Thankfully, Awakening’s Arrakis itself is great fun to explore. Not because of any unique visual choices - it’s a lot of rocks and sand dunes as you’d expect - but because of what you need to think about as you go from waypoint to waypo

Once their character model is complete, players enter their name and the Reverend Mother initiates a character-building conversation with them. Here, she asks questions like "Where were you born?" and a list of even more customization options presents itself. Throughout the conversation, players will choose their homeworld, caste, and mentor, with each choice granting them a specific trait, bonus, or skill. The player's choice of homeworld gives them a unique dialogue trait and emote, their chosen caste gives them yet another dialogue trait, and their mentor affects their training and starting abil

The number one tip we wish someone had told us before we started playing is don't build your base where you spawn. This is because your spawn spot is probably quite far away from some of the key points of interest in the game, like the trading post , wrecked ships , and larger bandit camps which can be repeatedly farmed for resour

While Dune: Awakening is also slated to release on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, there isn't yet a release date for those platforms, so it might be a while before the game is accessible on console. The release date trailer states **" PlayStation and Xbox Release Date to be Announced ," ** which does at least imply that the launch should be simultaneous across both platforms despite failing to synchronize with the PC rele

In the world of Dune: Awakening , war between the Atreides and Harkonnen houses still rages on Arrakis, but the Fremen that inhabit the planet have disappeared . Players start from the bottom, setting out to explore the dunes as prisoners on a uniquely dangerous assignment. If they can survive, however, the game offers opportunities to build bases and grow in power with the riches of the spice trade and the powers of Schools like the Bene Gesserit and Ment

Planetologists exist as an additional School in the game, but it's not an option that appears to be available for a jump start during character creation. Abilities can ultimately be learned from all Schools , with the starting choice simply defining what a character will have access to as they first venture into the harsh desert of Arra

From there, Zantara walked us through the basics of surviving out in Dune: Awakening 's open world, from building shelter to raiding Scavenger Camps. In fact, this is largely the survival-crafting gameplay loop for Dune: Awakening — raiding Scavenger Camps and then using the materials to progressively build a better base and craft better weapons and armor. Some Scavenger Camps are small, with only one or a few enemies, while others are much larger, requiring a bit more firepower and finesse. The larger camps also come with better rewards though, so it's worth it in the

Additionally, **Dune: Awakening 's Character Creator & Benchmark Mode can already be downloaded ahead of its release ** , and doing so offers another exclusive reward. The " Frameblade " knife skin takes a very scrapyard approach that looks quite a bit different from either a Crysknife any equipment that an Atreides or Harkonnen might have. Playing the Character Creator & Benchmark Mode will provide a key that can be used to redeem the Frameblade at lau

As an MMO, the multiplayer component is obviously a defining element of Dune: Awakening , expanding the scope of Conan Exiles , Funcom's previous multiplayer survival game. That also means that Dune: Awakening is sacrificing the ability to take on its challenges in single-player, so anyone looking for a solitary experience on Arrakis might have to turn to one of the various Dune strategy games made over the ye

After spending around 30 hours with it, it's clear that Dune: Awakening is shaping up to be one of the more ambitious survival MMOs in recent memory, not because it reinvents the genre, but because it layers familiar mechanics onto a world that feels alive, dangerous, and deeply rooted in the Dune mythos. There's still a lot we didn't get to see in the beta, especially regarding faction dynamics and long-term political systems, but even in its first 30 hours, Dune: Awakening manages to feel dense, punishing, and even meditative at ti

Troopers are a dedicated gunnery class in Dune: Awakening that specialize in enhancing ranged weapon tactics for rifles, scatterguns, webpage and bigger weapons such as missile launchers and lasguns, all of which can be crafted after researching the associated schematics. Trained in the Landsraad's Great Houses, which are part of Dune's deeper lore from before the Butlerian Jihad, Troopers are an effective and powerful ranged class. They have dynamic skills suited for exploration and epic battles, and make use of a starting feature called a Suspensor Belt that enables unique abilit