Today, we dive into the first of five videos in which we show off some of the abilities from the various Schools of the Imperium in action.
In this first video, we delve into the secretive and feared Bene Gesserit, the ancient sisterhood of spies, advisors, and truthsayers that manipulates the Imperium from the shadows. Theirs is the hand that seeks to steer the very evolution of humanity. Although an insular and all-female order, there are some who have no qualms about teaching an outsider their ways.
Witness the Voice and weirding ways of the Bene Gesserit now:
This is but one of the Schools you will be able to learn from in Dune: Awakening, and with the ability to mix and match abilities from all of them, the possibilities would require a strong dose of spice to foresee.
A few of the early Bene Gesserit abilities:
Bindu Sprint: Override your nervous system and musculature with an immense surge of activity, allowing you to run forward at an incredible speed.
Compel: Use the Voice to force a target to your position from afar. Voice abilities require a short period for you to “register” your opponent before they can be used.
Recovery (passive): You are able to heal your body more effectively after suffering catastrophic injury – regenerating your health to a higher threshold than normal.
If you do not choose a Bene Gesserit as your mentor in character creation, you must find them in the world and convince them to teach you. Only one mentor in each School, however, has the knowledge to teach you the most advanced skills.
The first Bene Gesserit mentor is Sister Mesa, located somewhere in the Hagga Basin. Speak to her and she will request your aid in seeking out ancient texts from the Missionara Protectiva – the part of the Sisterhood tasked with intentionally seeding prophecies among world populations to control them – on Arrakis. Fremen prophecies.
Begin your journey to mastering the uncanny arts of the Bene Gesserit on June 10.
Global LAN Party Broadcast live NOW! Massive beta key giveaway!
Tune in now to the official Dune: Awakening Global LAN Party, streaming live on Twitch and across partnered creator channels. This massive 4-hour broadcast is underway, and you won’t want to miss a moment of the action!
Two teams of creators led by Shroud and Sodapoppin are going head-to-head in a wild challenge across Arrakis.
Live updates from PAX East, with gameplay, interviews, and cosplays.
Dev insights into the beta content, endgame systems, and what’s coming next.
The final showdown: an epic PvP battle at a shipwreck.
Want in? We have tens of thousands of beta keys!
Watch the stream for a chance to claim your Beta key and join Dune: Awakening’s Beta Weekend, featuring up to 30 hours of early and mid-game content from the Hagga Basin and Vermillius Gap.
You can also go to the Dune: Awakening Steam page to wishlist and sign up for the playtest there.
Additionally, we’ll be sending invitation e-mails.
Don’t miss your chance to explore Arrakis before anyone else.
🎥 Join the broadcast. Claim your beta key. Shape the sands.
Pre-order access to Beta Weekend
Good news!
Everyone who has a Dune: Awakening pre-order can now also access the Beta Weekend!
We heard your feedback on this, and we’ve been working with Steam on a solution. If you already own or decide to pre-order any of the editions this weekend, you should now also see a Beta Weekend product in your Steam library. You might need to restart your Steam client to see the Dune: Awakening Beta Weekend app.
We truly appreciate your support and hope you have a great time this weekend.
See you on Arrakis!
Large-Scale Beta Weekend Now Live – How to Join!
Greetings Sleepers,
The large-scale Beta weekend has begun!
Can you taste the spice on the wind? Arrakis has never been closer. Create your character and crash into Arrakis, where you and other players will together survive sandworms, the blistering sun, roaming bandits, and more!
Unlike previous Betas, this one has no NDA, meaning you can share any info you want with friends, or even stream the game for all to see.
The Beta will continue until May 12 at the following time:
North America: 5:59 PM EDT / 2:59 PM PDT South America: 18:59 BRT Europe: 23:59 CEST Asia: 05:59 CST / 06:59 JST
Don’t have access yet? Here’s what to do!
There are three ways to increase your chances of getting into the Beta Weekend:
Wishlist and request access on the Dune: Awakening Steam page
Get one of tens of thousands of Beta codes during the Global LAN Party Broadcast on May 10. Catch it on Twitch at 12 PM PDT / 8 PM BST / 9 PM CEST.
Bonus: Do all three to increase your chances!
In case you missed it, here is our recent FAQ, answering a bunch of questions we’ve seen about the Beta and beyond.
Frequently asked questions
Will my progress during the beta weekend carry over to launch?
No, you will have to start fresh when the game launches. Head start begins June 5th, and full launch is on June 10th.
How does the server structure work in Dune: Awakening?
We recently released a blog post explaining this in detail, please find it here. It has a lot of information about the broader multiplayer mechanics and server structure at launch, and not everything is relevant to the beta weekend.
Specifically, for this beta weekend, this is what you need to know:
When you first start playing, you pick a home server that belongs to a World consisting of many other servers. Your server will be home to hundreds of other players, with up to 40 of them playing concurrently. You can visit friends on other servers in the same World and do everything including building on your friend’s/guild’s bases, but you cannot claim land.
Which server should I pick?
You can pick any server you want, but for optimal ping you should pick one in a region closest to you. You can also see what servers your other Steam friends are playing on.
How many players can you support per server?
Your home server is home to hundreds of players, with up to 40 of them playing concurrently, something that’s possible due to the ebb and flow of player populations throughout the day and across the game world.
Your home server represents one persistent instance of the Hagga Basin map, a huge, open world where players can fight, progress, claim land, and build bases. While not available during the beta weekend, at launch, players will also have access to social hubs and the Deep Desert, locations where many more people can play concurrently. In these areas you can meet hundreds of other players belonging to different Hagga Basin servers in the same server World as yours. These areas either have none or more limited building options.
It’s important to us that players always have their base in the physical location they built it in and that they have the same neighbors so they can build lasting relationships. We also want server performance to be good enough to have engaging vehicle movement and combat. That’s what the Hagga Basin, your home server, is for. These design principles mean that we may have situations where a server is full when someone tries to log in. If that happens, you enter a server queue.
