Ding 200 -- Max Level in Dune Awakening

I've had a lot of time on my hands with the Government shutdown.  Now that it's all set to end, I suppose it's fitting that yesterday I finished off my leveling in Dune Awakening.

Ding 200 -- Don't mind me, just getting stabbed while taking a screenshot

I started out the week with a level and a half left to go, and previous to this, I wasn't really in a rush to max out good old Tree Trunks McSkinny, but the writing was on the wall that my goofing off during the daytimes on Dune Awakening was soon coming to an end. 

What does an old MMO player do best . . . GRIND. I reran the infamous Secret Lab in Station 163 over and over. It was my favorite instance of the latest DLC, and as it turns out, the exp there is pretty great! If you really want to you can just sit in that end room and grind wave after wave of one boss and four enemies at a pace of one wave a minute.

Grinding Station 163 Secret Lab Boss Room

This is what Dune has become for me, just killing time and trying to complete a few Tom-goals, like . . . "Hmm. I want to build my own carrier and spice crawler and do a solo spicing run." OK! DONE! I even have an hour-long unedited video of it. (11:30 mark is a fun close call . . . 44 minute mark is another.)

If you actually watch that video (I don't expect you to), you'll see me using my awesome thanksgiving turkey base I built for the holidays.

You enter through the legs. It's genius.

Before that was my pumpkin base for Halloween.

Happy Halloween from my goofy base!

. . . and of course, we shall never forget the FREE MAZE, but these are the types of Tom Goals I'm talking about -- self-created ones.

As for the not self-created goals, I have 90 percent completion on the Dune Steam Achievements with my most recent being crafting a Lasgun, which was pretty fun to use when I was grinding experience, but I highly doubt I'll ever break it out to rip apart a base in DD.  I guess you never know though.

Melting away the golden AI guys worth 3 exp each

All that's left for achievements are:

• Kill 50 snipers with a spit dart sniper (doable, but time consuming)
• Release a suspensor blast 25 times (easy, just need to respec)
• Use a hunter seeker 25 times (again, easy, just need to respec)
• Mine 10,000 of each resource type by hand (hard! There's no way to track what you're missing)
• Eliminate 500 Harkonens (would just need to grind Row A shipwrecks in DD)
• Cook up 100 Muad'Dib meatball sandwiches (just need to find and kill the little mice and craft up like 10 more)

So there you go. I'm level 200 and still doing my thing in Dune. Yes, it would be kind of fun to 100 percent this game, but I'm back to work (most likely today or tomorrow) so who knows what's next?!

Happy Dueling!

Team Tom Update Nov 2025 -- Thank you and humbled

Well, I just had another infusion, so I guess it’s time for another Team Tom update!  

Here’s where we’re sitting:  

• Chemo (Done! No more!) 
• Immuno (Just had my fourth **flexes for the crowd) 
• CT Scan (Number four is coming up in a couple of weeks – hoping all still looks good) 
• Holistic (yup, still doing it) 
• Body Check (gained back some weight – general takeaways from labs are everything looks stable, and several key markers are either normalizing or have stayed in the normal range for a while. There are a few mild, chronic lows [like red cell counts] and immune shifts, but nothing alarming or drastically changing.) 

The weird thing that happened: 

The company that did my genetic sequencing on my cancer came back, now over two months later, and basically said, “Hi peoples. Um, just kidding you from whatever we gave you a while back . . . we didn’t get enough cancer from the sample to give you a solid genetic analysis. I don’t know what we were thinking. #dealwithit ” My oncologist was pretty floored. He hasn’t EVER seen that happen. He’s going to dig in deeper to that and find out what’s up. At some point I may need a fourth biopsy, but the treatment has pretty much worked so far and there’s nothing really urgent that needs to happen from that . . . it’s just . . . weird. 

Still not as weird as Timmy . . .

The fun thing that happened: 

The fam and I went to Lagoon a couple times. I thought I had wasted my season pass because I was too sick from Chemo to go. We were able to go the last two weekends in a row! Super fun. I love the new Primordial ride. Also, I’m so happy I was able to ride JetStar2 one last time before it got taken down forever. Good times with the fam for sure. 

Once more around the ol' JetStar2!

The surprising things that happened: 

MOM . . . mom came through with some money to help us during government shutdown. It was unexpected and incredibly kind. You can tell she loves our family and is willing to help us when times are tight. Thank you, mom! 

KINGSISLE . . . I got a package from my old company . . . all my old friends. There was a super nice get-well card (featuring my old avatars of Dworgyn and One-Eyed Jack) from the whole team. Inside the package was a Ninja Pig T-shirt, a slew of stickers, and more plushies than I can hold in my arms at one time. Thank you, friends! 

Thank you, old friends!

JT4 . . . The fine people at JT4 pooled together and got me a metric ton of donated leave. I thought I was going to be on unemployment at this point, but my amazing coworkers (You know who you are) have made me feel valued. Thank you, coworkers! Now let’s just hope this shutdown nonsense ends soon.

MUTC . . . I joined the Man Up to Cancer group and met some really nice folks there. They sent me a backpack and some supplies. The Wolves, as they call themselves, seem like a good bunch and welcomed me warmly. Thank you, Wolves, and thank you to the social workers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute for turning me on to them. 

MORE Thank-yous that need to happen: 

Man, I’ve been feeling super unworthy of the love and gifts I’ve been getting from you all, but I’m so happy to have you on my side. I just mentioned MUTC, MOM, KINGSISLE and JT4 above, but just in case I haven’t said it: 

NEIGHBORS, FRIENDS, and FAMILY . . . y’all have been there with incredibly supportive messages, gifts, advice, books, plushies, food, patience, and time. Thank you each and every one of you. Back when this nonsense started I said that some of you may be wondering how to help and I didn’t have a good answer. Kudos to you for just jumping in. I have a hard time asking for help (or even knowing what I need) and you made it effortless by just doing what you do, whether it's an uber eats card or just leaving me a note. Thank you!

Happy Dueling!