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Awakenings

Dune: Awakening’s first major patch has entered public testing, so you can give some Deep Desert PvE a go

by admin June 25, 2025

A work-in-progress version of Dune: Awakening’s first big post-release patch is now testable on Steam, so you can hop in and check out the changes Funcom’s making early doors before it rolls out for everyone in a few weeks.

A bunch of the changes the game’s devs teased or confirmed during their recent AMA and letter to players haven’t found their way into the patch, or at least this early version. Though, you’ll at least be able to try out PvE in the Deep Desert, something folks have demanded en-masse.

Alongside pointing folks to the freshly launch Dune: Awakening Public Test Client on Steam, where you can now test out patch 1.1.10.0, Funcom have released the notes outlining what’s in it.

Among the highlights is the news that “the PvE area near the shield wall has been expanded to cover row A, B, C, D and half of E within the Deep Desert.” So, you’ll be able to check out some Deep Desert PvE, which folks had been calling for to avoid being forced into PvP during Awakening’s endgame, when you’re hunting for the best gear and resources.

Sleepers, we have news!

Patch 1.1.10.0 is now live on the new Public Test Client. Be among the first to experience the changes, and help us hunt down technical issues.

🔽 Read more about the Public Test Client and get the patch notes here: https://t.co/b504leiKl6 pic.twitter.com/TZn6ntZrHy

— Dune: Awakening (@DuneAwakening) June 25, 2025

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I have noticed a few folks on the social arguing that this PvE expansion is too big an adjustment – we’ll have to see what the consensus is. Outside of that, Funcom have “reduced the frequency of Harkonnen attacks on certain Atreides bases (and vice versa) in Hagga Basin”, set up the main menu’s play now button to filter out private servers, and made sure “sandworms now linger for a bit around spicefields that have been recently harvested from”.

Meanwhile, you can now use, claim and list items straight to and from the inventory of your Ornithopter in the exchange. There are a bunch of handy minor tweaks to everything from base building to vehicles, combat and the UI. However, if you’re hungry for the big PvP changes that the devs have teased, adjustments to the Landsraad, or just the ability to deposit all of your stuff at once, you’ll have to keep waiting.

In the meantime, why not listen to the radio and read our DA review?

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June 25, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Dune: Awakening’s Deep Desert is getting “partial warfare” PvE areas so you can gather endgame resources without being PvPed to death

by admin June 23, 2025

Good news if you’ve been a bit frustrated with how Dune: Awakening handles PvE and PvP, specifically in terms of its treacherous Deep Desert. The game’s creative director Joel Bylos has announced some changes coming in response to player feedback on both those and the Landsraad.

Basically, it looks like Funcom have switched up their plans to take the concerns folks have cited into account, aiming for a nice compromise between the original ideas and the practicalities of what’s been happening since the game dropped in full.

In a lengthy letter to DA players, Bylos wrote that while the devs still believe their core concept of the Deep Desert as a dangerous, constantly changing place you go to get the rarest stuff, they’re not aiming to force PvE enjoyers to engage with PvP just to get the good stuff.

So, to ensure those folks don’t get locked out of the endgame, the director revealed that “starting soon, some areas of the Deep Desert will now be flagged as ‘Partial Warfare (PvE)’ areas where players will be able to explore testing stations and harvest T6 resources without the threat of conflict they may not want”. The likes of “Landsraad control points, shipwrecks and the largest spice fields” will stay as PvP areas, to preserve the biggest rewards coming with the biggest risk.

We’ve been listening.

The Deep Desert is evolving. PvE players will have more space to explore and progress without unwanted conflict. The Landsraad is getting more variety, better pacing, and stronger rewards.

Check out the letter from our Creative Director to know more about… pic.twitter.com/ZbHKgEBDwk

— Dune: Awakening (@DuneAwakening) June 23, 2025

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Speaking of PvP, Bylos wrote that the devs are “planning to make more changes to the Deep Desert to accommodate ground battles and reinforce the use of player builds”, outlining some already incoming scout ornithopter tweaks designed to help ensure air superiority isn’t the be all and end all. There’ll also be “additional changes to mechanics like respawn timers, vehicle storage tools, hand scanners, and other mechanics that we see being abused in the Deep Desert”.

