How to Play as Thief in Marathon

Marathon's thief shell is undoubtedly the wildcard of the bunch, giving runners the ability to pickpocket their opponents using a deployable drone, but there's a lot more going on beneath the surface than just common thievery.

Thanks to the long-distance range of the pickpocket drone and the ability to ping targets while you're piloting it, the thief doubles as an exceptional scout—spotting potential ambushes, or prey, from a safe distance.

At the end of the day, it's all about the loot, and the thief is the best in the business. In this guide, I'll show you how to take advantage of the thief's loot-locating X-Ray Visor, and how to steal items from unsuspecting runners.

Thief Abilities, Explained

Pickpocket Drone (Prime): Deploy a remotely piloted flying drone with a limited lifespan. While piloting the drone, fire a hooked tether that can eject the highest-value item from target inventories, collect and store loose loot, and open doors.

You can exit pilot mode and return to your shell, and re-enter pilot mode as long as the drone still has battery.

Grapple Device (Tactical): Launch a grapple device in your aim direction, propelling yourself toward it.

X-Ray Visor (Trait): Activate your visor, highlighting hostiles and containers in the color of the most valuable item they're storing. Containers are revealed through walls, while hostiles require line of sight.

While active, aiming at a hostile for a short time hacks their optics, disrupting their vision until you look away.

The Finer Things (Trait): Gain increased weapon handling and accelerated Grapple Device recharge rate based on the number of items in your Backpack.

Loot Goblin Activated

In extraction shooters, locating valuable loot isn't always easy. Fortunately, the thief's X-Ray Visor trait gives you an advantage when it comes to securing the best items in the area.

Activate your x-ray visor when approaching buildings, to have a better chance at locating clusters of high-value loot containers, such as the ones seen in the picture above.

This is a great way to get stocked up on resources needed for faction upgrades, and to find weapons and rare mods.

How to Steal Items

The thief's prime ability, the pickpocket drone, is not only insanely fun to use, in the right hands, it becomes a tactical tool providing valuable recon for your team and disrupting the game plan of your enemies.

When you're piloting the pickpocket drone and you've found a squad of runners to steal from (seen above) you'll need to fly the drone fairly close to them, so your hooked tether will be in range.

When you're in striking distance, fire the tether to eject an item from their inventory.

The item you ejected will flop onto the ground in front of your prey, as seen in the picture above. Aim at the item and fire your hooked tether once again in order to retrieve it.

Your stolen goods will be placed in the drone's storage, which you can access once you safely pilot the drone back to your shell (seen above).

When you're attempting to steal items from enemy squads, you'll only have a couple of seconds to snag an item and fly away before they notice you and destroy the drone, so you'll need to perform these actions in quick succession.

Best Team Compositions

Heists don't always go as planned, so it's a good idea to bring a medic along for the joyride. Triage might be pound-for-pound the most impactful shell in Marathon when it comes to playing squads, as they increase your chances of survival exponentially thanks to med-drone healing and speedy reboots.

To compliment the thief's deceptive, disruptive abilities, join forces with a reliable assassin and watch as your vault overflows with loot.

When paired together, the assassin and thief have the opportunity to aggravate enemy squads, cause confusion, and strategically pick opponents apart.

One potential strategy is to utilize the thief's pickpocket drone to distract your enemies, which creates an opportunity for the assassin to launch a surprise attack from a different direction.