The term “server queue” is rarely used in positive context – but to us it’s a quality-of-life addition. Commonly, survival games don’t offer this, and you are left having to wait and hope you are able to click fast enough when a slot opens up. By adding a server queue functionality, you can simply click once and rest easy knowing that you will get in when a slot becomes available to you.
We recommend checking out the Server Structure and Large-Scale Multiplayer Mechanics blog for a broader look at these topics. You can find it here.
How many players can you support for this beta weekend, more than closed beta?
We will have much more hardware for the beta weekend and launch than we ran on the closed beta. In the closed beta we have intentionally invited a lot of people while artificially limiting hardware there so that we could stress test our tech and ensure features such as server queues are functional for the beta weekend and launch.
What languages is Dune: Awakening localized in?
Interface, subtitle, and all text is localized in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. All voice dialogue is in English, with localized subtitles.
Please note that localization is not final in the beta weekend build. Expect localization bugs, for instance where cinematics and subtitles don’t always match, and some aspects such as the Codex are not localized yet. This will be finalized for full launch.
What emphasis does Dune: Awakening put on combat?
Combat is an important part of Dune: Awakening, and our goal has always been to set a new benchmark for combat in open world survival crafting games. But it’s important to note that’s the genre we’re competing in. This is not Doom or Elden Ring, combat in Dune: Awakening is one element of a much larger and complex open world filled with varied gameplay mechanics such as base building, vehicles, PvE/PvP systems, and large-scale multiplayer features.
We believe combat in Dune: Awakening brings something new and more elaborate than what you have seen before in the survival genre. It’s also been important for us to stay true to the Dune IP, with everything that entails including shields, dart guns, slow blade melee combat, and more.
Dune: Awakening offers a myriad of combat options, including ranged, melee, abilities, spice prescience, gadgets, and even vehicle combat. When you start, you pick an archetype – Trooper, Bene Gesserit, Mentat, or Swordmaster – and each offers unique abilities and a progression system that will see you unlock more power over time. At launch, you can find trainers that allow you to start mixing and matching abilities across these archetypes.
Is this a PvE or PvP game?
What you get to experience in the beta weekend is primarily PvE. Most of the Hagga Basin map is PvE, with only small pockets of PvP enabled. At full launch, you will get access to the Deep Desert, a vast, open area where hundreds of players can gather to explore unique points of interest but also battle over control points and previous spice melange. The Deep Desert is primarily PvP, with only small areas limited to PvE.
The great thing about this setup is that you can explore, progress, and build in the vast, open world of Hagga Basin without fear of getting killed by other players, and when you’re ready to sample the even more dangerous side of Arrakis, you can head into the Deep Desert to try your luck without having to worry about your base being raided and destroyed.
Even the Deep Desert will have many options for PvE players, as will all the gameplay related to the Landsraad mechanic, where players help the two Great Houses rise to power.
Our focus has been to have Dune: Awakening offer something for both PvP and PvE players, a design principle that extends throughout the game, even the end game.
How much of the story do I get to experience in the beta weekend?
Story is an important part of Dune: Awakening, and we have gone to great lengths to combine multiplayer survival with an engaging storyline that includes in-game cutscenes, multiple-choice NPC dialog, and missions spanning the game world.
In the beta weekend you get to experience much of (but not all) of Act 1. At launch you get to experience the rest of Act 1 and all of Act 2.
When is Dune: Awakening set, do I get to play or meet Paul Atreides?
Dune: Awakening takes place roughly around the same time as the first book, on Arrakis, but in an alternate timeline where Paul Atreides was never born. Instead, Lady Jessica obeyed the instructions of the Bene Gesserit and had a daughter, and from that one event, history took a very different direction. For instance, Duke Leto Atreides survived the attempt on his life and is now locked in a conflict with the Harkonnen over Arrakis and its precious spice.
You will still visit many of the same locations and even meet some of the characters you know and love, and for Dune fans we believe this setting provides a unique way to experience the IP.
Learn more about this in our Story Cinematic – The Vision of Paul Atreides, available here.
If I get killed by the sandworm, will I lose everything?
Yes! The sandworms represent what is perhaps the ultimate danger on Arrakis, and you must take care to ensure you don’t end up as worm food. Never build in the open desert, stick to the so-called “rock islands”, and when traversing between them make sure you move quickly and with care. Sandworms are drawn to movement in the open desert, and while there is a certain grace period involved, if you stay there too long, they will find you.
Part of the fun in Dune: Awakening is learning how to avoid them and manage the risks. Once you get to the Vermillius Gap, you’ll start seeing spaceships crashing into the open desert, and these have loot ripe for the taking. Can you make it out there, salvage what you can, and make it back to safe ground before the sandworm comes?
That said, the first time you get killed by a sandworm, the penalties are milder. That’s your chance to learn, and if there is one thing you need to do on Arrakis to survive, it’s learning from your mistakes.
Will I get to experience vehicles in the beta weekend?
In the beta weekend, you will be able to craft and pilot a sandbike. At full launch, many more vehicles become available, including the groundcar and the legendary ornithopters. Vehicles can be modified with different modules, opening up a whole new dimension to the game.
How much of the world will I get to experience in the beta weekend?
A small, but solid slice of it. You will play in Hagga Basin, the game’s “survival map”, which is made up of 12 different areas. In the beta weekend, you get to explore three of them: Hagga Basin South, Western Vermillius Gap, and Eastern Vermillius Gap.
At launch, you get to explore much more, including what’s beyond Hagga Basin including the Arrakeen and Harko Village social hubs and the Deep Desert.
Will I be able to get a good feel for the game for this beta weekend alone?
You will certainly get a good feel for the early game, getting close to mid-game. But there is a ton of content and gameplay mechanics not in this beta, that will be available at launch.
