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It seems that my time in Dune: Awakening has come to an end – at least for now. As it turns out tier 6, aka “the endgame”, is just not for me in its current state. While it was engaging enough for a couple of weeks it’s just too grindy for my taste, and I can’t really see the point either.

I mean, I know what the intended point is – PvP. However, and this might surprise you coming from me, I want no part of that in this game.

But let’s start off with how the transition from tier 5 to tier 6 actually works, shall we?

Whenever you feel that you’re finished in Hagga Basin and ready for the next step, a short hop across the world map takes you to the shield wall, which constitutes the Deep Desert’s southern border in the game. You need an Ornithopter to make that trip, but that’s just as well, because the DD is huge!

Save for shipwrecks and Landsraad control points its southern half is PvE-only, while up north everything can and most likely will be fought over more often than not. To incentivize taking that risk the largest spice fields only exist in that part of the map, as do the most sought after crafting schematics, realistically speaking, as those have no or abysmally low drop chances in the south.

Again, usually I’d be up for the challenge, probably even seek it out. Not this time though, for a couple of reasons.

First off, while playing solo in Hagga Basin is very much possible and also a lot of fun, absolutely everything beyond the shield wall is very obviously designed with groups in mind, even the PvE.

I’ve only once raided a tier 6 Imperial Testing Station, for instance, because that wasn’t fun at all. Not only are the enemies much tougher there (which is to be expected of course), in the “boss room” you have to fight seven or eight of them at once. If you manage to survive that…another wave spawns. And another one after that. And on and on. You can’t run away either because the doors remain locked until either side has won.

When the seemingly never-ending stream of baddies finally stopped I was completely out of bandages, almost out of ammo, and my weapons on the brink of breaking. I felt a bit pleased with myself to have persevered, sure, but mostly I was just glad and relieved that the ordeal was over.

So, yeah, to me that’s already not fun in and of itself. Now imagine having endured all that and heading for the exit, your well-earned spoils in hand, only to be ganked and looted by a group of campers just waiting for an easy prey. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t need experiences like that, thank you very much.

Speaking of your stuff breaking, in addition to the wear and tear of just using it, all your gear loses some more durability whenever you die, which makes PvP-battles even more undesirable in my book.

You see, repairing tier 6 items requires t6 resources, naturally, and those aren’t nearly as easy to come by as everything that came before.

In accordance with Dune lore the rarest raw material is, obviously, Spice sand. Now, in contrast to all other t6 resources Spice does also exist in the Hagga Basin, but once you realize how much of the stuff you need to actually do anything with it…well, let’s just say those small spice fields are hardly worth your time.

These are the remains of a medium Spice field, the majority of which I’d just hoovered up. In about a quarter of an hour I’d filled up my Assault ‘thopter’s storage as well as my own inventory. That’s a lot of Spice!

However, as far as I can tell it’s very much random when/if you stumble across a medium field, and even if you do chances are you’re not the only one there.

Also, you have to drop that stuff, as well as all the other t6 materials you gather, off somewhere to process it further. Which means that, realistically, you need a base in the Deep Desert.

Problem with that is, you can’t set up a permanent base there. Between Monday and Tuesday evening, depending on where you live in real life, a coriolis storm destroys anything and everything in the DD. It also reshuffles the locations of all resources and PvE-sites, which is good, but it means that in order to “play properly” in tier 6 you have to pack up shop every week before the storm hits, and rinse and repeat on Tuesday.

I knew from the start that I wouldn’t follow what most guides suggest, namely to build a fully functional base complete with refineries, water production etc. in the DD. Sure, refining locally would mean less trips back to Hagga, but I think that’s only worth it if you grind and gather a fuckton, which I din’t intend to do anyway.

So I decided to build a very lite base. It’s basically just a parking garage for the Assault ‘thopter, enough temporary storage for a couple of Spice runs, and just enough water for my own hydration.

This doesn’t take much resources to build, and thanks to the Solido Replicator, basically a base copying tool, it’s not hard to set up again.

Still, after using it for two weeks in a row I started to ask myself what, exactly, I was doing it all for. Since I don’t intend to engage in PvP I don’t actually need any of the stuff I could build with those resources, and since acquiring them feels more like work than fun…well.

I’m not done with the game for good though. By now Funcom have announced tier 7 and a completely seperate way to progress for those who don’t want to PvP. We don’t know any details yet, but I’ll check it out for sure once it lands. The next story-chapter is in the making, too, and I definitely want to know what happens next on that front.