Meanwhile, Funcom are aiming to address some “key flaws” in the Landsraad that folks have cited. These include problems with tasks being turned in very quickly, and folks being able to do nothing with them once they’re completed. “Stockpiling is currently rewarded, but that is not our intention for this system, and we will make some changes to address it as best we can,” the director wrote, adding that the system will also be “updated to provide micro rewards for solo/small group players”.

It’s nice to see the devs finding a way to balance their vision for DA with making the changes folks want. Judging by the socials, the worm lovers who’ve been doin’ the Dune are glad to see these steps are being taken, even if there’s no concrete timeline on a lot of them at this point.

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June 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Dune Awakening’s early meta is an unbalanced, helicopter-infested nightmare, and I never want it to end

by admin June 19, 2025

The Dune: Awakening community is torn right now. In the Deep Desert, roaming hordes of orniphopters (the Dune equivilent of a plane or helicopter) are dominating the end game and making an already dangerous area even more perilous. The thing is, I don’t think this is a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s good for the game in the long run.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Deep Desert is a no-holds-barred open world PvP area that makes up the majority of Dune: Awakening’s end game. It’s a vast, mostly barren, landscape where the best materials can be found. It’s also a place where any player can kill you and snatch any money or materials you have on you.

So the stakes are high. At the moment, the Deep Desert is being patrolled by Assault Orniphopters. They may not be able to crush you to death anymore, but they’re still armed with missiles, allowing pilots to shoot down other orniphopters with relative ease. One can be evaded easily enough, but when eight of them fly towards you, you’re done for.

Check out our video retrospective on Dune games here!Watch on YouTube

As you can imagine, there are numerous complaints about these flocks of orniphopters dotted around social media and Dune: Awakening community hubs. Take this Reddit post conveying the sadness tied to the Deep Desert compared to Hagga Basin. Or this one, in which user nowheels64 makes a plea for the lock-on missile launchers that appear in the recent Dune movies. The frustration is real. It’s palpable.

Those annoyed by the Deep Desert all have valid opinions. It is undoubtedly frustrating when you’re on your own, mining materials, and get blown to pieces from some unseen threat on high. Losing all your things is a bummer, there’s no two ways about it.

But I’m going to make an argument that the scurge of orniphopters isn’t inherently a bad thing for the Dune: Awakening end game. The Deep Desert, the Landsraad – it’s all about collaboration with your fellows within the faction you have chosen. Player guilds are attached by the hip to the Landsraad, and objectives assigned each week are so lofty as to practically require group effort. Could one person theoretically farm up 1,000 Adept swords and hand them in on their own? Sure. Is that the intention? Obviously not.

So where does this leave the player, fresh from Hagga Basin? Well, they’re outnumbered and unable to make a real dent in the Landsraad. The only option is to join a guild, to dive headfirst into the social pool of a very community-focused end game.

Dune: Awakening doesn’t force you to do this, to be a social animal, but it’s so obviously the point that the only other thing Funcom could do to emphasise it further is to build a big neon sign that says “join a guild” in the small PvE slice of the Deep Desert.

Flying out alone, like this, is perilous. That’s kind of the point! | Image credit: Eurogamer

I appreciate that this isn’t everyone’s bag. In fact, history has taught us it’s not the majority of people’s preferred way to play. Throne and Liberty lost a lot of players who didn’t want to touch the guild zone control mechanics, no matter how cool sieges looked. Dark Fall Online was incredibly PvP focused, and incredibly niche as a result. In World of Warcraft, if you do a War Mode world quest and see another player PvP tagged, a lot of folks will just /wave and go on with their business.

But with a game like Dune: Awakening, the conflict between the factions is so integral to the mechanics, and even the narrative. You’re on Arrakis during the war of assassins, Landsraad bonuses are faction-wide. It’s Atreides vs Harkonnen baby, all the way down into the mud. To shy away from that would be to separate from the source material in a way I’m not convinced Funcom wants to do.

