Dune: Awakening is getting a bit more chill, as Funcom announced the free Blood And Ice expansion coming to the survival game this December.
This free update is labelled as an expansion for a reason: Funcom claims that the new content here, which adds a new map (Polar Sink), has over 35 hours of progression content. Polar Sink itself will feature two different biomes: tundra and ice cap. If you associate Dune and the planet Arrakis as sole a desert planet where you mostly battle heat, well, now you’re surviving against the cold.
There will be whole new gear to craft using resources only found at the Polar Sink. Harvested ice can also be used to cool base equipment and speed up production. New vehicle modules, augments and specialisation traits will also be added.
The Blood And Ice expansion won’t be the only time you visit the more chilly side of Dune, as future updates will “add further reasons to revisit the region.”
The Blood And Ice free expansion for Dune: Awakening will be out on December 1 for PS5, PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S. The console versions, which just released and arrived a year later from the original PC launch, is feature-parity with the PC version.
Alongside the expansion announcement, Funcom is also adding “optional cosmetics” to support this rollout of free updates. It’s more or less an item shop, with a rotating set of cosmetics. Funcom assured that a future update will have the full catalog of cosmetic microtransactions available at all times.
Funcom also gave some timing window on what to expect of upcoming features and content, which includes the following:
- New event: Water Crisis (releasing “shortly after the Blood And Ice expansion”)
- Offline single-player: November
- Character copy from multiplayer servers to single-player mode, and from single-player mode to select private servers: January 2027
- Full cross-play: January 2027
Dune: Awakening is out now on PS5, PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S.