For now I’ve set my main base to maintenance mode. With only one generator running my stockpile of fuel cells would last for years, and paying my taxes every two weeks isn’t much of a hassle either. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back on Arrakis sooner rather than later anyhow.

Until then I’ve picked up some games to play that fit this time of year perfectly…

160 hours in, and my enthusiasm for Dune: Awakening still isn’t waning. There are always various things I want to do, each and every day – want to being the operative word here, not have to, which makes all the difference to me – and it still feels like I’m having a big adventure.

By now I’m firmly settled in tier five, which means that I’ve pretty much explored the whole of Hagga Basin (with only a few bandit outposts missing here and there), fulfilled almost all contracts, and of course crafted a Scout Ornithopter as well as the much bigger Assault variant. I actually had to modify my base’s hangar quite a bit to make room for the latter, and it still just about fits in there.

Just like the buggy before it, getting the first flying vehicle has changed how the game is played substantially. It obviously makes getting to places go much quicker, and even regions as jagged as Hagga Rift have become pretty easy to traverse all of a sudden.

In most other games I’d probably have perceived this as a downside. In my opinion advanced means of travel often lead to the game world shrinking to the point of not feeling like a world at all anymore. On Arrakis it’s different somehow.

First of all, it’s extremely fun! Turning off the engines and gliding in near silence over and across these beautiful landscapes is a feeling that screenshots can’t convey – it has to be experienced.

Another important aspect is that the game is very well designed in terms of progression.

Just as I was realizing how big even the starting area is and how far apart the safe zones are, I got to build a sandbike. Next up the weight and volume of all kinds of stuff kept getting bigger, and harvesting the increasing amounts of required resources by hand got a bit tedious…buggy to the rescue!

And now that I can fly everywhere? What do you know, the next tier of resources can only be found far out in the middle of nowhere – and “nowhere” is completely irradiated to boot, so getting in and out quickly is key.

In other words, everything happens or becomes available at just the right time, which I find pretty amazing.

The devs took that into account when designing the various contracts, too. In the early game everything is relatively close by, and backtracking is rarely needed. By contrast, the other day I flew no less than four times to Harko Village and back to Hagga Basin because multiple quest lines I was working on required it. Without my own ‘thopter this would have been extremely inconvenient – and expensive, too – but as these were mid- to late-game contracts it is (correctly) assumed that zipping to and fro isn’t a problem anymore at that point.

Speaking of quests, I’ve recently finished the first DLC-storyline, and I think it’s awesome. It’s divided into a continuation of the main story, which all players get for free, and a separate, paywalled questline.

The latter’s overarching theme is “Bad AI”, or at the very least “Dangerous AI”, and not only does that fit well into the times we’re living in, it’s also a way for the devs to do something very different while not actually deviating from Dune lore.

The screenshot above shows a game world designed by an AI for its coder and best (and only) friend. I think you can guess what kind of game it’s supposed to be. I especially appreciate the effort that went into changing even loot containers and such to fit the game’s aesthetics. It’s actually quite a sad story, but I liked it.

Another AI has developed more of a sinister personality, and its hiding place very much reflects that. It’s basically Dead Space on Arrakis. Really intense, that one!

Recovering the third AI (which actually comes first when you play through it in order) wasn’t as memorable, but it’s still a cool introduction to the theme.

Each of these quests culminates in a boss battle. Those aren’t particularly difficult, but I was glad to have The Sentinel equipped (as always), the little floating turret from the Mentat skill tree, because it helped immensely with keeping the swarms of AI-controlled opponents at bay.

As of yet I haven’t even built the DLC-exclusive vehicle, the Treadwheel, nor have I used the Duneman building set, but I can highly recommend buying this piece of content for the storyline alone. It’s of the short variety for sure, but add in the other stuff and I think it’s well worth the 13 bucks.

The new main story quests are pretty cool, too. Among other things I’ve infiltrated the hideout of a Harkonnen cannibal (seriously), eliminated a cultist leader, and solved a full-blown murder mystery. Like most endeavours in this universe all of this turns out to be quite a bit more ambiguous than it seems at first. Very few things are strictly black or white.

Also, we get to learn important details about our own origin, which I obviously won’t spoil here.

I just realized that I’ve talked about combat encounters quite a lot by now, but I’ve yet to give my verdict of whether fighting in Dune: Awakening actually feels any good.

Well…kinda.

