Dune: Awakening’s Free Blood and Ice Expansion Trades Desert Heat for a Frozen New Map

Funcom has announced Blood and Ice, a free expansion for Dune: Awakening that launches December 1 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox. Rather than adding more desert to explore, the update sends players to the frozen north of Arrakis for the first time, flipping the survival MMO’s core heat-management loop on its head.

A New Survival Challenge in the Polar Sink

Blood and Ice introduces the Polar Sink, an entirely new map split into two biomes: a more manageable tundra and a heavily guarded ice cap beyond it. Instead of avoiding extreme heat, players will need to stay warm, craft new cold-weather gear, and harvest ice to cool down their desert bases and speed up production. Both regions are controlled by wealthy water shipper families who won’t welcome any interference with their operations, giving the expansion its own faction to push against.

“Around 35 hours of new progression.”

Dune: Awakening team, on the scope of Blood and Ice

Survival on Arrakis has always meant managing heat, Blood and Ice asks players to do the opposite in the frozen Polar Sink.

Cosmetics, New Events, and Long-Requested Features

Alongside the expansion, Funcom is launching a cosmetics store, whose opening rotation will include looks pulled directly from the Dune films to coincide with the theatrical release of Dune: Part Three this December. A new in-game event called Water Crisis will also arrive shortly after Blood and Ice, following the currently running Scourge event with another story built around a scarce resource.

Funcom is also finally addressing some of the community’s most requested features. Offline single-player support, letting players run the game without an internet connection, arrives in November, while character copying between multiplayer and single-player and full cross-play across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox are both planned for January 2027. The studio says Blood and Ice is just one step in a larger plan to keep expanding Dune: Awakening with major free updates through 2027, building on the new world detailed in our Dune: Awakening map guide.

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Picture Source: Funcom