You’ll get a solid feel for the story, survival, vehicle, and building mechanics, but even those features have a much broader dimension to them that you will only see at full launch. For instance, while you can build Choam buildings during the beta weekend, at launch you can move up the ranks of House Harkonnen and House Atreides, unlocking a wealth of new building pieces that have a very different visual style. Not to mention vehicles like the groundcar and ornithopters.
Beyond the content of the beta weekend also lies the Landsraad and the Deep Desert, offering a completely different way to play Dune: Awakening. The Landsraad will see players help either of the two Great Houses through both PvE and PvP activities, and each week one side wins, allowing players to impact what decrees the Landsraad puts in place in that server World. The Deep Desert on the other hand is a vast, open area where hundreds of players will explore, build, and fight each other over control points, unique points of interest, and, of course, the precious spice melange.
We have also compiled a list of known issues that we’re working on, listed here.
Pre-order Dune: Awakening now and play on June 10. Choose the Deluxe or Ultimate Edition for a 5-day head start and a trove of exclusive in-game items.
Get one of tens of thousands of Beta codes during the Global LAN Party Broadcast on May 10. Catch it on Twitch.
Bonus: Do all three to increase your chances!
Start and end times:
The Beta will run from May 9 to May 12. See the start and end times across time zones below:
Start: North America: 8:00 AM EDT / 5:00 AM PDT South America: 9:00 BRT Europe: 14:00 CEST Asia: 20:00 CST / 21:00 JST
End: North America: 5:59 PM EDT / 2:59 PM PDT South America: 18:59 BRT Europe: 23:59 CEST Asia: May 12 - 05:59 CST / 06:59 JST
What’s in the Beta?
Get a taste of both spice and story, as the Beta features the first 20-25 hours of the game and most of Act 1. Create your character, crash into Arrakis, and survive sandworms, sun, and roaming bandits alongside other players. Choose which School of the Imperium you will follow first, then craft a shelter, your first weapon and sandbike, and venture deeper into the sands.
Unlike previous Betas, this one has no NDA, meaning you can share any info you want with friends, or even stream the game for all to see.
You can pre-order Dune: Awakening now and receive the Terrarium of Muad’dib. Choose the Deluxe or Ultimate Edition for a 5-day head start and a slew of exclusive in-game items.
Will my progress during the beta weekend carry over to launch?
No, you will have to start fresh when the game launches. Head start begins June 5th, and full launch is on June 10th.
How does the server structure work in Dune: Awakening?
We recently released a blog post explaining this in detail, please find it here. It has a lot of information about the broader multiplayer mechanics and server structure at launch, and not everything is relevant to the beta weekend.
Specifically, for this beta weekend, this is what you need to know:
When you first start playing, you pick a home server that belongs to a World consisting of many other servers. Your server will be home to hundreds of other players, with up to 40 of them playing concurrently. You can visit friends on other servers in the same World and do everything including building on your friend’s/guild’s bases, but you cannot claim land.
Which server should I pick?
You can pick any server you want, but for optimal ping you should pick one in a region closest to you. You can also see what servers your other Steam friends are playing on.
How many players can you support per server?
Your home server is home to hundreds of players, with up to 40 of them playing concurrently, something that’s possible due to the ebb and flow of player populations throughout the day and across the game world.
Your home server represents one persistent instance of the Hagga Basin map, a huge, open world where players can fight, progress, claim land, and build bases. While not available during the beta weekend, at launch, players will also have access to social hubs and the Deep Desert, locations where many more people can play concurrently. In these areas you can meet hundreds of other players belonging to different Hagga Basin servers in the same server World as yours. These areas either have none or more limited building options.
It’s important to us that players always have their base in the physical location they built it in and that they have the same neighbors so they can build lasting relationships. We also want server performance to be good enough to have engaging vehicle movement and combat. That’s what the Hagga Basin, your home server, is for. These design principles mean that we may have situations where a server is full when someone tries to log in. If that happens, you enter a server queue.
The term “server queue” is rarely used in positive context – but to us it’s a quality-of-life addition. Commonly, survival games don’t offer this, and you are left having to wait and hope you are able to click fast enough when a slot opens up. By adding a server queue functionality, you can simply click once and rest easy knowing that you will get in when a slot becomes available to you.
We recommend checking out the Server Structure and Large-Scale Multiplayer Mechanics blog for a broader look at these topics. You can find it here.
How many players can you support for this beta weekend, more than closed beta?
We will have much more hardware for the beta weekend and launch than we ran on the closed beta. In the closed beta we have intentionally invited a lot of people while artificially limiting hardware there so that we could stress test our tech and ensure features such as server queues are functional for the beta weekend and launch.
What languages is Dune: Awakening localized in?
Interface, subtitle, and all text is localized in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. All voice dialogue is in English, with localized subtitles.
Please note that localization is not final in the beta weekend build. Expect localization bugs, for instance where cinematics and subtitles don’t always match, and some aspects such as the Codex are not localized yet. This will be finalized for full launch.
What emphasis does Dune: Awakening put on combat?
Combat is an important part of Dune: Awakening, and our goal has always been to set a new benchmark for combat in open world survival crafting games. But it’s important to note that’s the genre we’re competing in. This is not Doom or Elden Ring, combat in Dune: Awakening is one element of a much larger and complex open world filled with varied gameplay mechanics such as base building, vehicles, PvE/PvP systems, and large-scale multiplayer features.
We believe combat in Dune: Awakening brings something new and more elaborate than what you have seen before in the survival genre. It’s also been important for us to stay true to the Dune IP, with everything that entails including shields, dart guns, slow blade melee combat, and more.
Dune: Awakening offers a myriad of combat options, including ranged, melee, abilities, spice prescience, gadgets, and even vehicle combat. When you start, you pick an archetype – Trooper, Bene Gesserit, Mentat, or Swordmaster – and each offers unique abilities and a progression system that will see you unlock more power over time. At launch, you can find trainers that allow you to start mixing and matching abilities across these archetypes.
