The Sleeper has Awoken - Thoughts on Dune Awakening

First thoughts on playing Dune: Awakening

I set foot on Arrakis for my first sessions in Dune: Awakening

Dune: Awakening is generally referred to as a survival MMO, though I think MMO doesn’t quite capture the way the online communities feel.

You are dropped into the Dune universe on Arrakis with nothing but scraps to wear and, like most survival RPGs, you need to maintain resource levels to stay alive, craft better gear, build safe bases, venture out into the desert, and follow the main story line.

I don’t usually like survival games. I didn’t last more than a few hours in Valheim, Enshrouded, or even Palworld for that matter. The fact that this game existed in the Dune universe (and the fact that I was pretty bored) is the main reason why I picked it up.

I picked a Bene Gesserit male (the game didn’t seem to have an issue with that), mostly because I usually gravitate toward the magic damage types in most RPGs. Once I got my first set of rags started following the main quest. You have the option to start the game with your research tree unlocked or you can have it open progressively along with the story. I went with the recommended approach of leaving it locked.

At that point I started drawing a lot of similarities with No Man’s Sky where (at least the last time I started a new game) they drop you on a random planet and you have to craft and forage your way into space where the story picks up.

My first recommendation: Plan to throw away your first character. You’re going to stumble around and make a pile of mistakes anyway, so it’s better to just charge in head first to learn how everything works and then start a “clean” character.

The hardest lesson I learned this way was sandworms. They are absolutely huge, awe-inspiring, and amazing to look at. They will also eat you if you make too many vibrations on the sand. If they do eat you, you lose everything. Everything you had equipped and everything you had in your backpack. Not just short-term gone, but entirely gone.

My second recommendation: Craft and store spares of your essentials. In my second character, once I learned how to craft a basic weapon and some clothing and some tools, I made spares of those and put them in a storage container in my base.

Third recommendation: Never let the power drop in your base. The base power drains in realtime, not in in-game hours. If the power drops, your base is vulnerable to damage from sandstorms and worse, any player can hop inside your base and empty the storage containers of all those spares you so cleverly built.

I see the core game loops as surviving, crafting, building, and fighting. Once I got the hang of things, I was doing many of these things during a single “loop”.

Surviving

As you might imagine, on Arrakis, you need water. Water is also in scarce supply. There are some plants that usually grow in shady spots on the rocks that will give you enough moisture to avoid death, but you need more than that.

To get moisture, the easiest way (at least in the early early stages that I’m in) is through blood. Whenever you kill someone, you can use a tool to extract the blood. There’s a machine you can build in your base that will convert blood into water. Just don’t waste that water. If you know you’re going back out past the dew plants or going to kill more people, leave the reserves in your base for when you need it.

I’ve just learned how to make a cistern, so I suspect that will make my needs for water less immediate.

The day-night cycle, the sun, and shadows are absolutely crucial in the game. If you spend too much time in the open sun, you get debuffed and burn through your water. If you’re in the sun and burn through your water, it gets ugly.

Avoiding the sandworms is actually fun for me, likely because I’m what folks like to call “nuts”. Avoiding the sandworms means that when you plan your travel (and you do have to plan it), you plan your route by taking the shortest possible desert crossings, hopping from rock to rock and optimizing your use of shadows all the while.

This gives you a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction at having made the treacherous journey. Feeling this sense of accomplishment without feeling harassed or beaten down by game mechanics is a hard balance to achieve but I think Dune does it well.

Crafting

Crafting feels very similar to No Man’s Sky and follows a well-established progression. There are things you can craft on the fly, things you can build using machines, and things that require refined materials, which just means multiple hops through different machines to get what you want.

To make my first desert snowmobile (I know it has a different name, but that’s what it looks like), I first had to craft a blowtorch, then had to use the fabrication machine to create all the different parts of the bike. Then I had to “refine” regular fuel cells into vehicle fuel cells. Finally, you use the blowtorch to assemble all the parts.

It’s satisfying to build and seems balanced really well. I haven’t yet felt like I’ve had to “grind” for resources, usually only needing a couple foraging trips when I’ve been low on common components.

Researching new plans is done by spending Intel points, which you get through leveling up or by gathering intel at different locations. This actually feels like a nice mix between The Division’s method of giving you “points” when you explore that can then go to unlock things.

Building

So far, building is my favorite activity. The joy of building is actually why I recommend a throwaway character. Location is everything when you’re building, and (unless you’ve been watching all the YouTube videos) you won’t know which locations are the best.

Finding that sweet spot nestled in or on a rock and building it out is a ton of fun. One thing they’re missing is terrain modification like you get with No Man’s Sky. In Dune, if you build a foundation where there are plants, they pop up through the floor. Same with resource nodes (there was a Copper ore chunk in my base for a while).

I don’t know if I haven’t yet unlocked it, but I’d love to be able to flatten terrain as well as dig into the side of the rock formations. I want my Airwolf hidden hangar for my first Ornithopter!

Fighting

Fighting is the weakest part of the game. Granted, I’ve only tried two different character classes for fighting: the mentat and the bene gesserit. Most of the NPCs are pretty dumb and, in the early game, they’re all alike. There’s one with a knife that charges you, one with a rifle that stays back a bit, and occasionally you’ll get shielded variations of those.

They’re all dumb as a sack of doorknobs. Fighting itself is a chore to get through and not something that’s fun. I think this is fixable, though. Look at how long it took before fighting felt good in No Man’s Sky!

I will routinely pull the trigger and have absolutely nothing happen. No fire, no misfire, no bullet use. I’ve watched and this happens when I have a full clip or half a clip. It’s frustrating because that one “dud” gives the knife charger enough time to close ranks.

While cover doesn’t have the “sticky” feeling from The Division, it still plays a vital role. Firing from cover or standing out in the open with a “shoot me” sign will mean the difference between moving on to your next victim or spending the next 5 minutes crafting and using bandaids.

Community

This is where Dune: Awakening differs from traditional MMORPGs. It isn’t a single giant world populated by all million players (the game had a million users within a day of launch). Instead you have “sietches”, which are small servers that hold around 30 players. This sietch covers the Hagga Basin desert area. You are PvE compatriots with those other 30 players.

It’s been a ton of fun watching the bases build up and change the way the landscape looks. It’s gotten to the point where I can get my position and bearings based on which player bases I can see. Even with the early game only having the one theme, the bases are all unique.

Once we leave the Hagga Basin area, then players from some large number of sietches (I forget the count) can join in PvPvE in the “deep desert”. This is supposed to be a huge area many times bigger than the PvE zone. I like the way this feels, as you can stay in your neighborhood with all your neighbors, or you can commute to the big city for bigger rewards and bigger risk.

Conclusion

I am getting very close to the addiction threshold on this game. I want to hop in, make a fuel cell run, reload my two bases, fill up the blood bags, load the blood machine, and then go and move the story forward. I want to do this all the time.

I don’t know if I’ll feel the same way when my bases are “done” and I’ve gotten further into the main story. I’ll post again once I’ve experienced more of the game and likely made a ton more mistakes.