Welcome to Part 4. Today I am gonna rant about the enemy NPC variety issue in PvE. And as things go, Dune is quite bad at this variety thing.

We effectively have 5 types of NPCs: guys with blades, guys with guns, guys with bigger guns, guys with snipers and zombies. Most are further subdivided by having different weapons, and some even have a special ability to throw at you (how exciting!). The rushers can have swords, rapiers and daggers, abilities include Suspensor Blast and throwing a rock at you (I am not joking). Troopers have rifles, SMGs, drillshots and scatterguns, abilities include Stunner, Poison Capsule, Assault Seeker and a variety of grenades. Heavy gunners have the Vulcan or the Flamethrower, abilities include Suspensor Blast and Elbows of Justice.

And now you can ask: Well, how is Funcom adressing this issue? The answer is, of course, to reduce the number of rapier rushers and gravity grenades in the game! Because? They are inconvenient to players. And nothing says player enjoyment like fighting the same enemies with the same abilities in every zone you enter for the entire game.

I understand there are limits to NPC variety due to this being the Dune universe, but at least expand the abilities that different NPCs can access to enhance the experience. Rushers should have access to Swordmaster abilities like Deflection, Knee Charge, and Eye of the Storm. Troopers should have Shield Wall, Sentinel, Attractor Field and even more of them should use grenades because those abilities create interesting tactical situations. Heavies should plant mines when the enemy is detected or place the Source of Power. And ultimately, more NPCs should have Suspensor Belts to fly around and produce more interesting challenges.

It is quite disappointing that, after more than a year, Funcom managed to add only The Old Quarry and The Wind Pass as instances with some NPC variety, and even those were minimal. Instead of reworking NPC encounters across the entire game. This issue is especially important with the pivot to PvE; players expect a decent level of depth in PvE encounters, but at the moment things are, in general, quite shallow.

Funcom, please make your game more interesting and less of a repetitive grind it has become.

Welcome to Part 3 were we continue with everyone's favorite activity in any game: the GRIND. Today's topic will be one close to everyone's heart. The reward structure of the Overland Testing Stations. Much has been said, and most of us agree that this system relies far too heavily on RNG layered on top of RNG.

Difficulty 40 is a reasonable baseline for discussing endgame farming because Testing Station rewards reach their maximum scaling at Level 40. At that point, players are already expected to have good equipment, a specialized build, and enough experience with the encounter to clear it consistently. Depending on the station, time required may vary, but let us estimate a clear at roughly 15–25 minutes. This means that even a fairly efficient player completing four runs per hour is already investing a significant amount of time.

The problem is that completing the station is only the first RNG check. You then need that schematic to be a desirable grade. After finally getting it, crafting the augment introduces another problem: the resulting stats still need to roll well. A rare Grade 5 schematic therefore isn't really the end reward; it is effectively just another lottery ticket.

Lets consider a simplified example. Suppose the particular augment you want effectively appears once every 10 runs. At 20 minutes per run, that is already about 3 hours and 20 minutes per schematic on average. If only one in four crafted copies has stats you would actually consider good, the effective expectation becomes around 40 station clears, or more than 13 hours of farming, for one satisfactory augment. And this is an example with "high" drop augments; the numbers on a 5% drop rate augment are just insane.

Even a considerably more generous scenario becomes excessive very quickly. If the desired schematic averages one drop every five runs and you need six crafted copies before getting a strong stat roll, that is 30 clears. At 20 minutes per clear, that is approximately 10 hours invested into one augment.

And averages hide how unpleasant RNG can actually be. If we assume, purely for illustration, that each crafted augment has a 20% chance of producing the stat quality you want, then after:

• 5 attempts, there is still a 32.8% chance you have received no good roll.
• 10 attempts, there is still a 10.7% chance of getting nothing.
• 12 attempts, the failure chance is still 6.9%.
• 20 attempts, roughly 1.2% of players will still have failed every roll.

That last percentage sounds small until it is translated into players and hours. In a population of 10,000 people farming the same augment under those assumptions, roughly 115 players could craft it twenty times without ever receiving the desired result. If acquiring each schematic takes several station clears, those unlucky players are not merely losing a few crafting materials, they can be losing dozens of hours to variance.

There are player reports illustrating this problem from the loot side. Players have reported accumulating dozens of unwanted graded schematics while still missing the specific Grade 5 item they are farming. This is why the issue is not simply that "good gear should be easier to obtain." Rare and powerful endgame equipment should require effort. The problem is that the game repeatedly asks the player to win separate random rolls after already proving they can complete difficult content.

You beat the Level 40 station. Then you roll for the correct loot. Then you roll for its grade. Then you invest the materials to craft the augment. Then you roll its stats. If the final roll is bad, most of that progression effectively resets and you return to the beginning of the loop.

