Dune: Awakening has a new test patch which increases the PvE area in the Deep Desert, and players can hop in now via a separate client on Steam.
PvE now covers map rows A, B, C, D and half of E, developer Funcom revealed in an announcement, hopefully easing the worries some players have of running into griefers in the area.
It's been a quick turnaround for Funcom, after the devs said players "don't have to engage in PvP" if they don't want last week, then backtracking and saying that PvE-only areas in the Deep Desert would be coming "soon" just a couple of days ago.
The expanded PvE area is not the only change Funcom is making to Dune: Awakening in the test patch. As well as bug fixes, sandworms will now "linger for a bit around spicefields that have been recently harvested from" and players will be able to claim land in any sietch, the developer says.
If you want to help test out the new changes, the Public Test Client will be open "for a week or two" until the dev is ready to roll out patch 1.1.10.0 to the main game. Character progression will save in the Public Test Client too, so if you want to help test future patches you won't have to start over again and can continue from where you were with the character you made in this test.
Players have criticized Dune: Awakening for an endgame that "unfairly favors large guilds" over solo players and smaller groups, but that hasn't stopped one million players from taking to Arrakis in two weeks.
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