Is this a PvE or PvP game?
What you get to experience in the beta weekend is primarily PvE. Most of the Hagga Basin map is PvE, with only small pockets of PvP enabled. At full launch, you will get access to the Deep Desert, a vast, open area where hundreds of players can gather to explore unique points of interest but also battle over control points and previous spice melange. The Deep Desert is primarily PvP, with only small areas limited to PvE.
The great thing about this setup is that you can explore, progress, and build in the vast, open world of Hagga Basin without fear of getting killed by other players, and when you’re ready to sample the even more dangerous side of Arrakis, you can head into the Deep Desert to try your luck without having to worry about your base being raided and destroyed.
Even the Deep Desert will have many options for PvE players, as will all the gameplay related to the Landsraad mechanic, where players help the two Great Houses rise to power.
Our focus has been to have Dune: Awakening offer something for both PvP and PvE players, a design principle that extends throughout the game, even the end game.
How much of the story do I get to experience in the beta weekend?
Story is an important part of Dune: Awakening, and we have gone to great lengths to combine multiplayer survival with an engaging storyline that includes in-game cutscenes, multiple-choice NPC dialog, and missions spanning the game world.
In the beta weekend you get to experience much of (but not all) of Act 1. At launch you get to experience the rest of Act 1 and all of Act 2.
When is Dune: Awakening set, do I get to play or meet Paul Atreides?
Dune: Awakening takes place roughly around the same time as the first book, on Arrakis, but in an alternate timeline where Paul Atreides was never born. Instead, Lady Jessica obeyed the instructions of the Bene Gesserit and had a daughter, and from that one event, history took a very different direction. For instance, Duke Leto Atreides survived the attempt on his life and is now locked in a conflict with the Harkonnen over Arrakis and its precious spice.
You will still visit many of the same locations and even meet some of the characters you know and love, and for Dune fans we believe this setting provides a unique way to experience the IP.
Learn more about this in our Story Cinematic – The Vision of Paul Atreides, available here.
If I get killed by the sandworm, will I lose everything?
Yes! The sandworms represent what is perhaps the ultimate danger on Arrakis, and you must take care to ensure you don’t end up as worm food. Never build in the open desert, stick to the so-called “rock islands”, and when traversing between them make sure you move quickly and with care. Sandworms are drawn to movement in the open desert, and while there is a certain grace period involved, if you stay there too long, they will find you.
Part of the fun in Dune: Awakening is learning how to avoid them and manage the risks. Once you get to the Vermillius Gap, you’ll start seeing spaceships crashing into the open desert, and these have loot ripe for the taking. Can you make it out there, salvage what you can, and make it back to safe ground before the sandworm comes?
That said, the first time you get killed by a sandworm, the penalties are milder. That’s your chance to learn, and if there is one thing you need to do on Arrakis to survive, it’s learning from your mistakes.
Will I get to experience vehicles in the beta weekend?
In the beta weekend, you will be able to craft and pilot a sandbike. At full launch, many more vehicles become available, including the groundcar and the legendary ornithopters. Vehicles can be modified with different modules, opening up a whole new dimension to the game.
How much of the world will I get to experience in the beta weekend?
A small, but solid slice of it. You will play in Hagga Basin, the game’s “survival map”, which is made up of 12 different areas. In the beta weekend, you get to explore three of them: Hagga Basin South, Western Vermillius Gap, and Eastern Vermillius Gap.
At launch, you get to explore much more, including what’s beyond Hagga Basin including the Arrakeen and Harko Village social hubs and the Deep Desert.
Will I be able to get a good feel for the game for this beta weekend alone?
You will certainly get a good feel for the early game, getting close to mid-game. But there is a ton of content and gameplay mechanics not in this beta, that will be available at launch.
You’ll get a solid feel for the story, survival, vehicle, and building mechanics, but even those features have a much broader dimension to them that you will only see at full launch. For instance, while you can build Choam buildings during the beta weekend, at launch you can move up the ranks of House Harkonnen and House Atreides, unlocking a wealth of new building pieces that have a very different visual style. Not to mention vehicles like the groundcar and ornithopters.
Beyond the content of the beta weekend also lies the Landsraad and the Deep Desert, offering a completely different way to play Dune: Awakening. The Landsraad will see players help either of the two Great Houses through both PvE and PvP activities, and each week one side wins, allowing players to impact what decrees the Landsraad puts in place in that server World. The Deep Desert on the other hand is a vast, open area where hundreds of players will explore, build, and fight each other over control points, unique points of interest, and, of course, the precious spice melange.
Make sure to check the infographic we put together about this further up in this article.
We have also compiled a list of known issues that we’re working on, listed here.
See you on Arrakis, Sleeper.
Our Closed Beta Impressions Roundup Is Here!
Greetings Sleeper,
Press and content creators had the opportunity to experience the first 20 hours of Dune: Awakening in a Hands-On and Closed Beta Preview.