At that point the player's skill stops being the primary determinant of progression. Once someone can reliably clear Difficulty 40, the difference between obtaining an excellent augment after two attempts and obtaining one after twelve or twenty attempts is largely luck and available playtime.

That is the core problem with the current system: rarity is being multiplied by stat RNG instead of one system compensating for the other. If obtaining the schematic is supposed to be rare and time-consuming, crafting it should produce relatively predictable quality. If the developers want large random stat ranges to make exceptional rolls exciting, the schematic itself needs to be substantially more accessible. Having both simultaneously creates an unnecessarily punitive grind.

A better system does not need to eliminate RNG. Difficulty 40 could narrow the possible stat range, repeated crafts could gradually improve minimum rolls, unwanted augments could contribute toward rerolling an existing one, or repeated Testing Station clears could provide a deterministic path toward the desired schematic. Also, it is probably possible to make rerolling augments a Landsraad reward of some sort. Any of those systems would preserve the excitement of finding an exceptional augment while putting a reasonable ceiling on bad luck.

The goal should be simple: reward persistence without requiring unlimited persistence. Ten hours spent mastering and repeatedly completing difficult endgame content can reasonably represent progression. Ten hours spent doing content you have already mastered simply because the random-number generator has not permitted you to progress does not.

Welcome to Part 2 of this journey of mine, where I yap about a game I played more than a thousand hours. Today's topic is: The GRIND. Oh my blessed Shai Hulud, THE ABSOLUTE INSANE GRIND.

In the beginning, Dune Awakening had a pretty well done pacing in terms of progression; the Fremen questline was superbly done, progressing through different tiers of resources was good, advanced class trainers were passable (the biggest issue they had was how similar they were) but their saving grace was that finishing an advanced trainer was doable in an afternoon.

And then came Ch3 with new Landsraad missions and Specialization Tokens, which at the time was mostly hailed as a step in the right direction until the grind set in and people realized how much work they had to do to progress. Requiring roughly 70 days to fully level a single specialization, and close to a year to complete all five, is an enormous time gate that is just poor game design. The problem is not simply that progression takes a long time; long-term progression can be rewarding when the player controls how quickly they advance. Here, however, progression is heavily restricted by a limited number of daily opportunities, meaning that playing more, improving your skills, or putting in additional effort cannot meaningfully overcome the waiting period. This creates an increasingly large gap between established players and newcomers that is based primarily on when someone started playing rather than how much effort they are willing to invest. A new player joining months later could face months of mandatory waiting before reaching the same specialization options as veterans, even if they are willing to play considerably more. Instead of creating meaningful long-term progression, this turns specialization into an artificial retention mechanism where advancement is measured by calendar time rather than accomplishment. And the worst thing? Funcom did this intentionally just so they can say the game has "content" while they are working on console launch and Single Player...

Potential solutions:

Remove tokes altogether or remove the 35 limit.
Increase mission exp gain.
Introduce other sources of specialization exp gain.

Part 3 will cover Testing Stations and Augments, which is to say more GRIND. I will address the Landsraad endgame in a different post.

I've loved this game since I started playing last summer. I still play it regularly with friends and continue to enjoy it, but its current state is also increasingly frustrating. I'd like to share my perspective as a veteran player, and I think the best place to start is with what I believe is the game's biggest systemic issue: the entire class skill tree structure needs a rework.

As progression reaches the endgame, many active abilities stop feeling worthwhile. Weapon damage scales much better than most offensive skills, so instead of actively using our class abilities, we end up relying on our weapons while treating abilities as occasional utility. This makes combat less engaging because the class system no longer defines our build.

The skill trees also give the illusion of choice. In reality, there are a handful of passive skills that feel almost mandatory, while many techniques and abilities are rarely worth taking. Too many nodes are either too situational, too weak, or solve problems that don't exist in normal gameplay. Instead of encouraging experimentation, most experienced players eventually gravitate toward very similar builds. This is especially noticeable with any damage-dealing ability (both direct damage or DoTs) since their impact on gameplay becomes virtually unnoticeable.

The defensive side of the skill trees also feels underdeveloped. Outside of a few niche options, there are very few meaningful defensive abilities or techniques that can actively influence combat. Ironically, one of the most impactful defensive techniques, Reckless Lunge, is tied to an offensive melee action, and it's so strong (both in PvE and PvP) that it overshadows everything and completely dominates the meta.

Rather than repeatedly adjusting one or two techniques, I would like to see the game rework defensive abilities and techniques across all classes and make them more impactful; currently, besides RL and perhaps Litany, almost everything else is simply not worth taking, either because better options exist, the option itself is too expensive, or has very limited impact.