I’m not going to sit here and tell people they’re playing the game wrong: you play the game you pay for however you want. There’s nothing wrong with popping back to Dune: Awakening when a new faction or major story update happens. But in terms of the Deep Desert, I hope this spirit of danger remains. It can be aggravating, yet it’s also a necessary force to push players into the wider faction conflict. And isn’t that what Dune is really all about?

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June 19, 2025 0 comments

Dune: Awakening promo image - sexy man with sword

Product Reviews

Dune: Awakening’s dungeons are so atrocious that I’d rather get slowly digested by a sandworm than fight through another one

by admin June 11, 2025

It’s 8 pm on Arrakis and I’ve been on a crafting binge.

I’m not normally the sort of ex-convict-turned-desert-nomad who’s into the whole crafting bollocks. I am, however, absolutely flipping nuts for Dune, so the ability to slap together stillsuits and Holtzman shields and all sorts of fun Herbert-adjacent nonsense has tickled my brain in just the right way, leaving me eager to delve into Dune: Awakening’s byzantine crafting menus.

But yeah, like I said: I’ve been binging. So now I’m out of resources. That means it’s time to switch gears from crafting to gathering. The dunes call to me, and my humble sandbike.

(Image credit: Funcom)

I’m prepared for my potentially dangerous excursion. I have a couple of literjons full of water, a dew-collecting scythe, a blood extractor and two blood bags. I ain’t gonna be running out of water even if I risk riding under the raging sun rather than sticking to the shadows of the mountains and mesas.

As always, I’m excited to leave my base. Arrakis is a striking place, a red-gold ocean punctuated by imposing monoliths and mountain ranges, where burning vehicles on the dunes attract scavengers, who in turn attract sandworms. Not just striking, then; it’s thrilling, too.

To get what I need, I’ll have to delve into a testing station. It shouldn’t take too long, I think, like an idiot. But still, it gives me pause. These are Dune: Awakening’s dungeons, but to call them dungeons is an insult to other MMOs. Really, they are repetitive underground facilities that only contain three things of note: oodles of loot, lots of enemies, and a few locked doors.

I do not like fighting in Dune: Awakening. In fact, I’m growing to despise it.

(Image credit: Funcom)

One-off encounters are fine. And I have some neat tricks up my sleeves. Gravity-altering grenades, a suspensor belt that lets me float, a drone that hurtles towards enemies and explodes—fun toys, all of them. But my god the combat system is rough.

The shooting is perfunctory at best, but the melee combat is downright shameful.

The shooting is perfunctory at best, but the melee combat is downright shameful. Describing it as sluggish and unresponsive would be supremely generous. I feel like I’m shouting commands at a distant colleague who’s only half hearing me whenever I unsheathe my sword. It’s horrible.

Unfortunately, melee brawls are unavoidable early on. This is because you’ll frequently be faced with shielded opponents. Regular guns can’t punch through those shields effectively, so you’ll need to go close range to get a kill, using your slow melee attack to puncture their defenses.

(Image credit: Funcom)

Eventually you’ll be able to craft weapons like disruptors that can bring down shields, but honestly they’re not that great, taking too long to break shields. I’m still hoping to find something more effective out in the desert.

Most of the time I’m not that bothered by this. Not when I’m scouring the dunes and getting into quick 2-minute fights. But in a dungeon? God, it’s miserable.

Almost every room is a carbon copy of all your previous encounters. A melee guy with a shield charging towards you. Some arseholes trying to riddle you with darts from range. And then the real problem: the armoured minigun bastard who takes twice as long to kill, can shred your shield and health in seconds, and who needs to be taken out with your sword.

It’s 8:30 pm. I thought I’d be done with the dungeon. The last one took about 15 minutes to clear. But this one is bigger and contains a greater number of awful fights. Sadly, it’s not more interesting. In fact, visually it’s identical. It’s just bigger.

(Image credit: Funcom)

Since I’m hoping to die at 40 and love low quality food I ordered some Taco Bell and it has now arrived. My disappointing quesadilla is getting cold.

I’m extremely dead.

