A day after GamesFinity covered Funcom’s plans for Conan Exiles Enhanced on consoles, the Oslo studio had news for its other survival game. Funcom announced on Thursday that Blood and Ice, a free expansion for Dune: Awakening, launches on December 1, 2026, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox. It adds the Polar Sink, a new map in the frozen north of Arrakis, with about 35 hours of progression.
Dune: Awakening runs on official servers, or on private ones rented from hosts such as GPORTAL and Nitrado. A private server can be locked with a password so only your crew gets in. The announcement gives no party size. Full cross-play between PC and consoles is not here yet: Funcom says it arrives in January 2027. Character copying comes the same month, from multiplayer to single-player and from single-player to select private servers. An offline single-player mode lands first, in November.
The Polar Sink flips the main game’s problem. On the sand, heat is what kills you. Up north, heat is what you chase, and gear built for the desert has to be upgraded before it can handle the cold. The map has two biomes. You start in the tundra, where wealthy water shipper families defend their strongholds, and push toward the ice cap, the ground those families guard hardest. Resources found only in the Polar Sink feed the new survival gear. Funcom says traversal, temperature management and combat drive progression, with the action back on the ground.
What harvested ice does for a base
Ice harvested on the cap can cool base equipment and speed up production. You can also go back to the Polar Sink for its resources after the 35 hours are done, and Funcom says future updates will add more reasons to return. That gives a crew a job to split: a couple of people run ice while the rest keep the base working. The expansion also adds new vehicle modules, augments and specialization traits.
"We're far from done," Funcom CEO Scott Junior said in the announcement. Far from done is an easy promise; a free 35-hour map is a better one. Dune: Awakening reached PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on September 22, and Funcom says more than a million new players have joined since the console launch.
A cosmetics store opens alongside the expansion with outfits, vehicle variants and base decorations, some of them looks from the films, and Funcom says purchases fund the free updates. A Water Crisis event, a fight over scarce water supplies, follows shortly after December 1.
If your crew drifted off the sand after launch, Tuesday, December 1 is the night to get everyone back on a Dune: Awakening server. If half of them play on PlayStation, wait for January.
