Opening Words
Happy New Year, Sleepers!
We hope everyone had an exciting, festive, and joyful holiday. Or a quiet, gentle, and cozy one if that is more your speed. Either way, we’re happy to welcome you into the new year with a full cup, a bountiful harvest of spice, and a path kept clear by the Great Maker.
We’re excited to get the year going as we look forward and see what we have in store for Dune: Awakening. Chapter 3 is on the horizon and we are looking closely at all the feedback we’ve received so far on the Public Testing Client. Take a look at our Round Up section for more on this! And don’t stop scrolling there, we’re giving you a mini tour of the Oslo office as well as showing off some amazing shares from the community in this issue.
Round Up
Developer Stream
Last month we debuted the Chapter 3 developer stream! This three hour stream was jampacked with an info dump of everything you can expect to see in the next big update. You can see it all in action on the VOD here on Twitch or on YouTube. Or if you’d prefer to see a summary of what’s coming, you can check out our blog here.
Public Testing Client Patch 1.3.0.0
If you simply can’t wait for this update to go live, and you’d like to give your feedback on it, you can play it now on the Public Testing Client! Try out the augmentation and specialization progression, new testing stations, Landsraad revamp, and almost everything mentioned before in the stream and blog. The only thing not included is the story continuation and DLC. No spoilers here! You’ll have to wait a little longer for that.
Check out how to access the client as well as all the patch notes here!
Gifts of the Sand
With the latest patch we’ve added the Gifts of the Sand pack. This is a free pack that includes multiple cosmetic items for your base such as a strategy table, miniatures, holograms, two weapon skins, and more. You can find these using your construction tool.
Developer Deep Dive
In this issue, we’re pulling back the curtain to give you a glimpse of where the magic happens. Nestled in snowy Oslo, Norway, sits the Funcom headquarters. While we can’t show you every secret corner (we’d need an NDA for that!), we wanted to share a few highlights from our creative space. You’ll notice our fun and festive decor, but we'll be packing up the holiday spirit quite soon.
Here is one of the two lobbies at our office. This floor is at the very top of the building, so during the day these large windows offer a gorgeous view of Oslo. During the winter, though, sunlight is hard to come by. Sunset is at about 3:30pm during this time of year!
This is one wall of many of some of the Dune memorabilia we’ve collected through the years. We have figurines, posters, books, mini ornithopters, and even a thumper that articulates up and down.
Check out our luscious moss wall! It’s real, so making sure it’s moisturized enough is important. Much like it is in a certain game…
Here is video editor, Juan López Moreno in his natural habitat. He’s been a major part of many of the videos and trailers you have seen for Dune: Awakening. And like many of us at Funcom, we like to decorate our desks with trinkets. You might see some you recognize!
Here is an angle not generally seen during our developer streams. We have many Funcomers working behind the scenes during these streams to make sure they run smoothly. This includes doing rehearsal runs, like pictured here.
This is Lee Symes, one of our senior environmental artists. He’s busy working on Chapter 3 content, some of which we needed to blur on his right screen. Some of it needs to stay secret for now!
Community Corner
The holidays brought a surge of incredible community talent to Arrakis! From inspiring bases to cinematic screenshots, here are some handpicked highlights. We hope they inspire you to also share! You can do this through any of our channels such as the subreddit, official Discord server, Instagram, X (Twitter), BlueSky, or Threads. As before, those featured here will receive keys to the Atreides Battle Rifle skin.
Buildings
We’ll start out this section with some beautiful Tannenbaums.
By u/gracklewolf on Reddit
By u/KutuluKid on Reddit
By u/Guizmo0 on Reddit
By bo_fahdeez on Discord.
By u/DaughterOfDune on Reddit
A temple created in dedication to the sandworm by madmike72. on Discord.
A nice and tidy hangar with everything in its place by Beharion on Discord.
A table for Dungeons & Dragons with a game master chair in the middle. Room for 3 players on each side for Atreides and Harkonnen to plan their next move on the board. Created by Piegusek on Discord.
Supernautilus on Discord redesigned their base with a tunnel so others can drive through it.
Fanart
The Historian commissioned by u/ThatOneRoman and created by Rienque LeVerite. This was handmade in photoshop, and you can see the work in progress on YouTube here.
A sweet Christmas themed Maud’dib art by Crypsalis on Discord.
A festive sandworm beautifully drawn by variable_ian’s daughter.
Screenshots
By u/RockOrStone on Reddit
By u/Excellent-Cow9536 on Reddit
By revenge_606 on Discord
And more!
DeadWomanWalking Gaming has a new episode of their SandWalking podcast, where they break down Chapter 3 changes, talk lore, speculation, and community insight.
A new PC built by dragonsrcool69, see it in action here!
Our creative Director, Joel Bylose, sat down with Eradicati0n to talk in-depth about all the new additions coming to the game in Chapter 3. The endgame revamp, new dungeons, specializations, main story and plenty more is discussed in this long-form interview.
Q&A
Q: Is there a limit to specializations? Is there is a level cap for skills?
A: Each specialization track has a max level of 100. But there is no limit to the amount of XP you can get over time for each track, so you can max out each track at level 100 if you play enough missions.
Q: Regarding the new skills, if you pay the spice tax for a respec using the skill reattribution is that a permanent reduction in the cooldown?
A: Doing the skill reattribution only resets the skill points spent; it does not reset the specialization XP or Spice Melange spent on specialization traits. The spice cost increases each time you use it and will cap out at 50 but will decrease with time.
Q: Do existing testing stations also get the new difficulty scaler or just the new ones being added with Chapter 3?
A: Just the new ones, but we have plans to do some pretty interesting things with the currently existing ones!
Q: Are there plans for a PvP arena?
A: This is something we’ve been discussing internally. It won’t be available for chapter 3, but it’s something we’ve been looking at.
Q: What’s the status of console release?
A: Internal builds are going well! We are working on customizing the game to play smoothly on console, and working on elements of it such as controller technologies. It is still planned to release this year.
Spice for Thought
The year 2025 has passed, and the sands of Arrakis have already shifted beneath our feet. Even in these first few months in Dune: Awakening, you’ve already begun carving out your own legends. We’d love to hear about any memorable, fond, and/or interesting memories you had while playing!
Whether it was a narrow escape from a sandworm’s maw, an unexpected alliance or help from a stranger, a moment of peace interrupted by a spice blow right beneath your feet, we want to hear about it.
You can share your story with us in this thread on the subreddit, this Discord thread, or on the social media post you found this blog on. Feel free to include pictures if you wish! We’ll collect them and share our favorites in the next Communinet Signal.
Closing Words
Thanks for joining us once again for this Communinet Signal! We hope you enjoy reading these issues as much as we love sharing them; the creativity we see from you all is inspiring and our developers love seeing what you make.
Our next issue will feature more on Chapter 3 and everything around it, words from our developers, and of course, stories and screenshots from the community. Until then, stay hydrated and be well.