A tougher-than-usual heavy gun dork manages to stun me with some Holtzman trickery, I get stuck in a slow-as-hell animation and my camera decides to become fixated on the opposite direction. I’m extremely dead.

“OK,” I think to myself. “I really want to eat this disappointing quesadilla. I also have some disappointing nachos. They too are getting cold. Maybe I should call it quits?”

But no, I can’t do this. My bike is outside the dungeon and it will almost certainly be destroyed by a sandstorm if I leave it unattended. Along with everything in its inventory. So I leg it through the dungeon again. This time the heavy gunner smacks me with his gun and murders me while I’m stunned. So far, stuns are the only and only trick enemies deploy. It sucks.

(Image credit: Funcom)

I run through the dungeon again. I don’t realise my Holtzman shield is damaged, so when the heavy gunner opens fire as I’m closing in, I go down like a tragic sack of meat. I’m in my head now. This isn’t a tough fight, but I’m stressed out, hungry and not having any fun. It’s making me stupid. I’ve equipped my backup shield, though. I’ll be OK this time. Right?

My power pack has been broken and my shield doesn’t activate. I am rapidly shot to death.

I gnaw on a nacho to give me strength. It’s 9 pm. The nacho is chewy and cold. I hate this dungeon and I hate myself. I refuse to hate the nacho. It’s not to blame.

Eventually, I remember how to videogame. I kill my nemesis. I know his tricks now. I’ve smashed through the brain block. I do not feel good about any of this, especially since I still have to fight the actual boss. I have no more darts, and besides, my gun is broken, which is unfortunate, since she’s a ranged attacker with no shield. A gun would be handy here.

(Image credit: Funcom)

I slink around the room, weaving between cover as I take out her allies with my sword.

I’m making this sound cooler than it actually is. There’s no cover system. I’m just occasionally hiding behind objects and I never actually have a clue if I’m going to be hit or not. Mostly I’m just running in circles muttering curses. I have run out of health kits.

And then I go in for the kill. Unlike the heavy gun lad she has no tricks, except for an exceptional talent for not dying. I slice and I slice and I slice but she won’t go down. She gets me to the ground three times, but I have plenty of water, which allows me to get back up again. Her gun isn’t powerful enough to take me out before I can stage my comeback. Again and again.

Finally I slash her and she remembers that, actually, swords are sharp. She is dead. I am alive. All is right on Arrakis.

(Image credit: Funcom)

As I reluctantly chow down on my slimy, cold quesadilla, it strikes me that these two final encounters represent the high point of this dungeon. Not because they were good, but because—thanks to misfortune, getting trapped in animations, camera jank, broken equipment and arbitrary enemy health boosts—they at least made me feel something.

As I reluctantly chow down on my slimy, cold quesadilla, it strikes me that these two final encounters represent the high point of this dungeon.

Sure, that feeling was frustration. And, let’s face it, no small amount of anger. It was an annoying climax to the hour and change I spent in this incredibly bland facility—admittedly an infinitesimal amount of time in an MMO, but it feels so much longer when the slog is so dull. I’m gonna remember these two fights, though. At least for a day, anyway. But bloody hell that’s sad. That a mixture of my hunger-induced impatience/ineptitude and some slightly hardier-than-usual enemies would lead to my sole memorable dungeon encounter.

Anyone not being distracted by the smell of rapidly cooling fast food probably wouldn’t even notice these fights. And this is a multiplayer game. Bring a buddy along and you’ll drop these fools in a few seconds. Just another couple of faceless goons added to your burgeoning body count.

(Image credit: Funcom)

MMO dungeons need to offer more than this. I’m still hoping Dune: Awakening ups its game in the later areas, but even baby dungeons should feature some quirks. The odd bespoke mechanic or demand for strategy to train you for the challenges ahead. Give me some puzzles or traps or unique bosses. Not just some bald lassie who takes too long to kill.

As I drive away from the dungeon, at last, I’m at least able to appreciate all the sweet loot I found. It’s a good haul. At least Dune: Awakening gets that right. But the cold Taco Bell ain’t sitting right. I don’t think I’m going to have time for more crafting.

