If you've ever had a perfectly peaceful solo run in Speranza ruined because your trio sessions are full of coordinated PvP squads hunting you down, ARC Raiders update 1.36.0 is exactly what you've been waiting for.
Embark Studios has pushed a change that fundamentally fixes one of the most talked-about friction points in the game's aggression-based matchmaking system. Starting now, your play style rating is tracked independently across solos, duos, and trios. No more bleed-over.
How the old system was working against you
Here's the thing: ARC Raiders has always used an aggression-based matchmaking model. The more you engage other players in PvP, the more likely you are to land in lobbies full of people who also want to fight. Stay passive, focus on quests, and the system steers you toward friendlier lobbies. It's one of the more interesting takes on lobby balancing in the extraction shooter space.
The problem was that a single hidden rating governed all three squad sizes at once. So if you and your friends spent your trio sessions hunting down every player on the map, that aggressive rating followed you into your solo runs too. You'd queue up alone to knock out some quests and immediately find yourself in a lobby where everyone is playing like they're in a tournament final.
Plenty of players raised this exact issue. The game had no real mechanism for someone who genuinely plays differently depending on whether they're alone or with friends.
What update 1.36.0 actually changes
The patch notes from Embark spell it out directly. Before this update, a friendly solo playstyle could push you into more cooperative trio rounds, and heavy trio PvP could contaminate your solo experience. The two modes were constantly influencing each other in ways that didn't reflect how people actually play.
Now each squad configuration maintains its own separate rating. Solo, duo, and trio are all tracked independently. If you're a passive solo player who only fights Arc enemies and picks plants, that stays in the solo bucket. If you and your squad run trios like a coordinated PvP unit, that rating lives in the trio bucket and goes nowhere near your solo lobbies.
The practical effect is that switching squad size now means something. You can go from a quiet solo session to a full trio PvP run without the two experiences bleeding into each other.
The rest of the 1.36.0 patch
Matchmaking isn't the only thing in this update. Embark has confirmed that the rollout of Denuvo anti-cheat is now complete across the game. Work on additional duplication glitch fixes is ongoing, and free loadouts being restricted will extend to more map conditions going forward.
There's also a new outfit available for players who have Embark's other game, The Finals. Cross-game cosmetics between the two titles have been a recurring reward mechanism, and this adds another one to the pile.
The player base on PC has been holding at a daily peak of around 40,000 to 50,000 concurrent players, which is a healthy floor for an extraction shooter at this stage. The bigger test for the game's momentum will come with the Frozen Trail update later this year, which Embark has flagged as a more substantial content drop.
For now, 1.36.0 is a quality-of-life win that addresses something the community has been vocal about since launch. If you want to get the most out of your loadout before jumping back in, check out our guide on the best ARC Raiders gun modifications and upgrades. For a full breakdown of recent content drops, the ARC Raiders guides hub has everything you need to get back up to speed.
