Tag: Memorable Moments

This is what it looks like when you’ve aggroed a sandworm in Dune: Awakening. It’ll submerge one more time after this first breach, but if you stay on open sand any longer after that it will come for you.

That’s not a sight you wanna get to see, believe you me.

How did this happen? Well, when I realized that I didn’t have nearly enough screenshots of Imperial Testing Station No. 10 for my post about the adventure I had in there I decided to pay Station No. 2 another visit and take some more there. And, to be quite honest, I’d become a bit too comfy and carefree by then, so instead of hugging the rocky areas as much as possible I took a pretty long route across open sand. I thought that I’d be okay as long as I stayed clear of drum sand.

I was mistaken. When the aggro meter turned red while I was still a couple hundred meters away from safety I knew I was in trouble. Luckily I had a booster equipped to the sandbike (the alternatives being a cargo crate or passenger seat), and I saved that for the moment you see on the picture above so as to not overheat it too early.

How close of a call was it? Well…

The moment I hit the screenshot key I thought I was done for. But lo and behold, one second later the worm stopped its chase and disappeared below the sand for good. Phew (once again)!

However, just a day later I wasn’t so lucky.

At that point various contracts were asking me to venture further north, and to do so one has to traverse the first instances of quicksand. While moving on drum sand “only” increases worm aggro, quicksand is (as far as I know) a death trap for players and vehicles alike. And it’s fricking everywhere.

While it is marked clearly on the map, and also looks a bit different from normal sand in the game world itself, I didn’t want to risk my bike regardless, so I decided to walk.

Outside of drum sand I’d never had aggroed a worm while on foot until then, so I thought this to be the safest option.

Once more I was mistaken. When the worm came I used everything I had at my disposal to escape, but even with Bindu Sprint and Shigawire Claw (from the Bene Gesserit and Trooper skill tree, respectively) I was much too slow. No screenshots, by the way, as I was panicking and had better (albeit futile) things to do.

I won’t spoil exactly what happens after that, but in the end I was standing at my chosen respawn point in my undies. No weapons or armor, no inventory, no nothing, except for one worm tooth that can be crafted into a very deadly but equally fragile dagger.

I was pretty bummed for a couple of minutes, but instead of sulking and logging off I went back to my base and started to rebuild right away.

And a good decision that was, because as it turned out I had so much stuff stockpiled by then that I was able to replace almost everything within like fifteen minutes.

Everything except for some of the unique items, that is.

In order to craft these you need to get your hands on one-time use schematics, which only drop from super chests – I call them that; if they have an official name I’m not aware of it.

Many (but not all) POIs sport one such chest. In the bigger camps and dungeons they’re usually located in or past the boss room, or all the way at the top in the more vertical ones, and basically can’t be missed. In smaller places they’re sometimes tucked away around corners or in little side rooms or caves though, so keep your eyes open.

Each of these chests has its own loot-table. Once opened they respawn after 45 minutes, and if there’s more than one schematic to be had it’s random which one you get.

Which, to be honest, can be quite infuriating. I have, for example, farmed one specific chest for days on end, because I wanted to get my hands on the unique rifle that only drops there. Said rifle is just one of three schematics on that chest’s table though, and I got the (also useful) sandbike engine once, and the scattergun (which I didn’t want at all) six fricking times before the rifle finally made an appearance.

I have even logged off there to do something else for a while, then logged back in just to loot the chest again.

Despite the RNG repeatedly being a dick I quite enjoy this whole part of the gameplay loop though. It lets me gear up to the point of (almost) being overpowered for the current tier, which makes the transition to the next much less arduous. It also incentivises going back to places you’ve already been – which you most likely would have to anyway for crafting mats and the like – so you don’t burn through each area quite as fast.

Which, for me, is a good thing. I’m in no hurry to advance to the “endgame”, as that, by most accounts and at the time of this writing, seems to be the least appealing aspect of the game.

Also, I’m still having a blast in this relatively early part of the experience, and I’m definitely going to savour it some more. That being said, I’m now almost ready to advance into tier three and start working towards building the buggy. That should be fun!

As I said last time, I mainly started to play Dune: Awakening because of features like gathering and base building, but also in hopes of getting to experience exciting adventures. And boy, did the game deliver on all fronts already!

I’m almost 30 hours in now, have moved into the second area and crafting tier, built my second base, discovered new technologies for gathering resources, and unlocked my fourth of the five available classes.

What I’d like to focus on today, though, is my first foray into one of the game’s large dungeons, because that was an experience I’ll not forget anytime soon indeed.

Most PvE content in Dune: Awakening is more or less static, with enemies hanging around camps, in caves or shipwrecks. You go there, clear them out, loot everything and leave again. Calling these places ‘dungeons’ would be overstating things, because they range from a single campfire to a couple of adjacent rooms or caverns at most.

However, there are real dungeons too. They go by the rather unimpressive name “Imperial Testing Station No. XY”, but I assure you, they are anything but.

You get to explore the first one of those, Station No. 2 (don’t ask me what happened to No. 1…) in the newbie region already, and while that wasn’t a cakewalk when I went there only a couple of hours into the game, it didn’t quite make me break a sweat either.

The other day a contract (i.e. side quest) asked me to investigate Imperial Testing Station No. 10, which is located to the far east of my current area. So I stocked up on ammo, bandages and water, mounted my sandbike and got going.

