Dune: Awakening’s Blood and Ice Expansion Gets a December Release Date and Adds Offline Mode

December is shaping up to be the month of Dune. The largest Dunecember event will go to Dune: Part 3, which is due out December 18th. A little bit before that, however, is a well-timed free expansion coming to Dune: Awakening. It’s called Blood and Ice, which sounds gross, but hey, I guess free blood and ice isn’t entirely a bad thing?

“The expansion introduces the Polar Sink, an entirely new survival map where everything you’ve learned about surviving in the desert will be put to the test,” explains a Steam blog post. “Instead of protecting yourself from extreme heat, you’ll need to find ways to stay warm. The technology you’ve developed to survive the desert won’t be enough here, and you’ll need to upgrade your equipment, gather new resources, and adapt your strategies to survive the cold.”

You’ll find two biomes in the Polar Sink, the tundra and the ice cap, the former being where you’ll kick off your time in this expansion. “While conditions here are more manageable than on the ice cap itself, these families won’t welcome anyone interfering with their operations,” the blog notes. Your main goal is to get the ice cap and gather up all of its valuable resources, namely, ice! Said ice can then be used to “cool your base equipment and speed up production.”

Apparently you’ll get about 35 more hours of “new progression, along with new vehicle modules, augments, and specialization traits,” out of the expansion, and there are plans for future updates that’ll give you reason to come back to the Polar Sink in due time. Beyond that, there is also a new cosmetic store, which lets you purchase “optional cosmetic items, including outfits, vehicle variants, and additional ways to customize your bases.” I’m sure this will go down well.

Perhaps most importantly, offline mode arrives in November, meaning players will no longer need an internet connection to play. Hopefully, if (probably when—sorry to be a pessimist, a realist) the servers go down, this ensures the game remains playable. Character copying, allowing players to transfer their character from multipemain servers to single-player, will arrive in January, alongside full cross-play. A great deal is coming, essentially.