Salmon Run

Salmon Run is a co-op multiplayer mode in Splatoon 2 for up to four players. It can be played via local multiplayer (local wireless or LAN) at The Shoal, or online via Grizzco Industries during certain time slots.

Description
Each Salmon Run consists of three waves; to complete waves, players must collect and  by defeating Salmonids and depositing them at an egg basket. Each Boss Salmonid splatted yields three Golden Eggs; if they are not picked up, a Snatcher will appear after a few seconds to retrieve them. Each player can carry one Golden Egg at a time.

Each wave has a quota, which varies based on the number of players present. If the quota is not filled before the wave timer ends or if all players are splatted, they will fail the run. Completing a run will increase the player's pay grade, which also determines the difficulty of runs. If they fail, players are still paid for the Golden Eggs they collected, but their pay grade may be reduced.

Highest possible quota is 21 - 23 - 25 for wave 1, 2 and 3 respectivly. A messeage will appear on screen at the start of a game stating "Orange S2", when the difficulty is at its highest.

Inklings in this mode are equipped with special gear that allows them to be revived if they are splatted. When splatted, a lifesaver will appear at their last position after a few seconds. By Inking it, a teammate can save them and they come back with a short period of invulnerability. If they collected a Golden Egg before being splatted, it will not be lost and they can deposit it after being revived.

Each player is provided a different main weapon for each wave, and two uses of a special weapon to last all three waves. These include the, , or. There are also various special waves called Known Occurrences, such as Fog and Rush.

In Salmon Run, Inklings' Ink level and special weapon uses are displayed visually. The lifesaver on their back obscures their Ink Tank, but fills up to reflect their Ink level. Their special weapon stock appears as two silver packets strapped to their hat, which disappear as special weapons are used.

Rotations
Salmon Run is not always playable online, as the Grizzco Industries building is sometimes closed. It opens in an irregular pattern, but can be expected to be available every other day. Each Salmon Run rotation features one random stage and four random weapons to be assigned to players.

The stages menu shows the opening times of the next five Salmon Run rotations, with the stages and weapons shown for the next two. Due to the rotations being laid out in advance, newly-added stages and weapons may not appear for some time.

Loaned weapons
All main weapons aside from variants can appear in a Salmon Run rotation.

Stats
Main weapons and some special weapons loaned to players have different stats than their standard multiplayer counterparts.

Notably, the Sting Ray does not have a shock wave around the beam like it does in a standard multiplayer match.

Stages
There are currently four stages available for Salmon Run:

Wildcard rotation
There are two types of wildcard rotation: During the first kind, the weapons loaned to all four players are random and not known until the start of a wave. During the second kind, three weapons are pre-set, and the fourth is a wildcard slot. Rare weapons appear only at the random slot(s). There are no limits as to how many players can be using the same weapon at once (including rare weapons and repeats of the pre-set weapons in a partially wildcard rotation), and the player can receive the same weapon multiple times in a game (again, including rare weapons).

Rare weapons
During wildcard rotations, one of Mr. Grizz's personal weapons will be accidentally added to the mix. Grizzco weapons are tweaked versions of normal weapons with much more powerful stats. The following weapons have been available:

These weapons cannot be voluntarily chosen when playing Salmon Run at The Shoal.

Events
There are currently 7 different events in Salmon Run, with some having variants.
 * Water Levels (high and low tides)
 * Rush
 * Fog
 * Goldie Seeking
 * Griller
 * Cohock Charge
 * Mothership

Ranks
There are 6 possible ranks in Salmon Run, with Profreshional having 4 additional titles depending on the player's rank introduced in version 2.3.0.

At the end of a Salmon Run session, the player's rank will reset to whatever previous benchmark with a buffer of 30 points. If the player meets or exceeds Professional 100, they will have their rank reset to the previous checkpoint of 100 points up to 400.

The Pay Grade will increase by 5% after every 20 point increase up to Profreshional 999.

Rewards
Completion of a round of Salmon Run grants players Grizzco Points, which they can redeem for bonus prizes at the window outside Grizzco. The reward amount is based on the number of and  collected and the player's current pay grade. The player's Job Score is equal to one point per Golden Egg plus one point for every  Power Eggs (rounded down), and the final reward is the Job Score times the player's Pay Grade (rounded down).

Pay Grade goes up by 20 points (not 20%) when a player makes quota for all three waves. Pay Grade goes down by 20 points if the first wave is failed, or by 10 points if the second wave is failed. As Pay Grade increases, players are awarded titles. Titles are retained across hiring periods, but pay grades are reset to the 40-point mark within the player's current title. Titles are: Intern (during the tutorials only), Apprentice, Part-Timer, Go-Getter, Overachiever, and Profreshional.

Every 100 Grizzco Points (200 after reaching 1200 points in a rotation) earns the player one bonus "capsule," which come in different colors representing the type of the contents, or a piece of Gear. The gear is selected from a list of items available only through Salmon Run, and is rotated every calendar month. The main ability of this item is randomly determined when the bonus is redeemed. It usually has three blank slots for sub abilities, but there is a random chance that the sub ability slots may come already filled. The pink capsule can contain any Grizzco gear that has been released, including gear from previous months. If the player receives gear they already have, they can either replace the old gear with the new version, or receive (if the new gear has no slots filled) or ability chunks (equal to the filled slots) instead.

The most unclaimed bonuses a player can have at a time is 99; once the limit has been reached, any new bonuses will be lost.

Bonus capsules can contain, meal or drink tickets, ability chunks, or Grizzco gear.

At 600 and 1200 points the player will earn a superbonus, which always contains the 10% chance reward. The type of superbonus capsule is fixed for the length of a rotation. After 1200 points the player will only earn gear, alternating between the current monthly gear and gear from previous months, until the rotation ends.

Gear
Gear by the Grizzco Industries is obtained from rewards and new piece of gear arrives on the first of every month.

Local mode
There's an option to play and host a Salmon Run locally at The Shoal, requiring other players having a seperate console and copy of Splatoon 2 to participate. Local play is independent from the online Salmon Run rotation, thereby being available at all times. The host of a local Salmon Run has the ability to select which maps are played and set the difficulty levels up to 200%. Players are also able to choose the weapon that they'll will play with during a match, with a selction screen similar to the Equip screen. There's also and option to choose a random weapon. The weapons that are available to use aren't tied to the weapons that are purchased in Ammo Knights, having its own seperate weapon selection.

The following is a list of all available weapons in local Salmon Run.

Names in other languages
Salmon Run Rank Names

Rare weapon