Dune: Awakening is getting a free DLC that adds a whole new map and swaps out sand for snow

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Thus far, Funcom has focussed mainly on changes to its survival MMO Dune: Awakening, with the Norwegian studio reworking the entire game to function as both a solo experience and a PvE adventure. Now that overhaul is done, however, Funcom is now set on expanding players' adventures on Arrakis, having just announced a free expansion that adds a new and completely different map to explore.

Coming in December, the Blood and Ice DLC will let players depart the searing sands of Arrakis for the planet's frozen north, adding a new survival map called the Polar Sink that flips the game's central survival concept on its head. Rather than avoiding the heat, players will actively have to seek it out, while also developing new technologies to help them adapt to the extreme change in climate.

There's some variance within this environment too. The Polar Sink is composed of two different biomes, the tundra and the icecap. While the icecap is the more extreme of the two, both areas are closely guarded by "water shippers", wealthy traders who supply Arrakis' second most-valuable resource from the polar regions down to the deserts. Players' primary objective in the DLC will be breaking the water shippers' stranglehold on the ice, which they can then use to cool their base equipment back in the desert and speed up resource production.

Funcom says that the expansion adds "around 35 hours of new progression", which sounds pretty beefy for a free DLC. It also apparently "brings the focus back to ground-level survival" for veteran players, "traversal, temperature management and combat all playing important roles in your progression."

Blood and Ice will be released on December 1. Alongside the expansion, Funcom has also introduced a Cosmetics Store to Awakening, and is also working on several other heavily requested features. These include an offline single-player mode that's coming in November (the game can be played solo right now, but only with an Internet connection) and fully supported cross-play in January next year.

Funcom also says that Blood and Ice represents "another step in the ongoing development of Dune: Awakening" and that it will "continue expanding the game" through 2027. This falls in line with the studio's recent announcement that it was pivoting to exclusively support its existing games—which includes Conan Exiles alongside Dune: Awakening—and was laying off an unspecified number of employees as a result of that shift in strategy.

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Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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