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You just flatlined a rival Runner. Their body hits the dirt, and their loot scatters. You see a pristine weapon mod and a stack of valuable salvage. You sprint over to grab it, but the UI flashes red. Your bag is full.
Nothing hurts more in an extraction shooter.
When you first drop into Tau Ceti in Bungie’s Marathon, the game is deliberately brutal. You are handed a default backpack with a miserable eight inventory slots. It is barely enough room to carry extra ammo and a couple of medical patches. If you stumble across anything remotely valuable, you immediately have to start playing inventory Tetris or leave the good stuff rotting on the floor.
If you want to survive and actually make a profit, you need more space. But upgrading isn't entirely intuitive. It's not just a magic button you press in a menu.
Here is exactly how to increase your backpack inventory size in Marathon so you can finally stop leaving your hard-earned loot behind.
The Hard Truth: Backpacks Are Expendable
First, we need to clear up a massive misconception about how progression actually works in this game.
There is a strict difference between your Vault and your Backpack. Your Vault is the massive, permanent stash back at your home base. Your Backpack is the physical bag strapped to your shoulders during a live raid.
You cannot permanently "upgrade" your backpack capacity through a traditional skill tree. Instead, backpacks are treated as physical, disposable pieces of gear. If you get sniped at the extraction zone, you lose the bag and every single piece of loot inside it.
The only way to get more space during a run is to physically equip a higher-tier bag before you deploy, or rip one off a body in the wild.
By default, the game ensures you are never totally empty-handed. You will always have the standard 8-slot rig. But there are three upgraded variants you need to chase:
Enhanced Backpack (Green): Gives you 8 extra slots (16 total).
Deluxe Backpack (Purple): Gives you 16 extra slots (24 total).
Superior Backpack (Gold): Gives you 24 extra slots (32 total).
So, how do you actually get your hands on them consistently?
The Armory Route (Buying Your Space)
Relying on random luck to find a bag mid-raid is a terrible strategy. You want to be able to just buy one before every single drop.
You can purchase backpacks from the Armory using your credits, but Bungie locks them behind the CyberAcme (CyAc) progression tree. You have to earn the right to buy them.
1. Unlock the "Carrier" Skill This should be your absolute first priority the second you boot up the game. Once you level up the CyberAcme faction to Rank 5, you can purchase the "Carrier" node. This instantly unlocks the Enhanced (Green) Backpack in the Armory. From that point on, you can just throw a few credits at the vendor and drop into every raid with 16 slots. It completely changes the early game economy.
2. Pushing for "Carrier+" When you hit Rank 15 with CyAc, you get access to the "Carrier+" skill. This unlocks the Deluxe (Purple) Backpack in the store. Now you are running with 24 slots. This is the sweet spot for the vast majority of players. It gives you plenty of room to hoard loot without risking millions of credits if you die.
3. The "Max Looter" Capstone This is purely endgame territory. You need 30 purchased CyAc upgrade nodes to unlock Capstone Upgrade V, known as "Max Looter." It gives you the ability to buy the massive Superior (Gold) Backpacks. Honestly? Unless you are running with a highly coordinated, sweaty squad covering your blind spots, taking a 32-slot bag into a raid puts a massive target on your back.
The Scavenger Route (Stealing Your Space)
Maybe you are completely broke. You spent all your credits on heavy ammo and weapon mods, and you can't afford to buy an Enhanced bag from the Armory.
You are going to have to steal one.
Rare backpacks do spawn naturally in the wild on every map. You might get lucky and find one sitting in a high-tier supply crate inside a heavily guarded building or a supply drop.
But the absolute fastest, most reliable way to get a bigger bag is to take it from another player.
When you scan another Runner in the wild, look closely at their character model. The backpacks are visually distinct. If you see someone running with a massive, bulky pack, you know they have the inventory space. And if they have the space, they are absolutely carrying high-value loot.
Drop them. When you loot their body, you can literally drag their backpack from their inventory into your own loadout slot. Any items they had inside will dump onto the ground, and you instantly equip the extra storage. It is ruthless, but that is the entire point of the game.
Stop Hoarding, Start Extracting
Getting a bigger bag feels incredible. But it also creates a nasty psychological trap.
When you have 32 slots of open space, you get greedy. You start picking up useless scrap and low-tier weapon parts just to fill the empty squares. You stay in the raid way longer than you should. You get sloppy. And then you get killed.
Upgrade to the Enhanced or Deluxe bag as fast as humanly possible, but don't let the extra space make you arrogant. Grab the high-value items, ignore the junk, and get to the extraction zone.