Braving the unforgiving desert environment of Dune: Awakening takes more than just a little luck, and a strong will. If you’re a newbie who cannot survive or an expert hoping to make a killing, these expert strategies will help you win on Arrakis.
Water Management and Desert Survival
Proper hydration forms the foundation of desert survival. Keeping water levels just right gives lots of performance bonuses, beyond what you’d need basic. Players should always make sure to fill their water bottles, even if they feel full, as being maximally hydrated greatly improves their travel rate and combat effectiveness.
As hydration source, blood bags are the best available resource. Blood bags should be properly stocked for long duration trips. Whenever possible always choose and stock these better alternatives to regular water sources. Watering sites can provide adequate substitutes to blood bags when not available.
Avoid standing outside under the sun when traveling in the desert. After prolonged exposure, heat stroke can occur, which drastically raises drinking rate and causes an impairment to survive. People who know the right way to travel plan their tours are travellers who make use of these mechanics. They know to take shade regularly and time their short trips during peak hours of heat.
Equipment Selection and Shield Management
The equipment you choose makes a big difference to survival in a wide range of situations. During exploration phases, specialists use stillsuits to recycle moisture for a longer time in the desert. However, combat armor provides essential protection during hostile encounters. Gear selection depending on activities avoids complications as cognized.
It’s important to think strategically before activating your shield and not activating it or using it too often. Shields may help a fighter survive many deadly hits in combat, but they also make travelling through the desert a perilous affair. Warriors using shields when crossing the desert will face deadly complications, as their shields attract sandworms. Moreover, shields do not help with protection against anything environmental like heat and dehydration. Do not activate an emergency shield unless there is a real fight to avoid the worm encounters.
Oases that you discover become permanent map symbols, appearing like drops of water when you zoom in far enough. Finding natural water sources can be beneficial while planning for a long duration in any region. These comfortable refill points can help you explore the region for a longer duration without having to worry about drinking water.
Sandworm Avoidance Strategies
Knowing how sandworms work helps prevent deadly desert encounters. When a player runs over the open sand with their shields active this will now automatically detect a worm immediately instead of the regular 30 seconds. Worm activity indicator provides essential early warnings for incoming threats.
With worms in your area, you have only about 15 seconds of escape time, which means when worms are already in the area, every second matters. The red circles on the map refer to the drum sand areas where the rate of detection of the worm is twice as fast as in normal terrain. The standard detection time of the worm which is generally 30 seconds in normal terrain is reduced to just 15 seconds here.
To successfully navigate a desert, one should plot a route from rock formation to rock formation to minimize time spent on dangerous sand. Always park or stop your vehicle facing the escape route. This way you do not lose precious time in turning around if a worm comes.
The best place to cross this treacherous area is in the designated crossing between Hagga Basin south to Vermillion Gap. Taking the shortcut route in a creative way commonly leads to worm problems and wastefulness.
Movement and Navigation Optimization
Optimized combinations of movement maximize speed and minimize detection. The Benny Dash with lift modules and jump mechanics provides optimal off-road capabilities. Using the smart movement pattern, you will always be close to the rock formations and cross at the logical paths. Thus, your exposure time in the dangerous area will be reduced.
By placing custom markers above the destination markers, users can still see the compass when they turn away from the destination markers. This method for navigating lets you know where you are going no matter what direction you are facing. According to the elevation markers on the compass, whether your destination is above or below your current position.
Repeated encounter with the terrain creates mental maps that ensure the safety of the navigation. As one digs deeper into desert survival, knowledge of safe paths, resource locations, and danger zones become paramount.
Resource Collection and Inventory Management
The right prioritization of resources can help with inventory not being clogged. With 100 salvage materials, players can craft a respawn beacon that allows them to safely revive after dying. EMF regulators are a very valuable early-game component that unlocks recipes.
We will be able to make bandage for healing from 100 fibre materials. Fuel cells and power cells work to keep base shields operational which helps to protect the base structures from damage during sandstorm environmental processes. Focus on collecting plant fiber for healing kits. Scrap metal is for crafting. Finally, power cells for base maintainance.
Don’t take valuable equipment on risky trips unless you have to. Secondary gear sets stop losing a good set of gear to sandworms and other players. Holtzman actuators are commonly found on the sandy crashed ornithopters near the rocky areas. From crashed buggies around sand rock formations, you can consistently get armor plates.
Spice sand spawns can be set easily near rocks, and there’s no need to dive deep into the sand. When gathering plants, check rock edges before venturing out onto the open desert.
Combat Mechanics and Weapon Selection
Knowing the strengths of weapons against enemies is essential for effective combat Most early game foes go down with one shot to the head. The heavy gunners will take some extra fire but the shotgun can do its damage. The parry-to-slow stab combo will usually deal with most melee threats in one-hit kills.
SMG with their higher fire rate can easily breakdown the shield of enemies. Sword users will benefit from stunner wire effects because they will be able to attack through shields. Green weapons with a standard prefix often outperform rarer non-prefixed counterparts, making prefix identification essential for equipment evaluation.
Shields create tactical weaknesses during combat. You can fire your weapons while shielded, but you’ll lower your radius of shield protection for a short while, creating an opening that allows weapon damage to bypass shields. Be careful when using your time attacks and get ready to take cover when the shields fall off during the action sequence.
Base Building and Location Selection
During the early stages of base construction, restraint is required, as the story will eventually compel you to move to another site. Don’t overbuild starter bases that will be left for quests. To choose the base location, you must consider the sandworm pattern. It attacks at a certain location when you are offline.
Temporary construction of bases allows for familiarisation with the area before prosecution of work. Choosing a permanent location can be helped by knowing what is available and what threats there are. By placing your base carefully, players can easily access orange, green and blue resource farming loops without dangerous traveling.
Chest resources in base areas become available during crafting and building activities automatically. The circuit systems allow for a variety of resource processing with the left boxes as input. Whereas, the right boxes act as output. To ensure automatic sorting into chests, clog a fabricator or refiner with one item per slot.
Loot Farming and Vehicle Management
The primary source of unique blueprints is in constellation chests, so mark these for your regular farm routes. The resupply time for chests and PVE zones works in 40-45 minutes. This makes it easier to spam different spots for loot.
When the sandworms start coming or you are under attack from enemies, you can speed loot by repeatedly pressing spacebar or holding E to quickly pick up loot in bulk. Crashed ship compartments have different loot tiers. As per my experience, you should prioritize the port bow compartments. These will net you some good items. After that, go for the top middle compartment. Then, head to the starboard midship compartments.
Garage areas at trade ports often have free sandbikes that respawn. NPC camps often have free buggies available for claiming. It’s best to always keep two vehicles on hand; one to explore and one for recovery of corpses.
Advanced Techniques and Character Development
You should obtain those Bene Gesserit skill lines early, as trainers become hard to find later on. Do not choose the Trooper as a starter class. This trainer can be found in starting zones throughout the game. Suspension belts enable characters to travel over and take position behind rocks while fighting.
You can reset your skill points once every 48 hours, allowing you to experiment with different builds without the fear of them vanishing forever. The starter classes have different bonuses. These bonuses will stack with the bonus of learned abilities. Moreover, the bonuses will impact different strategies that help in long-term character development.
Vertical climbing using uplift modules involves taking hold, jumping off, releasing one direction at a time, and regrabbing. To prevent fall damage and remain in the air during a fall, you can quickly back off edges and press the spacebar.
Use your anti-gravity grenade with the hookshot and emperor’s wings to create advanced movement combinations for extreme vertical travel including sandworm escapes. Learning how these NPC AI behaves gives a tactical advantage in battle.