Funcom’s survival MMO Dune: Awakening is heading north with a free enlargement that trades the deserts of Arrakis for a frozen new map.
The enlargement, known as Blood and Ice, will launch on 1st December. Funcom stated it provides “round 35 hours of latest development”, together with new automobile modules, augments, and specialisation traits. It is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox.
The brand new map, known as the Polar Sink, turns the sport’s regular survival loop the other way up. As a substitute of defending your self from excessive warmth, you will want to search out methods to remain heat, upgrading your gear with sources discovered solely within the Polar Sink.
The map is break up into two biomes, the tundra and the ice cap. You will begin within the tundra, the place rich water shipper households have constructed lavish strongholds, earlier than attempting to get into the closely guarded ice cap. When you’re in, you may harvest ice to chill your base gear and pace up manufacturing.
In keeping with Funcom, the enlargement “brings the main target again to ground-level survival, with traversal, temperature administration, and fight all enjoying essential roles in your development”. The studio additionally stated future updates will add extra causes to return to the area.
Blood and Ice additionally brings a brand new Occasions tab to the principle menu. Shortly after the enlargement launches, a brand new occasion known as Water Disaster will comply with the present one, The Scourge. Funcom says each occasion could be accomplished in each single-player and multiplayer, and that it plans to run them extra usually, every with new tales and free rewards.
Funcom has additionally launched a cosmetics retailer, which it says will assist fund continued growth and free updates. The shop will begin with a rotating collection of objects, together with seems taken from the Dune movies to coincide with Dune: Half Three’s launch in cinemas this December. The plan is to finally make the complete catalogue obtainable always.
A number of of the group’s most-requested options are additionally on the way in which. Offline single-player is due this month, and from January 2027 you can copy characters from multiplayer servers to single-player, and from single-player to pick personal or self-hosted servers on PC. Full cross-play may even arrive in January 2027.
“We’re removed from finished,” Funcom stated, including that it has “formidable plans for the yr forward”, together with main free updates in 2027. The studio says greater than one million new gamers have joined for the reason that recreation launched on consoles, alongside a rebuilt endgame, three DLCs, and the conclusion of the sport’s first story arc, E book One.
Simply a few weeks in the past, Norwegian developer Funcom, creator of Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles – and lots of different video games – confirmed it was coming into a interval of restructuring and bracing for layoffs in consequence. You could bear in mind the corporate making an identical transfer this time final yr, months after the preliminary PC launch of Dune: Awakening.