Dying Light: The Beast Turns One With a Double XP Weekend Today, a Three Week Call of the Beast Event, a Free Discharge Weapon Pack, and Its First Physical PS5 Edition

Dying Light: The Beast is a year old today, and Techland is treating the date as a proper event rather than a tweet. Update 1.7 went live on September 18 with a Double XP weekend that starts right now, a three week community event that kicks off on September 21, a daily reward calendar, and the one thing the community kept asking for: a physical PS5 edition. On top of that, the Discharge Weapon Pack is free to keep on every store for a few more days.

We like anniversaries that give players something to do instead of a retrospective video. This one does, and most of it costs nothing if you already own the game.

Video: Dying Light on YouTube

Double XP now, Call of the Beast from September 21

The Double XP weekend is the warm up. It starts on September 18 and exists to get lapsed players levelled before the main event. That main event is called Call of the Beast: 1st Anniversary Edition, and it runs for three weeks from September 21. Each week the whole community chases a shared global goal, and each week players vote on how they want to target enemies. The winning vote becomes a weekend modifier that changes how fights play out in Castor Woods. Techland also promises tougher enemies and rare Bober Infected spawns during the event, plus anniversary rewards claimed through the Outpost web hub.

Running alongside it is Crane's Anniversary Drops, a 21 day login calendar on the Outpost site that also starts September 21. Each day unlocks something, from in game dockets and store points to festive weapon skins and blueprints. If you miss a day you can catch up later, but the hard deadline is October 19 at 2:00 PM CEST, and anything unclaimed after that is gone for good. Update 1.7 itself is mostly housekeeping: fixed assets that refused to break in Race Challenges, fewer crashes, an end to the FPS spikes during PS5 boss fights, a stutter fix in the settings menu, and a fix for screen tearing when Ray Tracing and Frame Generation are combined on RTX 40 series cards.

The free weapon pack and the physical edition

The Discharge Weapon Pack is free to keep on Steam, the PlayStation Store and the Xbox store, and on Steam the offer ends September 24 at 7:00 AM. Its centrepiece is the Discharge machete, an electrified blade salvaged from Harran that crackles through the infected. It normally sells for 4.99 on Steam, so claim it even if you are not playing this week. The base game is also 50% off across digital stores through September 26 if you never picked it up.

The physical edition is the headline for collectors. Techland has partnered with Super Rare Games on a PS5 only release, with pre-orders that opened September 18 at 4:00 PM CEST. There are three versions. The Retail edition costs £60.00, comes with the disc and a manual, and has no cap on quantity. The Super Rare Games edition costs £64.80 and adds a numbered slipcover and sticker in a limited run. The Anniversary edition costs £172.80 and stacks on a hardcover artbook, a double disc soundtrack, an A2 poster, a physical map, pins, postcards, a woven patch and stickers. Every version contains the Definitive Edition content on the disc. The two limited editions close on October 16, and all three are expected to ship in Q1 2027, so this is a spring 2027 delivery, not a Christmas one.

Our take

The Beast had a rough summer after Techland cancelled the PS4 and Xbox One versions, so a generous first birthday is a smart way to reset the mood. The free machete and the Double XP weekend are the parts worth acting on today, and the login calendar rewards anyone who simply shows up for three weeks. The physical edition is a Super Rare Games product with Super Rare Games pricing, and a 2027 ship date on a game that launched in 2025 will test patience. If you want the disc, the uncapped Retail edition is the sensible pick. If you want the loot, log in on September 21 and keep logging in.