How to extract from Cryo Archive in Marathon

It’s fine and dandy loading into Cryo Archive in Marathon and looting it for all its worth—seriously, there’s high-end loot everywhere—but you actually need to escape for it to count. The Cryo Archive extract system functions very differently from the other maps, where you casually stroll on over to an exfil beacon and beam outta there.

You’ll no doubt find this out the hard way on your first run, when your backpack is full and you’re looking to make an escape: ‘wait, where are the exits?!‘ I’ll explain the full process below.

How to extract from Cryo Archive in Marathon

The Exfil Stations on Cryo Archive are hidden, so you won’t have access to them right away. To extract, you need to:

1. Raise your Security Clearance to level 3—you can see your current progress in the top right corner.
2. Visit an Exfil Station to mark your team’s Secret Exfil—you can pinpoint the location of Exfil Stations (and other priority interactibles like Batteries) by using Scanners, large computer screens found in the walls of many rooms.
3. Race to your Secret Exfil, which often spawns on the other side of the map in one of the spawn locations, before the three-and-a-half-minute countdown runs out.

As you can see, it’s a lot more difficult to extract from Cryo Archive, so make sure you leave yourself enough time. You’ll need to reach Security Clearance 3, find an Exfil Station, and to reach the actual extract location. Don’t underestimate how long this will take.

You can also extract from Cryo Archives via a final extract, which will activate at the very end of the match. However, this extract won’t be marked on your map, so you’ll have to stumble upon it by chance, and that’s unlikely to happen. And if you’re one of the few players taking on the Compiler, then you can rest easy in the knowledge that there’s a unique extract available once you beat the boss.

As for Security Clearance, this is a mechanic unique to Cryo Archive, and you need to raise it to be able to interact with various doors, puzzles, and also extract. You can increase your Clearance level by:

1. Killing UESC and taking their Security Tags. You don’t need to do anything with them besides keep them in your inventory, and it’ll collate your team’s total.
2. Killing other players and looting any Security Tags they might have.
3. Hacking Security Clearance terminals which will give you three points towards your level once activated.