Dune Awakening sietches, worlds, and visiting explained

How do Dune Awakening sietches work? We've been trying to play Dune Awakening with friends, and it's been a rough ride. With only 40 concurrent players per sietch (server), the servers are constantly locked down, stopping new players from joining their friends. However, we've discovered an easy way to play with friends, even if you can't create a character on their server.

Dune Awakening is one of 2025's best survival games and one of the most played games on Steam, resulting in the servers filling up fast. When you start the game, you're met with a list of worlds, within which are over 20 sietches. We're going to break down what this means, why you can visit some sietches, and explain how you play with friends on other servers.

What are Dune Awakening sietches?

Dune Awakening sietches are the game's individual servers, and each can hold up to 40 concurrent players. This is considered your 'home' server and is where you can claim land to build on.

For those who aren't up to speed on all the Dune lore, the word sietch is derived from the Fremen word meaning village. You start your journey through Arrakis here and must complete at least the first few story quests on your home server.

Dune Awakening worlds contain at least 20 servers and hundreds of players. You can only create one character per world, and you can then visit any sietch within that world with that character.

Characters cannot be transferred between worlds yet, so you must create a new character to join or visit a different world. Since you can only have one character per world, you must choose a different world if you want another character, say to try out other Dune Awakening classes.

The Deep Desert, the massively multiplayer, PvP endgame location, is located across sietches, meaning everyone in your world will appear in the same Deep Desert, allowing for more players here than in Sietches.

How to play with a friend on another server

If you're trying to join a friend and their server is locked, there's still an option. The main thing to remember is that you must still join their world. Find any server that is open in your friend's world and create a character there. For example, if they are on Sietch Eaqrab on the Hagal world, you can join any open Hagal sietch, such as Sietch Abbir.

Once you have created a character and completed the tutorial, you can visit another sietch, and you can join your friend's party and guild. In fact, you can play out most of the rest of the game with them on their server.

The only thing you can't do while visiting a server is place a sub-fief, in other words, claim land. However, your friends can give you permission to edit and access their build, so it doesn't actually matter. Your progress and inventory is shared between servers, so as long as you're happy running a base with your friends, you can play together.

While completing your journey quests, you must place a Sub-Fief and an advanced Sub-Fief, as well as place a few walls. Since you can't claim land on your friend's server, you cannot place a Sub-Fief, so you must do these quests on your home server. However, once you've done it, you can simply return to your friend(s) to continue.

It's not ideal, but it's a workaround for playing with friends on other Dune Awakening sietches.