Capstone abilities should also feel like defining milestones that fundamentally change how a class plays, but many of them feel underwhelming compared to the investment required to unlock them. Reaching the capstone should be exciting, not something players question whether it's even worth pursuing.

Finally, the overall presentation of the skill trees could be improved. Some skill descriptions are vague or inconsistent, making it difficult to understand exactly how abilities work or interact with other mechanics. Players shouldn't have to rely on community testing to figure out how their own skills function. This just makes playing the game frustrating, especially for casual players.

Vehicle combat is in a terrible state overall. Ground vehicles are effectively death traps, not primarily because of ornithopters, since hitting moving ground targets from the air is surprisingly difficult, but because handheld missile launchers can destroy most vehicles in two hits.

Rocket pods on ornithopters are particularly frustrating. Their speed penalty makes them impractical for normal travel, so most pilots fly with boosters equipped and swap to rockets only when necessary. That is unnecessary friction rather than meaningful balance.

The Assault (Medium) Ornithopter remains a second-rate combat option compared with the Scout. Its main advantage is that it can technically keep up with a Carryall, which appears to be the primary reason people use it.

More broadly, ground completely dominates thopters. Even using rockets to support party members in a ground fight is usually a net loss. Two missile hits can remove the thopter from combat, meanwhile, its impact on the fight is negligible since rockets deal insignificant damage to players.

Suggested changes:

• Remove the speed penalty from rocket pods.
• Give the Assault Ornithopter unique lock-on missile pods with a 500-metre range.
• Add a nose-mounted Vulcan turret to the Assault, operated by the copilot.
• Give the Buggy an armored hull.
• Add a unique lock-on missile turret for the Buggy with a 700-metre range.
• Introduce more vehicle weapons, such as side-mounted lasers and heavy dart guns.
• Add vehicle shield generators as alternative modules, for example, replacing the booster on the Assault or the Buggy.

These additions should not simply make vehicles stronger. They should create defined combat roles, make multicrew vehicles worthwhile, and give players meaningful equipment choices. The goal here isn't to create a flight simulator but to add much-needed variety to an existing feature.

On the subject of Guilds

I would also like to see a progression system for guilds, similar to character specializations. Guilds should be able to level up in directions that support their preferred playstyles.

Possible guild perks could range from quality-of-life improvements to modest bonuses for combat, crafting, and gathering, including:

• Additional vehicle slots
• Additional Auction House slots
• Defensive bonuses when protecting a guild base
• Bonuses when every party member belongs to the same guild
• A larger maximum party size, increasing it from four to six
• Increased Sandcrawler yields
• Guild crafting or gathering specializations

The bonuses would need sensible limits to avoid making large guilds mandatory. However, guild membership should provide some tangible in-game value. That is a major weakness in a game whose endgame is designed around group play. The necessary social infrastructure is largely missing.

Guilds should be able to form formal alliances. Those alliances could provide:

• Shared communication channels
• An alliance marketplace for internal trading
• Member-posted contracts or requests
• Shared objectives
• Limited alliance-wide bonuses
• Better tools for organizing PvP and Landsraad activities

The goal should not be to force everyone into a massive guild. Small guilds, solo players, and informal communities should remain viable. Instead, the game should recognize and support the cooperation that players are already organizing through third-party applications (mainly Discord).

At present, players are doing the work of building Dune: Awakening’s communities, while the game provides almost none of the tools needed to sustain them.

Right now, there’s basically no real incentive to fight over anything in the PvP Deep Desert, and no, the 2.5x resource multiplier is not enough to make people care.

One of the few systems that could naturally create PvP content is player-built bases. They can act as player-made Points of Interest and create actual conflict between guilds and factions. The problem is that Funcom never adjusted building HP/durability after the massive increase in weapon damage introduced with Chapter 3.

I did some testing in PvP with a lasgun:

• Takes ~6 seconds to destroy a wall/foundation
• That is ~10 building pieces per minute

That means a single player can realistically erase an entire base just by deleting the foundations one by one. All they need is a Source of Power.

And the worst part? The material loss is basically irrelevant compared to the amount of time and effort required to build the base in the first place.

Potential solution:

• Introduce a dedicated PvP building set with significantly higher durability that uses T6 resources
• Or allow existing building sets to be built with granite, plastone or T6 materials

Honestly, I think most players would love to see existing building sets get a plastone option anyway, and adding another tier specifically for PvP shouldn’t be that difficult. This would also provide a much-needed resource sink for T6 resources.

Funcom, please tell your combat team that TAW sucks as an anti-thopter weapon. It will never hit anything with a booster, the missiles are just too slow, and that is mostly fine. The big issue is that TAW will struggle even against rocket scout thopters who can outrun the missile by going straight and slightly downward (the Exploration vehicle speed buff is that significant).

