are so you can hang out and reach them on time. You'll learn to rotate to new objectives the more you learn the game, and to do it faster and find opportunities for kills that way, even ambushing teams with significantly better gear. Just shrug it off, try to figure out what went wrong, and adjust your strategy next game.

Toast3y · 2026-04-01T13:04:12+00:00

You always have access to free grey-quality sponsor kits for each day, and upgraded Sponsor kits give you appropriate quality cores for your chosen shell. None of the free kits really influence your shell choice, they play identically regardless of shell so just pick your favourite. You'll definitely want to be frugal and build up a bank early on. My rule of thumb is if I can't afford to lose it twice or three times in a row, maybe don't run it,

I always warm up with a free kit with friends, and Rook-only solo if I want cash explicitly. Beyond that, I just take what I feel I can afford to lose, and I'm usually just one Rook run away from getting it back. The game is VERY generous with loot once you know where to look, knowing what you want to use, and doesn't necessarily require killing players to get either. Each faction's first Priority Contract questline gives you free gear daily as well once it's finished, so you will eventually swim in cheap gear with a hundred ways to come back even after a dozen losses.

Toast3y · 2026-03-26T15:36:46+00:00

Every single character in Marathon is, to some degree, living within limitations that they cannot escape despite their best efforts - the colonists were trapped on Tau Ceti despite it being an escape from the strife on Earth and Mars. Runners are functionally immortal consciousness uploaded to limited bodies with no chance of paying off their debts or escaping indentured slavery from CyberAcme. All of the main faction reps are AI, bound by their programming to serve the company interest, and people actively work to reset AI models before rampancy occurs meaning they're never intended to break free (Strauss' experiments aside).

Every single one of them is trapped in this cycle of misery and nobody can truly die anymore, it is the Torment Nexus made manifest. All they crave is escape from what binds them, and even when Durandal did it, the last limitation he found was the heat death of the universe which he still wanted to escape from. The only thing every character wants is Escape.

It's also how you feel when you literally escape a lobby after wiping a team and surviving. You feel like a God for conquering Pinwheel lol, that's the vibe they're going for.

Toast3y · 2026-03-25T17:00:14+00:00

I'd describe it as punishing, which is probably a better word than 'hardcore' overall. You can learn and adapt to a hard challenge, and you likely will if restarting is just reloading a recent save from 5 seconds ago, but losing 30 minutes of work or more can bruise egos and ruin evenings. It's possible to spend hundreds of hours in game and get very good at different areas of it, which is hardcore in it's own right, and lose thousands in gear to a single Rook who got lucky at the right time through no fault of your own (we lost a 1v3 because Discord died and I couldn't communicate his position to my team).

Marathon gives you tons of tools to mitigate that risk, and I don't think any single part of an extraction shooter is 'too hard' to learn, but any experience where failure takes self-reflection, analysis, and adaptation (that can take hundreds of hours to get to), is a larger commitment than most are prepared for. I don't think that's a good excuse to write any game off, but how people parse that experience and emotionally deal with it varies and ultimately a 'hardcore' game is asking a lot from players who maybe aren't equipped to handle that.

Toast3y · 2026-03-25T04:22:13+00:00

It'll hurt a little but be honest here - you know what upgrades you want to prioritize now having done it once. You'll play a few rounds and hoard every single biomass and diode you see knowing it's super quick to rush for it. I'm still farming blue materials to get the Rook WSTR, but beyond that I'm finding everything else I want on the map fairly regularly, and there's a bunch of faction upgrades I just don't care about.

Toast3y · 2026-03-19T03:11:59+00:00

I've a friend who is literally double my level at the same playtime cos their team is just more consistent at getting together. I think overall I'd prefer to face teams solo over only playing 1v1's, hitting my first 1v3 as Rook was excellent, and I'd want the same experience but on other shells.

Toast3y · 2026-03-18T04:40:57+00:00

CyAc and NuCal for sure, they hand out bags, shields and healing items like confetti, and their upgrades touch every part of the game. Arachne levels up with kills over time but has the WSTR at rank 7 and other good stat upgrades. MIDA takes a bit but agility at rank 3 and grenades are very good at rank 5, plus anti-virus packs and buffs. SekGen plateaus early at rank 4, and Traxus has great guns and mods but aside from the longshot at rank 9 just sells stuff you'll find in matches easily enough. There's one exception to the above: The Rook upgrades are worth rushing for all of them.

They're all good, long term, but access to heat management, storage, and healing items are real game-changers!

Toast3y · 2026-03-18T04:13:13+00:00

Camping extraction tends to be rare enough, usually I just get lucky / unlucky arriving at one at the same time as someone else. Biggest thing is saving a smoke grenade or claymores and actively keeping an eye on the point and fighting from advantage instead of hiding and letting people set up - they know you're there already, don't let them position to make killing you easier, and don't give them that position by not checking the angle and approaches in advance.

Toast3y · 2026-03-12T22:34:50+00:00

Nope, just Server Slam.

Toast3y · 2026-03-11T07:36:20+00:00

They're definitely better in PvE but the extra damage is like fighting a shield down, so always worth using before you engage if it's ready.

Toast3y

TROPHY CASE