Cutthroat Competition Walkthrough in Marathon

The first Traxus Contract in Marathon after the Introducing: Traxus mission involves searching for Rod Salvage in Maintenance, a POI on Dire Marsh. Rod Salvage can usually be found on tables and in crates within the central Maintenance building, but it might serve you well to know more.

Below, we’ve shared where you can get Deimosite Rods, Cetinite Rods, and Ballistic Turbines, which can all be used to complete this quest. After you’ve acquired these goodies, it’s time to extract, so check out the useful walkthrough of Cutthroat Competition in Marathon below.

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How to Loot Rod Salvage in Marathon to Complete Cutthroat Competition

Rod Salvage can be found in Maintenance, which is a POI in Dire Marsh. The “Cutthroat Competition” Contract from Traxus requires you to collect any of the following:

• Deimosite Rods
• Cetinite Rods
• Ballistic Turbines

Enhanced Rod Salvage has a green rarity, and you will need to collect two of them. However, if you manage to find a Deluxe (blue rarity), then you just need that one. All three available Rod Salvage can be found in Maintenance, and we had the most luck in checking the lower levels of the central building.

You won’t need any access cards or keys to get through, but there might be a few hostile UESC and Runners here. Rods will spawn randomly in Maintenance, so it’s a good idea to head here as soon as you drop in so that other Runners don’t find and take all the loot.

Once you’ve found your Rod Salvage, it’s time to extract. We recommend extracting immediately instead of continuing to loot, because if you die, you will be forced to do it all over again.

You can extract when the timer reaches 20 minutes. After, check the map and locate an Exfil zone. There should be one in Maintenance, but it’s random, so you might have to take a detour.

Once you’ve activated the Exfil Zone, you will need to wait for the transmitter to materialize, then you can stand and wait for the 10-second countdown. We recommend finding some cover during this phase, as the last thing you want is to get killed after your scavenging run.

Now that you’ve successfully exfilled with Enhanced or rarer Rod Salvage, you can return to the Traxus Faction screen and claim your rewards from the Priority Contract. This will then open the next part of the Traxus quest, which we’ll have a guide for shortly.

Struggling to navigate through the dangers of Dire Marsh? Check out GameRant’s interactive map for Dire Marsh so that you can master the map before your next run!

Released

March 5, 2026

ESRB

Teen / Animated Blood, Language, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op