It’s amazing seeing the reception to Dune: Awakening and all that Arrakis has to offer. If you missed what people have been saying, here are some highlights:
Press Highlights
"Now, after enduring the unforgiving conditions and hostile lifeforms of a desert planet for nearly 20 hours in the closed beta, I’m confident developer Funcom has the foundations of an absolutely stellar MMO that makes fantastic use of one of the greatest science fiction worlds ever created." - IGN
"Dune: Awakening was already one of my most anticipated games of the year. After spending so much (maybe too much?) time with it during this beta, my hype is on another level.” - Cinelinx
"Playing late into the final night of access, my time on Arrakis left me wanting more. I cannot wait to dive deeper and have my friends join me on this exciting and daunting adventure. Dune: Awakening is already living up to the hype, and I have a feeling so will the final product." - NerdReactor
"Frank Herbert’s masterpiece is made video game: I have already played Dune: Awakening and I know how and why it will obsess you.” - Ruetir
“I am stupidly excited for Dune: Awakening. I cannot wait to jump into Arrakis and take on the desert when the stakes feel real and not simply tied to a world wipe in a test. I want to get my friends together and truly unlock the power of the desert, fly our Ornithopters across the world, and even try to corner our own little segment of the Spice market down the road." - MMORPG
When the game is flavorful, Awakening is at its absolute best, and it goes without saying that Dune: Awakening is a massively ambitious game." - Screen Rant
"More than anything, Dune: Awakening's open world is already incredibly immersive. The sound of a sandworm moving across the landscape is chill-inducing; the ambiance of the expansive desert makes it feel almost too real at times; and the sheer size of everything brings the world of Dune, which has largely only been read about and seen on this level, into an interactive experience unlike anything else." - Game Rant
"The time I played with Dune: Awakening made me more invested in the game’s final release. It has a lot going for it, but all of the chaos blends into something that feels special." - Digital Trends
"Dune: Awakening features an exceptionally well-crafted world and speaks to Funcom’s understanding of the world they are trying to create for players." - CGMagOnline
"Based on what we were able to play in Dune: Awakening, the game has a lot of potential." - WorthPlaying
“While I only spent around eight hours playing the new Dune game, it was enough time to grow properly acquainted with (and genuinely hooked on) the ways that Funcom’s unique MMO-survival blend stands apart from its predecessors.” - GamesRadar+
Creator Highlights
“The scale of everything is so insane. I’m very excited.” – TmarTn
“I can see myself playing this game for thousands of hours. PvP, PvE, survival, politics, it’s all here and it all works.” – Yo Mama So Sweaty
“I’ve been really impressed by this game. I was skeptical when it was first announced when they mentioned sandworms and sandstorms wiping and changing the map. But now that I’ve actually played it and seen those features working flawlessly, I’m very happy.” – Tomographic
“Seeing how much more research, schematics, and higher tier resources there were to collect really hooked me.” – Mr. Fruit
Want to play Dune: Awakening for yourself? Wishlist and request access on the Steam page and sign up on the website to increase your chances in getting into the large-scale Beta weekend happening May 9-12.
Server Structure and Large-Scale Multiplayer Mechanics Explained
Dear Sleepers,
Recently, we hosted a special preview Beta for gaming press and content creators that resulted in hundreds of articles, videos, and livestreams breaking down and showcasing the first 20-25 hours of the game. It’s been great not just seeing all this coverage, but also your many comments.
What the participants of this preview didn’t get to experience is many if not most of the massively multiplayer aspects of Dune: Awakening.
As a result, many of your comments and questions were about those aspects of the game, and we’ve been keeping an eye on the many discussions that have come up across our community channels. Now is a great time to address some of the questions that have come up!
Of course, this write-up only addresses some of the many questions you have raised, and we aim to answer many more of them in the Reddit AMA we’re hosting today. Make sure to tune in!
Dune: Awakening is a mix of genres
Dune: Awakening is an open world, multiplayer, survival game on a massive scale, with content and mechanics you haven’t seen in combination before.
Labels can be weird, especially when you’re making a game like this, and a while back we decided to drop “MMO” from our top-level, one-liner description. Many of you have been asking why, and the reason is simply that we saw expectations were veering too far into the classic MMORPG paradigm.
At its heart, Dune: Awakening is an open world survival crafting game, and while it has many typical MMO features – including the massively multiplayer aspect – it’s important to be clear about what the game is and isn’t.
But let’s take this opportunity to clarify further.
Survival open world crafting at the core
In Dune: Awakening, you’ll find tons of classic survival elements.
Surviving the environment is a challenge. You need to stay hydrated, stay out of the sun and its scorching heat, and you need to manage environmental dangers like sandstorms and radiation.
It has resource management. You must harvest resources, process them, and use them to craft anything from armor to vehicles and weapons. Dune: Awakening, of course, also has spice.
Building is hugely important. You start by building a simple shelter, before unlocking crafting recipes that let you build towering fortresses. You need to manage power and ensure that you are protected from the destructive sandstorms.
It’s a sandbox (no pun intended). Nothing is level-gated, so if your friend wants to give you the best rifle in the game five minutes after you arrive on Arrakis – that’s fine. If you somehow obtain an ornithopter and manage to make your way to the Deep Desert in your first hour – good luck.
There is of course so much more that makes it a survival game, but anyone going into it will recognize many familiar mechanics – and some very new and unique ones.
Where Dune: Awakening goes beyond the classic survival formula
Dune: Awakening has you playing in a persistent world, shared with several hundred other players.
It’s not single-player. It’s not just co-op. You’re not just playing on a small server with a few dozen players.
Dune: Awakening goes beyond the typical survival game formula by introducing a large-scale multiplayer world and large-scale multiplayer mechanics.
Beyond just player numbers, there are several mechanics in Dune: Awakening you will recognize from MMO games, but also other genres. Here are a few:
We have a slew of social gameplay features, from server-wide chats and proximity voice chat to players being able to form groups, open trade windows, and create guilds
There is a World-wide (we’ll get to what Worlds are in a minute) trading feature fueled by the in-game Solari currency called the Exchange, where players across multiple servers can trade items. Think of it like auction houses you’ve seen in many MMOs
There are social hubs, where players from many different servers in the same World can congregate to socialize, trade, pick up contracts, and talk to NPCs
There are NPCs that you can talk to, with branching dialog trees, many which send you on missions that can be very similar to what you find in MMOs and other genres
There are dungeons, what we call Imperial testing stations, that you can brave alone or with a group, offering both story and loot
There is a multi-act, engaging storyline to follow, complete with in-game cutscenes, NPC dialog, and missions you’ll be sent on
You can choose to join the Atreides or the Harkonnen, building up reputation with them that unlocks rewards such as unique crafting recipes and building pieces
It offers more than just crafting progression, it also has multiple player archetypes (Schools of the Imperium), where you can mix and match different passive and active abilities
Our goal has been to create a combat system that goes beyond what you can expect from survival open world crafting games, both in terms of quality and combat options, not to mention synergies between archetypes and their abilities
There is an end game beyond just maxing out your progression and unlocking all the crafting recipes, opening a whole new gameplay loop
All this in combination with the more classic survival mechanics makes for an experience that feels different from what you’ve seen before, certainly in the survival genre.
