3,150 Merits is the finish line, and if you're wondering whether The Last Resort event is worth your time in the Riven Tides update, yeah, it is. From April 28 to May 25, 2026, every successful extract feeds a 21-tier reward track with event-only cosmetics, five 50-token drops, and enough account value that even players already stacked on ARC Raiders Coins should still care. The short answer is simple: play normal raids, survive, bank XP into Merits, and grab Ship Models when you can do it without throwing the run.



How does The Last Resort event work in ARC Raiders
It isn't tied to some special queue. That's the first nice surprise. You can load into any map, run your usual loot path, and the event still ticks forward as long as you extract alive. Merits come from match XP, and the community's rough baseline has been about 100 XP per Merit, though that can wiggle a bit from performance bonuses. The reward track is linear across three pages, 21 unlocks total, and you need 3,150 Merits to clear the lot. I like that it rewards good extraction habits more than checklist missions, because too many event systems feel like homework with a gun attached.



Best way to farm Merits fast in Last Resort
Ship Models are the turbo button. Plain and simple. If you're only doing basic scavenging and hoping passive XP gets you there, you'll progress, but you'll feel the grind hard around the middle tiers. The better route is hitting the Riven Tides coastal zones where Ship Models show up more often, then getting out before the lobby turns into a death montage. On my third night after the update, I started cutting my raids shorter — ten to twelve minutes, shoreline sweep, extract — and my Merit gain felt way better than the long greedy runs I kept losing. That's the trick nobody loves admitting: the event rewards discipline more than cracked aim.



Is the Dockmaster's Detector worth using for Ship Models
Yes, if your goal is finishing the event. No-brainer. The Dockmaster's Detector eats a gadget slot, which sounds painful if you're attached to a combat tool, but spotting event loot faster is usually worth more than one extra panic button in your loadout. Especially near beach routes, it cuts out a ton of dead searching. I ran without it for a bit because I thought I could just eyeball spawns — bad call, honestly — and the difference was obvious once I swapped. You spend less time wandering, less time exposed, and more time making the only choice that matters: do I keep looting, or do I leave now with guaranteed progress.



What rewards do you get from the 21-tier track
The headline items are the Junior outfit pieces and their variants, which are event-exclusive right now. That's the stuff people are going to notice in lobbies a month later. You also get charms, emotes, and 250 Raider Tokens split into five bundles of 50 at key tiers, which is a pretty big deal for free-to-play players who don't want every cool cosmetic gated off. And because the track works account-wide through normal play, it doesn't punish you for running your regular build, your duo routes, or your money runs. I actually like that more than the rewards themselves — it respects your time, which live-service games don't always do unless they're feeling unusually generous.



Common Last Resort event mistakes that waste your Merits
The biggest throw is staying too long because you think one more shoreline shack will cough up a higher rarity Ship Model. That's how you get pinched by ARC pressure or third-partied by Raiders who heard your whole little treasure hunt. If you die, you get nothing from that run. Zero. Ship Models also eat a lot of backpack space, so there is a real trade-off between event progress and normal crafting loot, and you need to decide before the match what you're prioritizing. Another easy mistake is skipping your first extraction bonus of the day. If you can't grind for hours, short daily sessions are legit here, because that flat Merit bump smooths out bad RNG and keeps the track moving.



What we still don't know about Merit gains and squad farming
Some parts are still fuzzy, and I'd rather say that than pretend the data is cleaner than it is. We still don't have hard drop-rate numbers for legendary Ship Models, and that matters because those big-value pulls can swing the math on how many raids you'll need. It's also unclear whether XP boosters affect Merit conversion or if the game only counts base match XP, and I haven't seen solid proof either way after testing a few runs. Squad play has another question mark: if your teammate extracts the Model, do all of you get the event bonus or just the carrier. Until that gets clarified, my advice is to play it safe, split your loot responsibility cleanly, and keep an eye on how future updates handle tracks like this, because if you're already comparing it to an ARC Raiders Battle pass, you're not wrong. It's a smart event, but only if you treat extraction like the win condition instead of an afterthought.If you're trying to finish Last Resort before May 25, farming Ship Models with the Dockmaster's Detector in Riven Tides feels way faster than just relying on the usual 100 XP per Merit grind. I've been topping up through RSVSR at https://www.rsvsr.com/arc-raiders-coins so I can stay focused on hitting that 3,150 Merit track and the Junior set.