Salmon Run

Salmon Run is a co-op multiplayer mode available in 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. The online version requires the player to be at least Level 4 to be able to play.

According to producer Hisashi Nogami, Salmon Run was created to take advantage of the portability of the Nintendo Switch console, and to provide smaller groups of players with an engaging local multiplayer experience, given the relatively large number of players (eight) required for other game modes.

In, Salmon Run is succeeded by Salmon Run Next Wave.

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

Each wave has a quota, which varies depending on the number of players present and its ranks. If the quota is not filled before the wave timer ends or if all players are splatted, they fail the run. Completing a run increases 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.

The highest possible quota for three waves is 21 - 23 - 25 when the difficulty is at its highest. This happens when the squad's average rank is Profreshional 600 or above. A message appears on-screen at the start of such a shift stating "Orange S2".

Inklings and Octolings in this mode are equipped with special gear that allows them to be revived if they are splatted. When splatted, a lifesaver appears at their last position after a few seconds. By inking it, a teammate can revive them and they come back with a short period of invulnerability. If they collected a Golden Egg before being splatted, it is not lost. Additionally, if they did not have a Golden Egg before being splatted, they may pick one up while in a lifesaver. However, eggs cannot be deposited in the egg basket until they are revived. Each player wears an uniform consisting of a green cap, orange overalls, green gloves, and green boots during the entirety of this mode's gameplay, regardless of the gear the player wore prior to entering this mode. Also, no gear abilities apply during this mode's gameplay.

Each player is provided a different main weapon for each wave, and two uses of one type of special weapon, which last for three waves. These include the Inkjet, Sting Ray, Splashdown and Splat-Bomb Launcher. The sub weapon provided will always be the Splat Bomb. There are also various special waves called Known Occurrences, such as Fog and Rush.

In Salmon Run, Inklings' and Octolings' ink level and special weapon uses are displayed visually. The lifesaver on their back acts as their ink tank, which depletes clockwise from top. Their special weapon stock appears as two silver packets strapped to their hat, which disappear as special weapons are used.

When one of the squad is down, or when there are fewer than four active players, the box surrounding the squid or octopus icons glows orange to alert this.

When the time reaches thirty seconds remaining, it starts to appear yellow and if the quota is not yet met, the box surrounding the timer and quota glow orange as a warning. During the last ten seconds, a separate countdown appears in the middle of the screen as an overlay, with the color of the numbers being orange if the quota is not met or green if it is met.

Rotations
Salmon Run is not always playable online, as the Grizzco Industries building can sometimes be 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. Each player is randomly assigned one of four special weapons: the Splashdown, Sting Ray, Inkjet, or Bomb Launcher. Despite there being multiple main weapons and special weapons that players can receive, the only sub weapon a player can use while in Salmon Run is the Splat Bomb.

Main weapons and some special weapons loaned to players have different stats than their standard multiplayer counterparts. For these stats, see Salmon Run data.

Stages
There are five stages available for Salmon Run in Splatoon 2:

Standard wildcard rotation


There are two types of standard wildcard rotation: all-random wildcard rotations (displayed as in the Salmon Run schedule) and partial wildcard rotations (displayed as three standard weapons and one  in the schedule). Players assigned the wildcard weapon slot at the start of a wave receive a random weapon, which is not revealed until loaned; this wildcard weapon slot has a chance to loan players the one rare weapon that is assigned to appear in the specific rotation. In all-random wildcard rotations, work crews are loaned exclusively random weapons. In partial wildcard rotations, three weapons are pre-set, similar to non-wildcard rotations, while the last weapon is random. Wildcard rotations typically take place twice per month.

In all-random wildcard rotations, there are no limits to how many players may be loaned the same weapon in a wave, and it's possible for players to receive the same weapon multiple times in the same shift. This phenomenon extends to rare weapons as well as repeats of the pre-set weapons in partial wildcard rotations.

As of Version, a song called Frantic Aspic by ω-3 plays in place of Deluge Dirge during these rotations.

For a history of wildcard rotations, see Salmon Run data.

Rare weapon wildcard rotation
Every few months, a wildcard rotation has golden question marks instead of the normal  green ones. This signifies that the supplied weapons are all rare, but still randomly loaned. Each player is equally likely to receive any of the four rare weapons. The first such rotation took place on 2018-07-14 and was announced in a Tweet citing a message from Mr. Grizz saying he could not get the standard weapons ready on time, so the shift would take place using only his personal belongings. Like other random rotations, Frantic Aspic replaces Deluge Dirge during normal waves.

Rare weapons
During wildcard rotations, weapons belonging to Mr. Grizz are accidentally added to the random weapons mix. These rare weapons are very powerful, illegally modified versions of normal weapons that cannot be accessed in other modes, including playing Salmon Run at The Shoal.