Player population, and server/world structure explained
When you first start playing Dune: Awakening, you pick a server that will be your home. Each of these servers belongs to a World and a World consists of at least 20 servers.
As a player, you will meet and interact with players from other servers in your World. The best way to explain how this works is by looking at how our Arrakis is structured.
Our Arrakis is made up of different and separate maps, some larger than others. You move between these maps on the Overland Map.
Here are a few of the main ones:
Hagga Basin: This is where you start and where you will always return. The server you picked has one Hagga Basin map. It does not instance. Your server is basically your Hagga Basin, shared with several hundred other players, with up to 40 playing concurrently. It’s a big, persistent open world, similar in size to the map in Conan Exiles, and it consists of many different biomes. Here you must survive, build, and fight in the same space with other players who picked the same starting server as you. - It’s important to note that you can visit other Hagga Basin servers! You can do everything on the server you visit, except claim land. So, you can fight, progress, socialize, and even build on your friend’s or guild’s claimed land. - Hagga Basin is primarily PvE, with only a few small areas enabled for PvP.
Social Hubs: These are settlements (Arrakeen and Harko Village) where players cannot build, drive vehicles, nor engage in PvP, but instead go to trade on the Exchange, talk to NPCs and pick up contracts, and of course socialize with other players. Here you will meet players from all the other servers (Hagga Basins) in your World. Once a social hub is full, an additional instance is spawned, similar to how it works in many MMOs.
The Deep Desert: This is a massive, seamless, open space, several times larger than Hagga Basin. It is primarily a PvP map, with only a few smaller PvE areas. This is where players fight over control points and where battles will occur over massive spice blows. You’ll also find many different points of interest, including Imperial testing stations, promising new challenges and rewards. Once per week, a massive Coriolis Storm sweeps across the map, changing the locations of resources and points of interest, and players have to fly out to discover everything anew. - If you want to get technical about it, it consists of several maps seamlessly linked together, meaning you move across them seamlessly without loading. - While we are still fine-tuning the population for the Deep Desert, you can expect hundreds of players here, spread across its many points of interest. The Deep Desert is designed in such a way as to organically spread players across it, preventing all players from all huddling together in one small area. - You share one Deep Desert with all the other players across servers (Hagga Basins) in your World. So, once you leave your Hagga Basin, you can meet other players from your World either in the social hubs or the Deep Desert.
Overland Map: As mentioned above, you can move between all these different maps through the Overland Map. Here, you fly an ornithopter on a top-down representation of the northern hemisphere of Arrakis and can fly from your Hagga Basin to a shared social hub or the Deep Desert. Movement on the Overland Map costs fuel and time costs water. As you fly around, you will see other players from your World who are also flying around.
There are other maps as well, but we’ll save those for you to discover!
This setup gives us incredible flexibility in both how we can expand after launch and how we can provide so many different gameplay mechanics.
Whereas most other survival games would tie a server to a specific map, and when an expansion launches, you would need to abandon your base/progress on one server to start fresh on a new one with the new map, we can simply add more maps that you can travel to from the Overland Map. This allows us to expand the game without ever having to force people to choose to abandon their home or their progress.
It also allows us to create a game that offers a mix of all these different gameplay mechanics. You have land claim and persistent building of bases in Hagga Basin, you have large-scale multiplayer with a constantly changing world in the Deep Desert, and you have the social hubs with all the options they offer. You can move between any of these, and you can even visit other people’s Hagga Basin servers to play with them.
To put it simply: this is survival on a massive scale.
Concerns regarding load and server queues
We’ve seen several comments expressing concerns about server load and queues.
We certainly expect heavy loads at launch, and that is why we are preparing accordingly. Servers (Hagga Basins!) that fill up are impossible to completely avoid, same as with all games that operate with the populations Dune: Awakening does.
But, rest assured, there will be thousands of servers grouped together in hundreds of Worlds available at launch. They will be spread out across the globe, offering low-latency connections in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia as illustrated in the image below. If we see that we’re nearing capacity, we will be able to spin up more. This is not our first rodeo, we’ve launched several MMOs and survival games over the past 25 years, and we have a robust set of tools and processes in place, managed by an experienced live operations team.
What’s important to note is that while a Hagga Basin server can support 40 people playing concurrently, the way populations ebb and flow over the course of a day means that it still supports several hundred people picking that server as their home. This has been rigorously tested during closed beta, and we have systems in place that will restrict too many characters being created on a server that is becoming too popular, to minimize the chance of servers becoming full
As with all games operating with populations like this, that doesn’t mean servers will never reach the 40-player concurrency cap. If that happens, you will join a server queue when logging in.
The term “server queue” is rarely used in positive context – but to us it’s a quality-of-life addition. Commonly, survival games don’t offer this, and you are left having to wait and hope you are able to click fast enough when a slot opens up. By adding a server queue functionality, you can simply click once and rest easy knowing that you will get in when a slot becomes available to you.
Again, because of how player populations ebb and flow throughout the day, you should not have to wait long before being let in.
Servers can be filtered by location as well as language, and you will be able to see which servers your Steam friends are playing on.
