Dune Awakening -- Onward to the Endgame!

I've now been playing Dune Awakening for a couple of months. As for a gauge of where I am in the journey, I have completed the main story quest as far as I can progress it and crafted a mega-base, complete with an MK5 Assault Ornithopter landing pad.

You just fly down through the old Pentashield rooftop!

Inside ol' Tree Trunks McSkinny's base you'll find all the trappings needed to process Duraluminum. As for processing spice and higher-quality metals, Dylan and I combined forces and located our high-quality refinement machinery over at Skip Legday's base.  It's a relatively short hop over to his house from my place, so no complaints there from me.

Skip's old Dune Buggy Entrance before he widened it a bit.

The real fun in-game now seems to be tempting death in the Deep Desert. The mobs hit harder, and the grind is grindy-er there, which also seems to be slowing our interest in continuing to play this game. There are plenty of side quests and faction quests I could complete still, so I have plenty left to discover.

Speaking of that, I've really enjoyed doing the quests in this game. The storytelling has been fantastic, which is to be expected from a game based on an entire series of books and movies. It doesn't disappoint.

Sounds like a Friendly Necromancer's dream

What I also love about this game is how you can get into a meditative state while grinding away on whatever your next crafting goal is. It's that sweet Zen state where your brain shuts down partially while you mine ores, suck corpses of their blood, dodge worms while gathering spice, and finally craft that full set of sentinel gear you've been collecting.

It's a pretty sweet look. FYI puzzle solution for the Footsteps of the Fremen Quest in case you need it.

Hopefully the team of Skip Legday and Tree Trunks McSkinny can start farming a bit of the Deep Desert together. I'd like to get a set of the best armor in the game at some point, but on the other hand . . . just playing Dune to this stage has given me 137.3 hours of enjoyment. I'm good either way.

Happy Dueling!

Cowabunga, it's spicing time!

It's been a few weeks, and I've been playing a lot (for me at least) of Dune Awakening. The dynamic duo of TreeTrunks McSkinny and Skip Legday just completed the Fourth Trial and have been busy building our skills, filling out our bases, completing contracts (quests), and making new stuff to drive around the desert in.

Skip and I are ready to tackle some mining expeditions!

We've landed on a combat style that includes me running up and going ham on enemies getting agro while Mr. Legday snipes them all from a distance. That means I've augmented my Mentat abilities with a little swordsman to boot. It's not a bad combo so far.

Dead bodies everywhere and the friendly necromancer go hand in hand.

I like to think of us as the bad boys of the private server with our despicable Harkonnen ways. I believe everyone else chose to go with House Arrakis. NOT US! TreeTrunks and Skip always do things the hard way, which probably means we'll miss out on some server-wide bonuses at some point.  Meh.

In this survival game, however, the one thing you can be sure of is death -- it's always around the next corner. Whether it's being swallowed by a sand worm, killed by a mob of slavers, or just drying up in the sun -- death is ever present. Luckily, you have the power of respawn! In a lot of ways, Dune Awakening is much like ye' olde EverQuest in that if you die somewhere, you have to go back to the spot and collect your items you lost.  It's not quite as punishing, though, because at least you don't have to run back naked and afraid.  You at least keep your equipped gear on.

Stupid CHOAM Heavy and his stupid Heavy Darts . . .

What I think I enjoy most about this game are the small details. Occasionally, large zone-wide sandstorms will kick up and damage anyone who isn't sheltered. The other day I was hiding in a little nook of a stone wall to shelter from a storm and turned the camera to look behind me. You could see sand particles sweeping across the rock plateau. What a cool touch! Little, beautiful touches like this are everywhere.

The combat is surprisingly fun when you have a mix of gunplay and melee. Trying to make a slow dagger strike through armor is so satisfying. In addition, it all just makes sense within the context of the movies (I'd say books, but I haven't read them).

Overall, I've just really enjoyed my experience in Dune Awakening so far. Up next for me is probably relocating my base closer to a station and pressing on into the fifth spice dream vision.

As the Ninja Turtles would say, "Cowabunga, it's spicing time!"

Happy Dueling!

Tree Trunks McSkinny and Skip Legday in Dune Awakening

Dune Awakening launched back during the first week of June, and it's the new hot thing right now. We all had our fun in Valheim -- it was great. We all vamped it up in V Rising, but now we're going full on Muad'Dib and filling ourselves with spice dreams. 

I hear what you're saying . . .

Dylan and I are there for it, and our characters are the ultimate duo: Tree Trunks McSkinny and Skip Legday. Basically, Dylan put the slider all the way skinny on his legs, and I put the slider all the way skinny on my arms.  We balance each other out like that. 

Tree Trunks and Skip on top of the world

It isn't quite as extreme as it was in Ark where you could make your characters look absolutely crazy, and once you throw on your gear, it hides all the body stuff anyway.

Once we managed to sync up on the right server and start playing together, life was great! We were building stuff and off'ing the desert bandits.  

Dead Bandits, a great source of blood water and scrap

Water conservation, bandages, knives, and dart guns! What more do you need in this world! Come to find out, you need a lot . . . and there's always more to craft . . . .

Hide from the evil eyes!

Last night we made it past our first trial, but we've been invited to a private server now where we won't have to deal with gatekeeping guilds and PvP nonsense.  So now . . . WE DO IT ALL AGAIN!

Happy Dueling!