This is a game made by Funcom, and if you’ve played The Secret World you know what that means. It’s…janky, for lack of a better word. For example, it’s very easy to get stuck on the tiniest pieces of terrain, which can get you in big trouble when multiple enemies are trying to kill you at the same time.

Also, you get staggered or stunned all the fricking time, and while that’s not due to said jankyness but a deliberate design decision (at least I assume that it is) that’s not really fun, and also very dangerous for obvious reasons.

Surprisingly though, I enjoy the combat quite a lot despite these shortcomings.

It’s not really difficult in the usual sense of the word, but since it’s always a bit unpredictable it’s not exactly easy either. And, as I’ve talked about in the post linked at the top, there is a death penalty in place, so dying isn’t something that I want to happen often. Side note: I made a mistake in that post when I said that you drop only Solaris when you die in PvE – items you’ve looted like schematics, spice-infused dust etc. drop on death too, and you’ll usually want that stuff back. In short, there’s always a bit of tension, but not too much, which is just the way I like it.

But who knows, maybe I’ve just grown fond of the Funcom-jankyness during my hundreds of hours playing The Secret World. Sue me.

Hoo boy. It’s been a long time indeed since a game has kept me engaged the way Dune: Awakening has and still does.

The fact that I’ve played more than 80 hours over less than three weeks isn’t even what’s the most remarkable about it – this is not the first time I’m bingeing on a game that I enjoy, after all. No, what’s really extraordinary is that each and every one of those hours felt exciting and full of discovery and adventure. I’m not exaggerating.

If all survival games are like this I totally understand now why they are so popular.

But what makes the game feel so different from basically anything else I’ve played? Well, there are quite a few contributing factors.

First of all, there is actual danger. Heat, storms, radiation, fricking high rock formations and deep chasms, quicksand, overall pretty tough enemies and, of course, sandworms. On Arrakis absolutely everything is trying to kill you.

Now, except for when being swallowed by a worm the penalty for dying usually isn’t all that harsh. You drop any Solari you had on you, and if you didn’t place a respawn beacon nearby you may find yourself quite a ways away from where you were. You can still go back and reclaim your cash though, so all you’ll lose is some time. And water. And probably some durability on your vehicle of choice.

Dying’s not the end of the world, is what I’m saying, but you’d still prefer it didn’t happen. Which is why I always try to be cautious and alert, and I’ve died only three times total thus far as a result.

For me this really hits kind of a sweet spot. Death penalties suck ass in games where you inevitably die very often, possibly even without you having any chance to prevent it – think an MMORPG dungeon group wiping repeatedly because others aren’t doing their jobs.

However, when dying is of absolutely no consequence there can be no sense of danger. So penalizing death, but not too severely, and giving me the agency to prevent it from ever happening (at least theoretically) is the optimal way to do it in my opinion, as it causes just the right amount of tension.

As I said earlier, human beings and gigantic worms aren’t the only dangerous things on Arrakis. The area pictured on the two screenshots above is called Hagga Rift, and I’ve never seen, much less traversed, a more jagged and fascinating, yet also disorienting and treacherous landscape in a game before.

As you can imagine getting around on foot or bike isn’t an easy feat here, and I got very confused during my first forays into the area. That it gets really dark the closer to the canyon’s bottom you get doesn’t help one bit.

Even when I slowly started to know my way around the environment kept throwing curveballs at me. Like when I fell through a hole in the floor while looting a shipwreck (did I mention that it’s fricking dark down there?), only that said hole didn’t lead to where I thought it would – as it turned out I’d already been on the ship’s lowest deck, and I now found myself in a free fall all the way down into the canyon. Bless the Maker and His water for suspensor belts!

There are many little examples like this that perfectly showcase a world that has been deliberately and meticulously crafted, brick by brick. If there was any kind of procedural generation at work here it certainly doesn’t feel like it.

Each of the various areas, despite technically all falling into the “desert biome” category for obvious reasons, has a very distinct style, and poses its own challenges when traversing it. Just the other day I ventured into another hitherto undiscovered region, and this one looks and feels completely different yet again (shown above). Reminds me a bit of Arizona, to be honest.

It’s not just the landscape either, the enemies and their bases also have their very own aesthetics. Like this lair that, if you ask me, kinda screams “death cult”…

The imperial testing stations I’ve talked about before are also varied enough to not become a bore. They come in all kinds of sizes, too, and I’m actually a bit relieved that most of them aren’t quite as sprawling as No. 10.