While transferring between servers or Worlds will not be available at launch, this is something we will introduce in a post-launch update as populations stabilize. Remember that you can visit friends on any server belonging to the same World your home server is in, and you can do everything – including building on a friend’s or a guild’s base – except claim land on a server that you are visiting. You can even create and join cross-server guilds.
We are still tweaking population limits on servers, Worlds, and maps to provide a smooth experience for everyone, and we have the flexibility to do so even after launch as we get an even more complete picture of how people play.
What about single-player and private servers?
What’s hopefully clear after reading the above is that much of Dune: Awakening’s unique brand of fun lies in its large-scale multiplayer mechanics.
While the game does not have a single-player or offline mode, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it alone. You have to connect to a server and play in a multiplayer environment, but much of the game is perfectly soloable, and ultimately, it’s up to you if you if you brave Arrakis alone or with others.
The game is not launching with private servers, but we plan to introduce them in a post-launch update. Because of the game’s focus on large-scale multiplayer mechanics, it’s important to us that we retain that part of the gameplay, and our goal is to introduce a system where private servers belong to groups of other private servers that all share social hubs and a Deep Desert.
In this case, you will still have a private Hagga Basin server that only you and your friends have access to. We’ll talk more about this later.
Wrapping up
To define Dune: Awakening, we’ve had to talk a bit about what it is not, because it doesn’t fit into any single genre’s box, as most people would know them. It has a survival core, a pretty unique server structure, and several important online multiplayer features.
We believe Dune: Awakening’s server structure, where hundreds of players flow seamlessly between different areas of the game world, is doing something other survival games are not.
One thing that’s become more and more apparent to us as we’ve been developing this game is that you need to experience it to fully comprehend the scale and complexity of its systems. Some of you will get to experience a small part of this in the upcoming large-scale Beta Weekend (early game), and while our ongoing persistent closed Beta has allowed us to rigorously test both tech and gameplay, it’s only when the head start begins on June 5th that it will truly come into its own and players can get a real sense of what we’ve been building over the past several years.
The time is almost here, and we can’t wait for you to set foot on Arrakis with us.
Sincerely, The Dune: Awakening Team
Building in Dune: Awakening – Claim Your Piece of Arrakis
Greetings Sleepers,
In Dune: Awakening, you will claim your part of Arrakis and build your base on it, from small shelter to mighty stronghold. You will build it piece by piece, from foundation to interior decoration. You will even choose the architectural style you prefer.
Building is an essential part of your survival and rise to power on Arrakis. Today, we will give an overview of building - how to claim your piece of Dune, build your own unique stronghold, and much more.
See the building in action in our building video showcase, and read on for a deeper dive.
There are two core purposes to building: expressing yourself by creating your ideal base, and becoming more powerful by developing your crafting capabilities and safely storing your gear and resources. You can invest as much as you want into either of these activities, spending your time building striking marvels, or creating a powerful and efficient spice refinery. You can of course also do both.
Claiming Your Piece of Arrakis – Shields, Taxes, and Power
A base must be built on solid land because in the open desert, the roaming sandworms will inevitably destroy it. This still leaves ample space for you to choose where to place your headquarters.
You start by placing a sub-fief console, where you can manage things like your base name and permissions, and view important information like shield status, power consumption and capacity, water, storage, storm alerts, and more.
When you place your sub-fief console, you claim the land around it, and you will see an outline of the area in which you can build. The area around your starter sub-fief console can’t be expanded, but when you learn to build an advanced version and place it in new regions of Hagga Basin, you can expand your land claim both horizontally and vertically by placing staking units. You can build huge bases in such expanded areas and construct imposing structures atop tall mountains.
Keep in mind that you can’t expand infinitely and your land claim can’t overlap with the bases of other players or NPCs or be too close to Imperial Testing Stations or trade posts.
You can have a total of three sub-fief consoles and a maximum number of two starter ones. As you advance, your starter bases will be of little use and can easily be abandoned in favor of building more advanced ones.
Your base is protected by a shield. Without it, it will eventually crumble and return to the sands. To keep your shield running, you need to produce more power than you consume. Also, your advanced bases will draw the attention of the Emperor, who will begin to demand taxes to keep your shield running. If you don’t pay the taxes, the shield goes down.
This is a way to make sure that bases are not permanent, so the number of bases doesn’t simply grow until there’s no space for new ones. The system aims to be lenient enough to let you play entirely at your own pace, while making space for new bases.
Architectural styles of Dune – Choosing Your Allegiance
To begin with, everyone has access to the building pieces provided by CHOAM (Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles), a colossal commercial organization with a monopoly across most of the known Universe.
After you have gained a foothold on Arrakis by acquiring better gear, learning powerful abilities from the Schools of the Imperium, and making a name for yourself, you can align with one of the Great Houses vying for power on Arrakis – House Atreides and House Harkonnen.
Should you complete their initiation and gain their trust, you can get access to their architectural style. The look of these sets of building pieces reflects the values of their respective faction, and even let you flaunt your allegiance by raising their banners.
Will you choose the unyielding, regal Atreides architecture, with its falcon motifs and shapes, or the dark chitinous Harkonnen style, oozing with menace and excess.
These are not entirely cosmetic differences. For example, only the Atreides have the lofty, wing-like balconies, while the Harkonnen boast uniquely tall, slanted walls. A looming face protrudes from above the gate, ever watching those coming and going.
In addition to the building pieces, you will have access to a wealth of interior decorations, also in various styles. Take your pick from warm Atreides rugs, organic, insectoid Harkonnen lamps and desks, the cold efficient shelves of CHOAM, and much more.
Customization and the ability to live your Dune fantasy are core pillars of Dune: Awakening. Therefore, after the game launches, we plan to expand the number of architectural styles based on the many factions in the Dune universe, with new building pieces and decorations.
Blueprints and Solido Projections – Co-op Building Made Easy
At any point, you can use your Solido Replicator to copy an entire base into a Blueprint, which is stored as an item in your inventory. You can then use it to place a Solido Projection of your base all at once but at a different location. You still fill in each building piece and need the required materials, but the Blueprint is there for you to follow.
