How to increase your Cryo Archive Security Clearance Level in Marathon

Marathon's Cryo Archive is a maze, made only more complicated to navigate by the fact that you need Security Clearance to access most areas. It's a system unique to this endgame map, and it's not immediately obvious what it is and how to increase it.

But if you want to extract from the ship in one piece, let alone with any high-end loot from the elusive vaults, then you need to understand how Security Clearance works. And preferably, you'll find out before you queue into a match with your loot on the line.

Marathon Cryo Archive Security Clearance Level explained

Security Clearance is a mechanic unique to Cryo Archive (it even works differently than the similarly themed security cards on Outpost), 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:

• Killing UESC and taking their small red Security Tags, which are worth one point each. You don't need to do anything with them besides keep them in your inventory, and it'll collate your team's total.
• Killing other players and looting any Security Tags they might have.
• Hacking Security Clearance terminals which will give you three points towards your level once activated. These points can't be lost like those from Security Tags can be.

My recommendation is to clear the area your team spawns into, which should get you to around Security Clearance 2. At this point, you can either continue farming bots and finding terminals to hack, playing it safe in your starting zone, or you can brave another team's wing to kill them and steal their keycards.

Generally speaking, you'll need to steal another team's keycards to progress your Security Clearance fast enough to still have time for top-tier map events like the vaults. So if you've got eyes on the prize, you've got to be ambitious.

You should also distribute your Security Tags among your team. If a teammate dies, their tags will no longer contribute to your team's total, so you could find yourself trapped until you can retrieve their tags or revive them.

Each Security Clearance Level gives you access to more parts of the map. For example, you need to reach Security Clearance 3 to be able to activate an Exfil Station, so it's effectively the minimum you'll need to meet to be able to complete a run on this map. Meanwhile, you need Security Clearance 3 and 4 to access all six of the vaults where all the best loot is hiding, and level 5 gives you access to a secret treasure trove after the Compiler boss fight.