To summarize, whatever it is I set out to do in this game, I never know what’s actually going to happen, how long it’s going to take, or whether I’ll make it back home alive at all – at least that’s what it feels like while I’m out there. In the end I always do make it back of course, and that’s just the greatest and most satisfying sensation.

I haven’t even mentioned yet that I’ve crafted this cool ride by now, have I? Well, there it is.

Having a buggy really changes the game quite significantly. For one, its cutteray sucks so much more material out of resource nodes than the handheld version that it’s not even funny. Naturally it can also carry a crapton of stuff to go along with that, which is not only great for gathering, but also for moving shit around between bases – or for moving bases altogether.

At this stage of the game these features aren’t just nice to have though, they pretty much become a necessity. Building things like better refineries, bigger water cisterns and so on requires more and more resources, and as a consequence your base keeps growing not only in size, but also in terms of how much stuff you have crammed into it.

Which is another thing that Dune: Awakening does very well in my opinion: progression.

It all feels very natural to me, and it’s paced just right. Moving through the resource tiers happens more or less on autopilot thus far, and I feel neither forced to rush anything, nor held back in any way. It’s also very satisfying to progress to the next tier because of little details like, for instance, the bigger ore refinery not only allowing you to process new types of materials, but also being more efficient when refining the “old” tiers.

I really like how the skill trees open up more and more over time, too. Many abilities and passives have three ranks, but when you first gain access to a new class you can only spend points on the first rank of each. Working for the advanced trainers (most of which are found in either Arakeen or Harko Village) unlocks the second and third ranks as well as the special Spice-skills over the course of several quests.

Since basically everything you do in the game rewards XP you keep levelling up all the time (I’m currently at level 129), and as each ding grants one additional skill point they tend to pile up. Thus, whenever I’ve increased the rank of a skill tree or unlocked a new one, I’ve always had just about the right amount of available skill points to pick or level up the ones that seemed useful to me.

One thing that’s severely lacking, though, is having skill loadouts or something like that. It’s really tedious to swap around skills one by one, and since we can choose only three at a time (until you’ve reached a certain point in the main story it’s actually only two) not switching at all isn’t an option. Please, Funcom, do it! Give it a cooldown of a minute or two, I don’t care, but we really need this.

And that shall be enough for today. I’ll leave you with this little teaser of my new home though, the construction of which also turned out to be more exciting that I thought it would be…

Survival games have been pretty popular for some time now. Valheim, V Rising, Subnautica and others have had more success than anyone would ever have anticipated. In the case of Valheim, fellow bloggers like Bhagpuss and Wilhelm made it sound quite fun, too.

I, however, played none of them despite all the praise they got. The very idea of having to take care of a character who needs to eat and drink, who can be too hot or too cold, and/or who also needs shelter lest the faintest of breezes kills him within seconds, just sounded like the antithesis of fun to me. I’m pretty sure that I actually tried a game with similar mechanics a long time ago…I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but my vague memories of it aren’t fond either way.

The thing is though, these games usually do have a whole bunch of features and characteristics that very much appeal to me, namely exploration, resource gathering, crafting and, above all, base building. Which is why, despite said dislike of survival mechanics, I’ve always eyed them curiously from the sidelines.

Hence when I started to read really good things about Dune: Awakening, for example over at Chasing Dings!, Heartless Gamer and The Friendly Necromancer, an ever growing desire to try it out took hold of me. Next thing I know is that I’m watching various videos about the game on YouTube, and once I see what players are capable of doing with its base building system I can’t resist any longer.

Thus I finally decided to harden up and add some spice to my gaming diet – literally.

Keep in mind that I’ve only played about fifteen hours up to now, so these are going to be impressions of just the early game. To give you the bottom line up front though: I’m really digging it so far.

Let’s start with why I chose this game over the others.

While I’m not the biggest Dune fan ever – I’ve actually yet to read the novels – I quite like the first movie as well as the new ones. In terms of aesthetics and vibe the Denis Villeneuve films really are something else, and the game is very much based on those. The story takes place in an alternate timeline, but one that’s pretty interesting.

Specific IP aside, I’ll take a futuristic, or shall we say ‘technologically advanced’ setting over fantasy, dark ages or some such any day of the week.

Lastly, the game looks freaking awesome. I’m by no means a graphics-snob, but here the high level of detail and realism really help to get the feel from the movies across.

If you’ve read my ramblings about ArcheAge or The Secret World you know that I love me a flexible skill system. Not only does Dune: Awakening have that, you can actually unlock all classes on one character.