The entrance (seen above) looks pretty much exactly like that of Station No. 2, so I thought I knew what to expect. And I did…but, as it would soon turn out, not really.

As the name suggests these places are (or were) facilities for scientific or military research, and past the entrance they lie completely underground. Hence you have to go down some pretty steep and long ramps at first.

I could soon tell that the enemies here are tougher and more numerous than I was used to, and I had to fight tooth and nail from the get-go. Many of them have a Holtzman shield now (to be fair, so have I), and most packs have at least one heavy gunner, who wield some kind of gatling gun.

Fortunately my usual tactic of aggroing a group, then backtracking a bit and hiding behind something or around a corner works even better in the tight confines of these stations. This way the guys with melee weapons will sprint after you first, and you can hopefully dispatch them with your own knife or sword before their homies catch up.

I also made generous use of grenades and turrets, and generally kept kiting and using cover as much as I could.

I was so tense and focused the whole time that I didn’t pay attention to how long I was at it already, but after a while it dawned on me…this thing just kept going, and going, and going still.

Fortunately for me you can’t really get lost down there (I hate mazes with a passion). Sometimes a path branches off, but one of the two options always leads to a dead end soon, so there’s effectively only one way you can go. At least that wasn’t a concern.

But what if I’d died? I’m not sure how quickly enemies respawn, but it’s seemingly something like 10-15 minutes. Which means that I would have had to fight my way down here again all the way from the top.

Then I remembered that one of the things you can craft on the fly, provided you have the resources on hand, is a placeable respawn beacon. By then I had looted enough scrap metal to make a couple, so I plopped one down right away, just to be safe.

Deeper and deeper I went, with no end in sight. Aside from loot chests and enemies – of whom I’d probably dispatched nearly fifty by now – I found various audio recordings providing the place’s backstory. Don’t ask me about that though, for I was much too focused on the path ahead of me to actually listen.

To make things even more tense my supply of ammo and bandages had started to noticably wane by now. You find that stuff left and right, but I was consuming even more than I got. About time to finish this, I thought.

Then I finally came to a door with a green energy barrier, which I assumed had to lead into the boss room.

You see, such barriers are usually red at first, unless you have already found the corresponding ‘identification band’. I hadn’t picked up any kind of key during my whole run, so why was this one green? Ah, but I’d seen this before, in Testing Station No. 2! As soon as I’d walked through the door there it turned red and wouldn’t let me get out until the boss was dead.

I placed a new respawn beacon right in front of the door, checked my weapons and bandages one last time, and went in.

I found myself in a large, two-story hangar of sorts, and immediately had to fight for my life. I used the same tactics as before and dispatched the first batch of enemies, then another one. While doing so I noticed someone shooting at me from quite a distance…sniper! I tried to always have something between us while fighting the others, but still got hit once, and all of a sudden I was poisoned.

I started losing health fast while still fighting some other guy. Luckily I managed to finish him off quickly and applied a bandage right away. I don’t know if that stopped the poison or if it had just worn off by then, but my health bar turned from green to red again and I could heal up to full normally. Phew.

Using every bit of cover I could find I then got near enough for the sniper to switch to a different weapon, but I just made short work of him with my knife.

I had assumed the sniper to be the boss, but apparently not. By now the contract had updated its objective to “Kill Inna Hiller”, and that wasn’t checked off yet.

The hangar’s upper level was clear now, but the doors (plural because there’s one at both ends) were still red, so I went downstairs – only to get instantly perforated by a heavy gunner. Seriously, I went from full shields and health to dead in like three seconds, tops. Guess I’d found the boss, eh?

I respawned on my beacon and went in again. I had learned by now that Holtzman shields are turned off whenever the wearer fires a ranged weapon, but considering how quickly I’d died I wanted her not to shoot me of course. So I tried to get her to start firing, only to immediately take cover and let my grenades and turret do the work, which, after a while, did the trick. Phew again. But what’s that? This wasn’t Inna Hiller either?!?

At least the doors were green now, so on to the next room. This one was much smaller, but also with some opportunities to take cover. To my relief these four enemies didn’t pose much of a problem, and now the contract was finally completed. Phew the third.

I looted the super chest (more about those another time), and to my extreme delight the key that lay right next to it indeed led to a shortcut back to the surface, just as I’d hoped the whole time. This, too, seems to be a standard feature of these stations, and I think it’s great design.

And so my first proper dungeon run in Dune: Awakening had come to a victorious close.

To tell you the truth, I’m absolutely sure that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the boss fight(s), let alone beat those, without the aforementioned grenades. These aren’t consumables that you buy or craft and then equip like in most games, but come from the Trooper skill Explosive Grenade. If you play the game and haven’t already, I highly suggest to unlock that and give it a try. It’s so helpful! If you have a Technique-slot to spare also use Battle Hardened to reduce its cooldown a little (as well as that of all other Trooper skills, including the grappling hook).

I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s been a very, very long time since I had a solo PvE experience as gripping as this one.

Now, do I want every session to be like this? Hell no! Those one and a half hours (or however long it actually was) left me completely exhausted. But I was also exhilarated, and so very pleased with myself at the end! Games that can make me feel like that are a rare breed these days, so hats off to you, Funcom!

Oh, and as if all of this hadn’t been enough excitement for a day I came this close to getting swallowed by a sandworm while collecting screenshots for this post. More on that next time.