There is a reason people lasgun surf on boosted scouts... it is because you made every other anti-thopter weapon basically toothless. So please, an increase in TAW's range and missile speed is in order.

I just waited 20 minutes to get into Broodworks. I understand the servers are backed up and the game acknowledges that, but saying “queue times might be longer” doesn’t make a 20-minute wait feel reasonable or acceptable.

There seems to be a change to how stamina works; dashing now appears to cost more than it has before the patch. Multiple staggers/stuns now add up when you dash, that is, they make dashing way more expensive. And also, stagger from melee light attacks seems to have a higher cost to dash.

I'm not sure if the change was intended, but it wasn't mentioned in the patch notes. Makes dealing with multiple NPCs a bit harder, but makes melee more viable in PvP so tbh I am not really dissatisfied.

Can someone else confirm this?

Last night I made about 15 augments to try and get ONE good roll. Didn't get a single good one, and I don't mean good as almost maxed, I mean good as middle rolls. I am still salty about it.

It's really frustrating to grind crafting (lvl 80 atm), then grind labs AND then get minimal rolls on your augs. And yeah yeah, I know, RNG and all that... but having high crafting should, at least, come with an increase on possible minimal thresholds. Rant over.

That is me. What are your Monday morning Dune frustrations?

Before Chapter 3, Class Skill Trees felt like they were in a pretty solid spot. PvP had its defined meta sure, but in PvE, most abilities and techniques were at least viable.

After the introduction of graded gear (weapons, armor, augments) and the added damage/mitigation from Specializations, things shifted hard. Damage output skyrocketed, NPC HP pools followed, and as a result, a lot of abilities just don’t hold up anymore, especially on higher TS difficulties.

Below is a class-by-class breakdown of abilities/techniques that feel underwhelming, overpowered, or in need of rework.

Trooper

• Explosive Grenade – Severely underwhelming damage at high TS difficulties. Scaling it without breaking PvP is tricky.
• Assault Seeker – Same issue as above.
• Shigawire Claw – Arguably overtuned as a mobility/utility tool. Could use a cooldown nerf.
• Heavy Weapon Agility – Feels weak. Heavy Weapons in general need buffs, but this technique especially lacks impact.

Mentat

• The Sentinel – Damage falls off hard at higher TS difficulties.
• Poison Capsule / Poison Mine – Damage is too low. Could be reworked into %HP-based DoTs (e.g., ~25% total HP over time).
• Poison Tooth – Same idea, but potentially stronger (e.g., up to 100% HP as DoT).
• Hunter Seeker – Too slow/visible for PvP; underwhelming damage in PvE.
• Shield Wall – Should apply a stronger debuff to enemies passing through.
• Solido Decoy – Unusable in PvP. In PvE, aggro is unreliable, especially in tight spaces like boss rooms.

Planetologist

• Exploration Tree (entirely) – Currently offers little value. Could be redesigned to reward exploration (e.g., bonus resources, combat buffs in surveyed areas).
• Heat Management – Decent capstone in theory, but limited by inability to activate Prescience inside vehicles.

Bene Gesserit

• Prana Bindu Strikes – Okay in PvP, but PvE damage is too low.
• Litany Against Fear – Armor-based mitigation doesn’t scale well. Could benefit from added flat damage reduction (affecting both armor and shields). Buff or rework.
• Trauma Recovery – Feels useless at high TS difficulties. You’re usually either full HP or dead. Niche benefit with low-tier medkits, but irrelevant due to abundance of top-tier ones.
• Prana Bindu Stability – Poise mitigation is awkward. Having some is useful, stacking it isn’t. Most staggers are unavoidable anyway. Needs a rework or buff.

Swordmaster

• Retaliate – Underwhelming damage. Could be reworked into %HP-based DoT (~25% as an example).
• Dance of Blades – Overshadowed by other options. Needs a buff or redesign.
• Eye of the Storm – Damage doesn’t scale well into higher TS difficulties.
• Precise Parry – Theoretically fine, but extremely niche. Only useful with two bosses. Could be reworked to apply debuffs on melee hits rather than parries, thereby providing possible synergies between range and melee.
• Deflection – Rarely used. Could use a buff.
• Reckless Lunge – Currently broken in PvP. Players trigger the buff by attacking empty air, then they switch to ranged for a free 50% armor mitigation. No cooldown and spammable (more effective HP than Litany Against Fear) Suggested fix: apply mitigation to shields instead of armor to better support melee playstyles.
• Thrive on Danger – Sounds good on paper, but functionally dead. Full HP offers no benefit; taking damage on higher TS difficulties means death. Needs a rework or a higher activation threshold.
• Knee Charge – Damage doesn’t scale well at higher TS.

And that means the loop will remain as is for the foreseeable future... very disappointing Funcom.