Marathon Ammo Economy Guide: How To Stop Running Empty
Running dry while a hostile runner pushes your position is the fastest way to lose your sanity on Tau Ceti.
I spent my first ten runs in Marathon completely broke. I wandered around hostile territory with nothing but a desperate hope that the next room held a loose magazine. The extraction shooter genre is built on resource management, but the current ammo economy feels deliberately punishing. If you walk into this game expecting enemies to explode into a shower of ammunition, you are going to find yourself dead and bankrupt within an hour.
You need to fundamentally change how you view bullets in this game. They are a severely limited asset. Most players complaining about ammo scarcity on forums do not even know they are already carrying a massive resupply in their pockets. I am going to break down exactly how this brutal economy functions, how to stop wasting your money, and how to actually survive.
The Secret Ammo Bag Fix
Before you throw your keyboard through the monitor, there is a built-in mechanic that fundamentally solves the early game ammo drought.
Most players are completely ignoring their own equipment. When you burn through your cash reserves, the game offers a default free loadout so you can still deploy. The common complaint is that this free kit only gives you enough ammunition for about one standard firefight. Runners are dropping in, shooting a single security guard, and then realizing that they are out of bullets.
Press The G Key
You need to look at your inventory. The default free loadout comes equipped with a deployable ammo bag.
If you are running the free kit and your gun clicks empty, press the G key on your keyboard. Your runner will literally throw a heavy bag of ammunition onto the ground that you and your squad can use to completely resupply. It is a massive lifeline provided by the developers, and the vast majority of the community is bleeding out in the dirt because they refuse to read their equipment slots. I felt like an absolute idiot when I finally figured it out. Do not make my mistake. Drop the bag.
The New Math of Gunfights
Having a free ammo bag helps, but it will not fix your long term economy. You have to change how you approach combat entirely.
The biggest misconception new players have is treating AI enemies like walking resupply stations. I learned this lesson the hard way. The AI enemies in Marathon currently do not drop ammo upon death. They might drop other crafting components or salvage, but they will leave you completely dry on ballistics.
The AI Tax
This creates a massive economic reality that you must accept immediately. Every single AI fight is mathematically negative unless it blocks your primary objective.
If you see a patrol of guards wandering down a hallway, pulling the trigger is the worst financial decision you can make. Every bullet fired into an AI is lost money. You cannot shoot your way out of an ammo deficit. If you take an unnecessary fight against the local wildlife or security forces, you must accept that the resources you spent are gone forever. The AI is simply a tax on your progression. You are paying a toll in lead to walk through a room.
Players Are Potential Profit
Fighting other runners is the only combat scenario that offers any potential return on investment. Even then, it is a massive gamble. You spend bullets to take their gear, but if they are as broke as you are, you just wasted heavy ammo to loot a cracked helmet and an empty pistol. You have to assess whether a rival squad actually looks like they are carrying valuable salvage before you engage.
Loot Rooms Over Firefights
The mindset has to shift if you want to stay solvent. Sneaking past a patrol to reach a weapon locker is infinitely more valuable than clearing a room. Ammo is incredibly scarce in the wild and seems to spawn almost exclusively inside dedicated armories and security rooms. You will rarely find it sitting inside generic loot boxes. Prioritize stealth and looting over loud, pointless gunfights.
The Armory Bankruptcy Trap
If you cannot find bullets in the wild, you are forced to buy them back at the base. This is exactly where the game aggressively drains your bank account.
Vendor prices are currently exorbitant. Dropping 300 credits just to secure 40 rounds of heavy ammo is a terrible return on investment. If you die a few times in a row, your cash reserves simply vanish. I hit a point where my mandatory faction upgrades were eating up all my money, leaving me completely unable to afford the basic light ammo required to load into a raid.
Vault Liquidation
I watched my entire squad resort to selling huge swaths of our hard earned vault stash just to afford a few stacks of ammunition for one run. Stripping your permanent progression just to buy disposable bullets is a miserable feeling. You are mortgaging your future on Tau Ceti just to shoot a gun for ten minutes. Stop doing this.
Tactical Adjustments For Survival
Knowing about the ammo bag and avoiding the AI tax is great, but you still need to change your physical playstyle if you want to build up a healthy stockpile.
The Rook Farming Strategy
If you are entirely out of cash, stop trying to play aggressively. You need to equip the free loadout, specifically utilizing a character like Rook, and drop into a raid with the sole intention of farming.
Do not hunt other players. Do not engage the AI unless they force your hand. Use your free kit, drop your ammo bag if you get cornered, scavenge whatever weapon lockers you can find, and sprint straight to an extraction point. You have to treat these runs as pure salvage operations. Pulling a few stacks of light ammo out of a raid without spending a single dollar is the only way to slowly rebuild your economy. It is not glamorous, but survival rarely is.