I park my bike in the garage and move to the sofa to gently groan and question my life choices. The lesson: the dungeons of Arrakis ain’t worth the stomach ache.

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June 11, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Dune Awakening’s creative director speaks on the end game, and how the Landsraad will give key roles to crafter and killer alike

by admin May 28, 2025

As of writing, Dune Awakening just got its final dev stream going over the mid and end game. These large chunks of the experience have been largely mysterious for the longest time, aside from brief mentions of the Deep Desert and the massive community effort required to interact with arguably the game’s most exciting feature: The Landsraad system.

The Landsraad system, a supercharged weekly selection of rotating tasks that’ll require a faction-wide push for certain objectives, aims to provide a set of goals for every kind of player that’ll be filling their face with Spice. But there’s so much more to dig into, which is why I sat down and talked to creative director Joel Bylos about what I feel may just be the best approach to community-focused gameplay in an MMO since Classic WoW’s Gates of Ahn’Qiraj.

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This interview kicks off with Joel discussing what PvP means in Dune Awakening, and how it covers far more than people stabbing each other on the sands.

Bylos: It’s not actually direct fighting, but it’s like the Atrades versus the Harkonnen […] Some of them are just PvE objectives, like craft this many ornithopters and deliver them to this place. Doing this while you as a guild are under the Atreides, let’s say. You complete several tasks and you see that there’s another Atreides guild higher than you, which also creates guild politics within just the Atreides faction, and you’re like, “we want to beat that other guild who keep coming first.” Right?

So, there’s also that as well as the conflict between the two factions, which is like, “The Harkonnen won the Landsraad this week. The traders need to get our s*** together and beat them for the next week.” Right? So, it’s both of those things in tandem.

VG247: When I was in Oslo, a comparison you made was to classic WoW in terms of your ideas in terms ofdesign. So, using that for my own comparison, it reminds me sort of like the Ahn’ Qiraj gate opening, where different guilds can either go and fight and kill bugs, or go and do PvP content, or they can make bandages and do herbalism and it all contributes to one big effort.

Bylos: Exactly. The Landsraad is an activity driver, right? It points people to activities at the end game. There’s something there for everyone. If you don’t like PvP, or rather when I say PvP I always think of PvP as any activity you do against another player even, if it If you don’t direct conflict as in shooting people in the face, that’s fine you can contribute by crafting things. There are some Landsraad tasks that are just to go run these PvE areas of the game and kill 30, 300 or 3,000 slavers this week in order for you to win our vote in the Landsraad.

PvE players can go do that. People who love running dungeons can go do that. It’s an activity driver that points to all of the activities at the end of the game, and that’s kind of the whole point of the Landsraad.

Biolabs in the Deep Desert are built with groups of four in mind! | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: Would you say it’s fair to say that in terms of what players will be doing on in the end game, once they’ve put in their 100 hours and they’ve got their big base, it’s the Landsraad system. I am a PVE lover. I love crafting stuff. Blah blah blah. It all plays into this one system.

Bylos: The Landsraad system, I’m dumbing it down a little bit with this example, but you have a daily quest system in a lot of MMO type games where they’re like “here’s some small activities for you.” This is us saying here are weekly activities that are meaningful and actually change the server right, and then it is like okay s let’s work together and compete against the other faction. Yeah.

VG247: That’s interesting because I looked at some of the Landsraad bonuses you get, and I saw one that was a ranged damage increase and that immediately set off red flags, like Jesus that sounds crazy. But I suppose if the Landsraad system is also pushing players to do crafting and PvE and gathering etc, that you can say okay s*** we lost last week. They’ve got a range damage PvP is a bad idea. let’s focus on gathering all this and try and circumvent it. So you got this sort of weekly dynamic shift, right?