You accumulate a crapton of skillpoints over time, too. I assume that it won’t be enough to unlock absolutely everything, but it seems that you’ll at the very least be able to create the combat build of your choice while also having all traversal skills as well as the various passives to gather more resources, consume less durability and so on active at the same time.

If you don’t like your build anymore or find that you’ve missed something important, fret not. Respeccing the whole thing can be done every 48 hours and doesn’t cost a thing.

Speaking of traversal, holy macaroni, the game is really fun in this regard, even before you’ve built any of the awesome vehicles.

Spread across the classes you can unlock a grappling hook, an extremely fast sprint and an anti-gravity-bubble, and there’s also an equippable hover-device to either craft or loot. While these are already great on their own their real strenght comes into play when combined. For example, use the hook to propel yourself up a cliff, then press Space in mid-air to hover, and your momentum will carry you much higher or further.

Getting up and down the game’s mountains, some of which being actually pretty high (and falling damage is a thing of course), becomes quite easy once you get the hang of it. And also, like I said, a lot of fun.

As of yet I’ve only managed to build the smallest of the vehicles, the sandbike seen above. Even with only tier one parts it’s already much faster than running, and since the game world is anything but small owning one speeds up resource gathering trips or bandit base raids considerably. To no-one’s surprise it’s also a hoot to drive.

My next goal is the sand buggy. The name is a bit misleading I feel, because it’s actually more like a hauler with lots of carrying capacity and built-in mining laser. A gatherer’s wet dream, in other words.

The Ornithopters, of which there are three variants, should be the most fun of course, but those will probably take me a good while to get.

Resource acquisition comes in various flavors.

Whenever you’re in an area where specific stuff can be found, some of it just lies on the ground here and there, waiting to be picked up. The amounts you get that way are pretty negligible though, even early on.

What you’re really after is resource nodes. Those usually look like a big rock, clump or stack made out of the material in question. Scan these nodes with your mining tool and then cut along the blue line that appears to break them and get a good chunk of the stuff.

Once you’re able to build a dew scythe you can collect water from plants, but early on most of this precious resource will come from siphoning off dead opponents’ blood and purifying it. The next step up the ladder will be to dissolve whole corpses in some kind of high-tech sarcophagus (I kid you not).

Collecting Spice has again its own mechanics, but I’ll talk about that when I’ve experienced it myself.

Overall I like how resource acquisition works in this game quite a lot. Since looting dead enemies and their bases, shipwrecks and research stations is yet another way to get your hands on valuable stuff there’s much variety here, so things shouldn’t get boring too quickly.

This is my first base, and it’s obviously crap. I hastily slapped the first iteration of it down while the sun was scorching me, and instead of starting over from scratch at night I just kept adding to it whenever I needed more space. I didn’t know yet that all of the resources are refunded when you tear something down again, which is really great as it incentivises trying stuff out and also takes the sting out of relocating.

Which will probably happen a couple of times, so this one is temporary anyway. I’ll design something better – hopefully much better – for my main base, once I know where I actually want to build that.

Provided I’ll find an open spot there, that is – this is open world housing after all. It seems to me that there’s lots of space to go around though, but we’ll see.

Anyhow, the building system itself is pretty spiffy and, like I said, some folks have done ridiculously cool stuff with it already.

So what about the survival mechanics then?

To my surprise I’m totally fine with them. I would actually go as far as saying that I prefer them being in the game just the way they are, instead of having none at all. Why? Because they add a little bit of tension and thus a sense of danger and adventure, while in reality not being that dangerous after all.

You see, there is no hunger, so all you need is water, and that’s not really much of a problem right from the start. Sure, you can’t outright ignore it, but the game doesn’t make it overly hard for you to stay alive.

Freezing at night ain’t a thing, but sunstroke sure is. To avoid that you only need to find yourself a bit of shadow though, so that’s usually not a big problem. Even if you do overheat, all that happens is that your hydration wanes much faster, and, again, you quite quickly get to a point where water reserves become more or less a non-issue (for your body at least; it seems that higher tier crafting will require tons of it, too).

Aside from that there’s sandstorms and, of course, Shai-Hulud, aka sandworms. I don’t know yet how that might change later on, but in the starting area avoiding both is a concern, but not hard to do at all.

So, yeah, all things considered I really like what this game has to offer so far, and I haven’t even talked about crafting or combat yet as this is already getting long as it is.

To me Dune: Awakening is more than the sum of its parts anyway. Playing it feels like I’m having a big, exciting adventure, and that’s one of the things I enjoy the most when playing video games.

More to follow.