Arc Raiders Update 1.36: THE FINALS Crossover, New Solo Matchmaking and Expedition 4

By WillyB · tactical PvE + open-world since 2012 · 7 July 2026

Arc Raiders update 1.36.0 is live today, 7 July, and the headline everyone will lead with is the THE FINALS crossover, while the change that actually matters is matchmaking, because solo, duo and trio are now tracked separately, so playing alone no longer quietly shoves you into the same pool as full squads. That split, plus Expedition 4, a much-needed ARC Turbine loot boost and a pile of fixes, is what dropped, and I have been waiting for that matchmaking sentence more than I have been waiting for a hat from another game.

I have had the evening where I queued solo, Fill Squad off, and still walked into a coordinated three-stack that had a different afternoon in mind, bag full, extract close, and the raid turned into someone else’s highlight. The whole appeal of this game for me is that you can treat it as a tense solo PvE looter and largely dodge the sweat, so anything that makes a solo drop feel like a solo drop rather than a trio ambush waiting to happen is a win. Embark buried that line in the notes, and I am putting it at the top, because that is how I actually play it.

The matchmaking line they buried in the notes

Every patch has a headline the marketing wants you to look at, and then it has the line buried in the notes that actually changes how the game feels, and in 1.36 that line is the matchmaking rework. According to Embark’s patch notes, the game now tracks your playstyle separately for solo, duo and trio, where before your squad composition affected matchmaking across all sizes, which is a polite way of saying that dropping in on your own did not always mean facing other people on their own. Now each mode operates independently, so you can do a slow, careful solo run one match and jump into a PvP-focused trio the next, and the system treats them as the two completely different games they are.

I am not going to oversell it, because Embark has not published a full ranked-style breakdown of how the pools now weight, and for the way I actually play Arc Raiders, and the way a lot of you tell me you play it, this is still the single most welcome change in months. If you want the longer case for playing it this way, I laid it out in can you play Arc Raiders solo and PvE. Solo is still not a pure PvE mode, and it is just closer to the evening I keep coming back for, which is the distinction I do not want to blur while I am praising the queue.

The crossover hat, and the queue I actually wanted

The internet has already decided, in that particular way the internet decides, that a crossover is the patch and matchmaking is a sentence in a note, because people follow people and they follow a trailer with another game’s hat in it. I try to follow the session, which for me is a quiet Rust Belt run that used to get hijacked by a trio who had not asked to share an evening, and if THE FINALS crossover is a redemption arc for your wardrobe, good. If it is cosmetics you will skip because you do not own the other game, that is a fair shrug too, and my take is smaller than either headline, because for one drop the queue is supposed to know which kind of wrong I asked for, and I will take that over a backpack with a lore name.

Arc Raiders and Embark’s other game, THE FINALS, are running a crossover event from 9 July to 30 July, where you complete a set of Contracts over in THE FINALS, and that unlocks the Azimuth outfit and the Archeologist backpack in Arc Raiders. Once that window closes, the promotion reverses, so playing Arc Raiders then earns you rewards back in THE FINALS, and if you own both games it is free stuff for playing games you were going to play anyway. If you do not own THE FINALS, you lose nothing by skipping it, with no FOMO and no paywall, just a nudge between two of the studio’s titles, and the cosmetics are optional, so they do not touch the loot economy or the balance. That is the right way to do a crossover, and I am saying it as someone who will happily ignore a hat if the queue underneath it is the thing that changed.

Expedition 4, the Trials, and a Turbine that finally pays

The bigger reason to actually boot the game up this week is the fresh progression track, because the Fourth Expedition departure window opened on 7 July and runs to 21 July, and completing it unlocks the first step of the Zenith Outfit. Alongside it, Trials Season 5 kicks off with the Scorta Outfit to chase, and between the Expedition, the Trials season and the crossover there are three separate cosmetic tracks running at once, which is plenty to structure an evening around if you need the game to give you a job. I broke down the Expedition itself, the Forgotten Relics event that has been running with it, and the loot and anti-cheat changes that came before this, in the Fourth Expedition and Forgotten Relics explainer. This is the moment it all actually goes live rather than just being announced, which is a different feeling from reading the window on a news post and nodding.

Embark has also significantly increased the loot dropped by the ARC Turbine, off the back of feedback that the reward was pitifully low compared with how much effort and risk it takes to bring one down. I have committed to a Turbine fight, burned half my kit, and walked away with scraps, which is a specific kind of insult, so take one down now and it should actually be worth the ammo.

None of these are headline features, and together they are the sort of friction-removal that makes a looter feel less like admin and more like a game, which is the kind of note I actually feel on a Tuesday when the bag is already too full of decisions.

The Xbox wobble, and the issues they owned

The rollout was messy on Xbox, because update 1.36.0 went live early on Xbox ahead of its planned time, which caused some matchmaking issues, and Embark acknowledged it, according to Twisted Voxel. PlayStation 5 and PC got it on schedule on 7 July, so if your update arrived at a weird time or your first few matches felt off, that is likely why, and I would not recast a staggered patch as proof the new pools are broken on purpose. Embark has also been upfront about the known issues shipping with 1.36, including FPS drops on PC, crashes on Xbox Series S, and some animation glitches, and on the fair-play side Denuvo Anti-Cheat is now fully enforced, with ongoing work on duplication exploits and an experimental expansion of the No Free Loadout system under review.

Anti-cheat that actually bites is a good thing in this genre, and if you are on a Series S in particular, go in with your expectations set, because a crash is a worse evening than a fair queue. This is a quietly strong patch dressed up as a crossover event, where the cosmetics are a nice freebie and the matchmaking split is the change I would have led the announcement with, because it is the one that changes how the game feels to play alone. Pair that with a Turbine that finally pays out and a fresh Expedition to grind, and this is the best the game has felt to drop into casually in a while.

It also fits the bigger picture I wrote about a few days ago, because the monthly-update era is over, and Embark has moved to two big drops a year with a live team keeping things ticking in between. Update 1.36 is exactly what that in-between is supposed to look like, with no new map and no huge system, just events, fixes and one genuinely meaningful change. If it keeps landing at this level, the long wait for the October whale is a lot more bearable, which is the shift I explained in when is the next Arc Raiders update.

If you are still deciding whether the game is for you at all, start with is Arc Raiders worth it in 2026, and if you want to know how it stacks up against its big rival, I put them head to head in Arc Raiders vs Marathon. I keep coming back to the Rust Belt because a quiet run still makes me laugh when it goes wrong, and today, at least, the queue is supposed to know which kind of wrong I asked for.

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