Marathon’s Cryo Archive saga has reached its final stage, with one more step required until players can delve into the game’s fourth and final map. While this last task is not a wild puzzle requiring many minds to crack like we’ve seen in the ARG, it may prove quite the time sink. Players must wipe out up to 500m UESC robots.

As of writing, we’re at roughly 330.5m kills per this wonderful fan-made Marathon API website. As such, we’re around 66.1 percent done. At this rate with no developer help, Cryo Archive will be playable next week, not before this weekend. Taking down PvE UESC robots is now priority number one.

Now 500m sounds like a lot, and it is, but the good news is this kill count has been ticking over for a while now. First spotted in the API of the ARG website, the number of UESC kills have been tracked while players have been solving puzzles or just playing the game regularly. So there’s not been much ‘wasted time’. Still, there’s a lot left to go.

On top of that, there are indications that this process may be sped up a little. A recent post made on the Marathon Discord server indicates that kill progress may be impacted by exponential progress. The theory is, as we get closer to the 500m figure, each UESC kill will count for more than one. So there’s a chance progress will hasten as the days progress. Maybe Bungie thinks we’re taking too long.

So what does taking out these robots actually do? Well, in the Marathon Discord a new activity has been revealed. This is basically a symbol match game – current 25×42 tiles in size. Players have to match all the tiles within three minutes to complete the game. Sounds hard? It is! But for every one million UESC robots taken out, this grid shrinks just a little. So it’s a two-sided effort. Some players are tackling this grid to the best of their abilities, while others are playing the game and killing robots.

We know a little more about Cryo Archive today than we did last week, courtesy of teaser trailers and in-game Cryo Archive challenges being added. If you’re looking to kill two birds with one stone, you can take out some UESC robots while checking out the new experimental duo queue which is available to play at the moment.