Blueprints, like any other item, can be given to an ally, or even sold on the Exchange. If you’re architecturally inclined, why not make money doing it?
Solido Projections can also be used without using a Blueprint, by creating a base projection piece by piece. This is a great way to build with other players, since the projection is visible to everyone with access to your base. It’s easy to set up, change, and fill in.
Blueprints are invaluable for setting up a base fast, which can be the difference between life and death in the Deep Desert, where deadly sandstorms tear flesh from bone.
The Deep Desert and PvP
The Deep Desert is vast, deadly, and home to the most valuable resources, such as the spice. Maximize your production by setting up a forward operating base as a fortified hub from which to transport resources back to the relative safety of your main base behind the Shield Wall in Hagga Basin.
However, everything in the Deep Desert is temporary. Every week, the great Coriolis Storm sweeps across the huge map, changing the very landscape. Bases are reduced to dust, resources and points of interest, like the entrance to underground testing stations, are buried under the sand, while new ones are uncovered. The entire Deep Desert map is wiped, so make sure to get your resources out in time.
The Deep Desert is not subject to Sardaukar policing in the way other areas of Arrakis are, meaning that PvP is entirely possible. In certain limited circumstances, bases can even be raided there. Bases are invulnerable while their shields are up but there are three ways in which a base’s shields can go down in the Deep Desert:
A player’s base lacks power.
During and shortly after a regular sandstorms there is a small window in which the shields go down.
Deep Desert Coriolis Storms also bring down shields as they are building up, which can take a few hours. This window is longer than regular storms, but it is also far more dangerous, given that once the Coriolis Storm arrives in full force, it will destroy all bases and kill anyone in the Deep Desert.
Note: We mentioned earlier that failing to pay Imperial taxes will also lead to losing your shield, but Deep Desert bases are not taxed by the Emperor and therefore do not have this requirement.
Overall, creating a base in the Deep Desert is a choice - one that raises the stakes, so be conscious of the possible risks and rewards.
You Are the Architects of Arrakis
Dune: Awakening is a multiplayer survival game on a massive scale. It is also a sandbox where you, the player, have the power to affect the world around you, to build and to destroy, befriend and betray.
When you travel across the desert, the presence of others is apparent: a base nestled under the shadow of a cliff; another spearing the sky on a mountain peak; even their bodies, victims of the devastating sun, wither away in the sand. You will make your mark, too.
In Dune: Awakening, we have worked hard to make building as fun, easy, and impactful as possible, balancing functionality with freedom. We can’t wait to see what you will create on Arrakis. Your Arrakis.
Join Our Reddit AMA on May 6 – Ask Us Anything!
Greetings Sleepers,
We’ve been unveiling more and more of Dune: Awakening but we’re sure you have some interesting and fun questions for us.
To give everyone a chance to ask those questions, we’re organizing an AMA on the Dune: Awakening sub-reddit next week!
A question thread will be started on May 5th, 4PM CET on /r/duneawakening
This is your chance to submit your questions early and upvote questions that you think we should answer!
The AMA will take place on May 6th, on the same thread, between 4PM-6PM CET
Joining us will be:
Creative Director Joel Bylos
Executive Producer Scott Junior
Senior Game Director Viljar Sommerbakk.
This is your chance to directly ask your questions to our team and we’re looking forward to answering as many of them as we can.
Learn more about Dune: Awakening and Wishlist us on Steam.
Story Trailer Out Now, Large-Scale Beta Weekend Coming on May 9-12!
Greetings Sleepers,
We have a huge Beta Weekend and broadcast coming up soon! Read on to get all the details, and don’t miss our brand-new Story Trailer, giving you a taste of the cinematic storytelling awaiting you in Dune: Awakening.
Large-Scale Beta Weekend – May 9-12
From May 9 until May 12, a large-scale Beta weekend will take place, the largest one yet, with a huge number of new players joining, and no NDA, unlike previous closed Betas. Share any info you want with your friends, or even stream the game for all to see!
With access to the first 20 hours of the game and most of Act 1 of the story, you will get a taste of both spice and story.
You have a chance to gain access to the Beta weekend by wishlisting and request access on the Dune: Awakening Steam page, or by getting one of tens of thousands of Beta codes that will be given out during the global broadcast on May 10.
We will share the full details about the Beta soon.
Global Broadcast – May 10
Tune in to our Global Dune: Awakening LAN party, broadcast from both London and PAX East. Throughout the event, we will jump to many other locations around the world to check in with people playing the game. Watch lead developers discuss the game, with various content creators then facing off in-game in an exciting competition.
For a chance to get access to the Beta weekend, this is the place to be, as tens of thousands of Beta keys will be handed out during the broadcast to all those watching. Keys can be used to get immediate access to the Dune: Awakening Beta weekend.
Anyone attending PAX East in person is more than welcome to visit our Dune: Awakening booth for a chat and to play the game.
Survival and Story
Find the Fremen. Wake the Sleeper.
Gom Jabbar held at your neck, this is your mandate. Embark on an odyssey across Arrakis, told through a rich cast of characters and cinematic cutscenes. Get a glimpse of the epic journey in today’s Story Trailer:
Dune: Awakening’s cinematic story is an essential thread in the full tapestry - the open world survival experience – rooting you firmly in the universe of the sci-fi masterpiece. With this game, we aim to pull cinematic storytelling further into the multiplayer survival space.
Walk in the footsteps of the Fremen as you learn to survive the desert and uncover a past that the sands have buried. In the deadly crucible of Arrakis, each of you must eventually answer: who are you?
On June 10, you will finally be free to fully explore the rich and imaginative world created by Frank Herbert, feet in scorching sand, for the first time ever.
We can’t wait for you to get there. Neither can the worms.
