Greetings, Sleepers!
It is time for our next look behind the curtain. We have a few major updates to discuss today regarding our development, self-hosted servers with a customizable full gameplay experience and a rework of how PvP and PvE interact in Dune: Awakening.
Balancing Priorities
From our very first Closed Beta Weekend, player feedback has been instrumental in shaping the game. We strive to iterate quickly, but game development is rarely linear, and our resources must constantly be balanced between polishing existing content, responding to live situations, preparing the console launch, and developing new features or content. Adjusting the scope and timing of content releases to match what our team can realistically deliver is an important part of that process.
This year, you’ll see a series of features aimed at giving you more ways to customize your experience on Arrakis. Some of these will arrive early on the Public Test Client, giving us room to refine them based on your feedback. A few of these changes are planned to land with Patch 1.3.20.0, starting with a major shift in how conflict in the Deep Desert is handled.
PVE-first Open World Survival
We’ve always envisioned Arrakis as a tense place where players must master the desert to survive the scorching sun, lack of water, ever-present Shai-Hulud, and other hazards. We also want Dune: Awakening to feel like a triumph of your own making. Players should have the agency to tailor their experience and gravitate toward others with similar motivations, coexisting within the community.
Dune: Awakening offers a variety of playstyles. However, with over 80% of our lifetime players exclusively engaging with PvE content, the convergence of PvE and PvP, particularly in the Deep Desert, didn’t align with our objectives and remained a significant topic of discussion.
Combining our goals, the in-game data, and the results of player surveys, made it clear that we needed to rethink our approach and underline the PvE-first nature of the game. While PvP conflict is an important aspect of Dune: Awakening for some, it must be optional and incentivized rather than required for progression.
New repeatable gameplay loops in Chapter 3 have alleviated some of these concerns. These new features include Specializations, reworked Landsraad Missions and Faction Rank progression, and new scalable Testing Stations.
To further emphasize the PvE-first approach, we are making the following changes in Patch 1.3.20.0:
- All PvP zones in Hagga Basin will be disabled across all official Worlds.
- All official Worlds will have separate Deep Desert instances you can choose from:
- A PvE instance for pure survival and exploration experience with no player combat. There is no PvP in this instance across any of the rows, including Shipwrecks.
- A PvP instance with the classic high-stakes environment and open-world conflict across rows B through I. To make sure the rewards match the risk, the yield from mining and spice harvesting will be multiplied by 2.5 in PvP areas.
By separating these experiences, we allow players to hunt for spice or explore Imperial Testing Stations without the constant threat of a blade in the dark, while ensuring those who live for the thrill of the hunt have a dedicated arena to prove their mettle and the rewards to make it worthwhile.
Self-hosted Servers Are Coming!
We are thrilled to announce that Self-Hosting is coming to Dune: Awakening. Whether you want to host a private server for friends or foster a community with unique rules, the power is moving into your hands.
The initial iteration, which will be available for testing soon, will require a few extra steps to set up and feature a limited range of customization settings. These settings will include resource harvesting rates, adjustable limits on base building pieces, or item durability and base decay options, with more customization settings being rolled out later. All these customization options will also be available on private servers right from the start. We are releasing it early to get feedback on this experimental version and improve it alongside you. More features and improvements will be added throughout the year.
Full instructions on how to set up and customize self-hosted servers will be included in the patch notes when the feature becomes available. Please be advised that the initial setup for this first iteration of the feature is more technical than most other games and requires a computer running Microsoft Windows Pro with Hyper-V in order to run the servers in a Linux Virtual Machine (VM).
We are, of course, still working on future updates. The goal is to work on improving these customization tools along with those releases, but we will talk about that in dune time. We are excited to continue crafting a survival experience that can stand the test of time in the new era of Dune: Awakening.
Thank you for walking this path with us.
Frequently Asked Questions about Self-hosted Servers:
Q: Why is self-hosting more complicated than in Conan Exiles?
A: Because Dune: Awakening runs a larger, more complex world. Instead of a single server, it uses multiple maps that start and stop as needed, plus a database (Postgres) to keep track of all player and world data.
Q: Will Self-hosting always work like this?
A: No. This is an early experimental version. Our goal is to make hosting easier, more accessible, and less technical over time.
Q: What are the hardware requirements for hosting my own server?
A: It depends on how many players are playing at once and what they are doing. The minimum configuration we have tested to work is the following:
OS: Windows 10 64-bit Pro with Hyper-V
MEMORY: 20 GB RAM
PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600
NETWORK: Broadband Internet connection
STORAGE: 100GB
ADDITIONAL NOTES: SSD required
On hardware like that you can safely play the game with 1-4 players with normal activity (playing together and building standard size bases) and if everyone is on the same map at the same time.
CPU and RAM requirements increase rapidly with number of players and number of maps.
Q: Can I run the server directly on a Linux machine instead of running it on a VM on Windows?
A: Technically yes, but we do not yet support a streamlined installation for that. You’re free to experiment with that, though.
Q: Will the Server customization be made available to Private Servers?
A: Yes. All server settings will be available to private servers as we release them, though hosting providers may implement them differently.
Q: Can I transfer my character to a self-hosted server?
A: Yes, you will be able to transfer your character from Official and Private servers to self-hosted servers. However, you won’t be able to transfer it back from a self-hosted server to Official ones. You might be able to transfer it to certain Private servers. For this, private server providers need to accept Character Transfers from self-hosted servers.
Q: How many players can join a self-hosted server?
A: This is determined by the hardware you use, but the upper limit is the same as Official servers. Hagga Basin will be capped at 40 concurrent players, but you could technically host your own World with multiple Sietches. However, we expect most people will not have access to the hardware required to do that and will be capped to 1 Sietch or 40 players concurrently.
Q: Does self-hosting cost money?
A: Funcom will not charge players additional money for this feature but you may incur additional costs depending on your agreement with your Internet Service Provider.
Q: Can I host on Linux or cloud providers?
A: The initial version requires Windows Pro with Hyper-V. Additional options may be explored later.
Q: Can I customize PvP rules?
A: Yes, that is one of the customization options available in this first iteration.