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

Job Title
There are six possible titles in Salmon Run, with Profreshional having four additional ranks depending on the player's point range, introduced in Version.

The title's point range goes up by twenty points when a player makes the quota for all three waves, regardless of how much work players did. If players fail, the number of points lost is calculated with the formula 30-10w, where w is the number of the wave failed. In the event of a disconnected teammate or a player did insignificant work (for example, if the total Golden Eggs is 48 and two players collected 23 and 19 eggs, the other two only collected 3 each), players only get half the punishment. Also, if the player got the best statistics in the crew, regardless of how the others did, instead of having their point range go down, it will show the message "rank retained". As the point range increases, players are awarded titles. Titles are retained across Salmon Run rotations, but the point ranges are reset to the 40-point mark within the player's current title across Apprentice to Profreshional (0 - 99). If the player meets Profreshional 100, they have their rank reset to the previous checkpoint of 100 points up to 400. As of Version, players who are Profreshional 100 or above have the option to reset their rank to Profreshional 40, which is done by entering Grizzco and pressing.

The Pay Grade increases by 5% after every twenty-point increase, up to Profreshional 980 - 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 Golden Eggs and Power Eggs collected and the player's current pay grade. The points earned after any run is calculated with the formula (G/100)(E+P/200), where G is the pay grade number after any raises or penalties, E is the number of Golden Eggs collected, and P is the number of Power Eggs collected. All counts are rounded to the nearest integer.

Every 100 Grizzco Points (200 after reaching 1200 points in a rotation) earns the player one bonus "capsule", which comes 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 was initially 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 secondary gear abilities, but there is a random chance that the secondary gear ability slots may come already filled. The pink capsule can contain any Grizzco gear that has been released. If the player receives gear they already have, they can either replace the old gear with the new version or receive cash (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 are lost.

Bonus capsules can contain cash, meal or drink Crust Bucket Tickets, ability chunks, or Grizzco gear. As of Version of Splatoon 2, after exiting Grizzco Industries players will spawn just outside rather than returning to the center of Inkopolis Plaza, making it faster to claim their bonuses from the window.

Normal, non-superbonus capsules have a 50% chance of providing a poor reward, a 40% chance of providing a good reward, and a 10% chance of providing an excellent reward. At 600 and 1200 points, the player earns 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 only earns gear, alternating between the current gear and previous gear until the rotation ends. The capsules of the rewards until the second superbonus are different for every player.

Gear
Gear by Grizzco Industries is obtained from Salmon Run bonus rewards. The main ability for each gear reward is randomly selected from all abilities that can also appear as secondary abilities.

During the first two years of events, a new piece of gear arrived on the first of every month.

Starting from 2019-08-01, the featured gear is different each shift, cycling through each item in order of its original release.

Local mode
There is an option to play and host a Salmon Run locally at The Shoal, requiring other players having a separate console and copy of to participate. Local play is independent of the online Salmon Run rotation, thereby being available at all times. The host of a local Salmon Run can select which maps are played and set the hazard levels (not to be confused with the Pay Grade), which range from 5 - 200% as of Version. Versions before this one had a range of 5 - 100% at the start of a play session, where the players have to clear a match set at the highest hazard level to be able to gain the option to increase the difficulty by 10%, with 200% being the max limit. A hazard level of 100% is the equivalent to Profreshional 100, having a Pay Grade of 215%, meanwhile, a hazard level of 120% equals to Profreshional 200 with a Pay Grade of 240%. Matches played in the local mode do not affect the rankings and battle records of the online version.

The following is a table of the different Hazard Levels' corresponding Job Title:

When playing locally, Mr. Grizz has a darkened icon and is known as "Raspy Voice" while he comments as usual. At the end of the result screen, there is no dialogue present, unlike the online version of Salmon Run.

Players can choose the weapon that they play with during a match, with a selection screen being similar to the Equip screen. There is also an option to choose a random weapon. The weapons that are available to use are not tied to the weapons that are purchased in Ammo Knights, having a separate weapon selection.

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

Trivia

 * On 2018-07-21, first anniversary, a Salmon Run shift took place in Spawning Grounds with the Splattershot Jr., Splat Dualies, Splat Roller and Splat Charger. This is identical to the first ever Salmon Run rotation that took place on 2017-07-21.
 * The same stage and weapons were also used in a shift that took place on 2017-12-24, for Christmas.
 * In Splatoon 3, the same weapons appeared in a shift in December of 2023, except this time on Sockeye Station.
 * All rare weapons, except the Grizzco Slosher, have prescription medication containers attached to them.
 * Not commonly heard in-game, the match intro music ends with what seems to be a distorted version of the main melody from Splattack!.