Large-Scale Beta Weekend – All You Need to Know

08 May 2025Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Greetings Sleepers,

The Dune: Awakening large-scale Beta weekend on May 9-12 is almost here! Read on to discover all you need to know about accessing the Beta!

Three ways to increase your chances of getting into the Beta:

Wishlist and request access on the Dune: Awakening Steam page
Sign up with your email on the official website
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.

PC Specs

Minimum:

OS: Windows 10 64-bit (or newer)
Processor: Intel Core i5-7400, AMD Ryzen 3 1200
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB), AMD Radeon 5600XT (6GB)
Storage: 60 GB available space (SSD required)

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.

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.