When you’re playing an extraction shooter, your inventory is one of the most important elements that you need to manage. The main goal of most drops is to acquire as much loot as possible, and if you have a small inventory, then you can’t take a ton of loot with you when you go to extract from the map. The same is true in Marathon, and the default backpack you’re given to start the game doesn’t hold an overwhelming number of inventory slots.
So, sooner rather than later, you’re going to want to increase the overall size of your backpack’s inventory. However, that’s easier said than done in Marathon, as it all comes down to good, old RNG. Below, we’ll walk you through how to upgrade your backpack and increase your inventory capacity in Marathon.
How to increase inventory slots in Marathon
While it might sound a little counterintuitive, the only way to increase your inventory size in Marathon is to equip a backpack. By default, your loadout comes with a standard backpack that’s able to hold eight inventory slots. This default backpack is equipped on your loadout at all times, even if you die, so you’ll always have at least eight slots in your inventory.
If you want additional slots, you’ll have to equip a better backpack. There are several more advanced backpacks that you can loot or purchase in Marathon, and most of them offer an extra eight inventory slots on top of your default eight slots, giving you a total of 16. You can also acquire even rarer backpacks that provide even more capacity, but those are difficult to come by.
When you manage to loot a more advanced backpack, you can equip it by going into your vault. From there, drag the backpack from the vault to the backpack slot directly to the right of your inventory. The backpack slot is on the bottom-right side of your inventory and has a bag icon on it. If you’re currently using any type of loadout, equipping a backpack will force you to swap out that loadout.
How to find rarer backpacks in Marathon
So, now that you know a better backpack allows you to increase your inventory size, how do you find one of these backpacks? Like most loot in an extraction shooter, there are two main ways to do this in Marathon: find and extract with one or purchase one from the Armory.
Rare backpacks can be looted on any of the maps in Marathon, either through regular looting or by killing an enemy player. We’ve had the most luck looting backpacks off enemy players, but we have managed to find a few of them in larger containers. Supply drops are a consistent way to secure a better backpack, but they make a lot of noise and draw enemies to you, so there’s a risk with calling one of those in.
As for the other method of getting a better backpack, there are some available in the Armory in Marathon that can be purchased with credits. However, if you’re looking at the CyberAcme Armory page, you can only purchase a backpack once you unlock the “Carrier” skill in the CyberAcme upgrade tree. This skill allows you to purchase an Enhanced Backpack, which carries eight extra inventory slots.
Further down the line, you can unlock an upgraded version of the Carrier skill, “Carrier+,” as well as the Max Looter skill, both of which allow you to purchase more advanced backpacks. Carrier+ allows you to buy a Deluxe Packpack, offering 16 extra inventory slots, and Max Looter allows you to buy a Superior Backpack, offering 24 extra slots.
For the most part, though, you’ll find that Enhanced (green) Backpacks are what you’ll use a majority of the time in Marathon. They’re fairly easy to find, not that expensive in the Armory, and provide you with enough capacity in your inventory that you’re not having to sacrifice too much loot during a run in Marathon.
Of course, you can always use a free loadout and use the default eight inventory slots in an effort to secure a better backpack for future runs. That way, you’re not carrying any additional risk when you drop into a map.