Bylos: Exactly that. There are even there’s crafting bonuses and things like that, so winners can craft more. So combat is the preferred [alternative] there. The big one I think that sort of excites people and scares people is we have the full PvP loot in the Deep Desert. So you can turn on the salvage rights decree which means that anyone who dies in the deep desert can be full PvP looted…

That’s not the base level of the game, but that’s an example. In a way I kind of joke around because I think it’s funny on a very meta level that actually PvP players and PVE players are in conflict to try and get that decree pushed through. The Harkonnen players who want to PvP are like we really want to push to the ability to full loot, and all the PvE players who are also on the Harkonnen faction are like, hell no we don’t! So within that faction they’re even fighting over who gets the decree right and I think that’s kind of interesting right? That’s politics.

Just because you’re working for the same faction, doesn’t mean your goals are aligned. | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: It sounds like you have a deep love for community interaction. Not only in terms of the stereotypical sort of Alliance versus Horde dynamic, but in terms of how different players and the factions and subfactions interact with each other. Where does that love come from, and why is it so emphasized here?

Bylos: I’ve worked on MMOs most of my career, right? I started in 2008 or 2007 on Age of Conan,then Secret World. I worked on a Lego MMO for a bit. and then Conan Exiles, right? So, I’ve been doing these multiplayer games [for a while] and I think that the strength of these games is the multiplayer. You can just play a really well polished Ghost of Tsushima if you want a really good open world gaming experience. Why do people want to play these games with their friends? It’s because the social drama is what makes them interesting.

I just try to make mechanics that lean into it. Endgame I think is kind of the thing that I find nerve-wracking, it’s the part you don’t really know until everyone’s in there – how the endgame’s going to be. We’ve got guesses from how closed beta is going. We’ve seen how people are approaching it, but also there are different levels of how people approach things when a game launches versus how they are in a closed beta. And so it’s going to be really interesting.

We have all the microcosms. We have multiple worlds. And how are the Atreides and Harkonnen going to be on this server versus this server? I think that’s where I’m really interested in seeing how all this plays out.

How fights will play out around the Deep Desert, over spice and other resources, is something we’re keen to see. | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: In other games when super-dedicated players hit the end game they tend to hoard wealth, which I imagine could be a thorn to the Landsraad system. How will you combat that, so a leading faction or player guild don’t stay ahead?

Bylos:I mean people can hoard, so if you’re a smaller guild that can’t compete, we might save up for a time when we really need it. But there are 25 specific Landsraad tasks every week, and there’s a pool of 600 that can be drawn from. So you actually can’t really hoard with intent. If you say we’re going to hoard I don’t know silver las guns in case that delivery is required, it might not come up for eight months. So it’s not going to help your guild to hoard that much but you might hoard the precursor materials. You might hoard spice.

The other thing is the Landsraad is composed of 25 votes, and it gets revealed what each Landsraad envoy wants over time, but you can accelerate that process by sending in people to go find the envoys around the world and then bribe them with a chunk of spice. Once it’s revealed, it’s revealed for everybody in your faction. But if the Harkonnen reveal it, that doesn’t mean the Atreides get to see it. Eventually, we don’t have it in for launch, but eventually the plan is to have those envoys also give people quests that they can go do to reveal tasks.

Maybe you’re not a fighter, but a builder! There will be plenty for you to do. | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: I have one other major topic which is player expression. It seems like most of the progression is linear progression. As you get more gear, as you get better materials to build a better base etc… In terms of player expression, is that the extent of it? If I love PvP. I want to fly around my own and shoot down the Atreides players, is there any system that means another player can look at me in Harko village nad go “yeah, he’s a PVPer.”

Bylos: So the game has a huge customization system. A lot of the Landsraad rewards tie back to that customization system. So you can see the sort of a guy who has been doing tasks for house Dyvetz because he’s wearing the house Dyvetz colors right so that kind of stuff comes in. So you kind of can get access to different levels of social status by doing Landsraad tasks.

I think in terms of player expression, there are five kind of core archetypes that we chased in the game. We said, “Okay, how do these people have a role in our game?” And I think probably right now, yeah, I think three of them are very strong and two of them need a little more work to be stronger, that’s the stuff we’ll continue to work on in the post-launch.

Dune Awakening launches on June 10 for regular folks, but on June 5 for those who fancy spending a little bit more on the deluxe edition, on Steam!

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May 28, 2025 0 comments