After the second Dune film adaptation by Villeneuve hit like a bomb, the pressure on the Norwegian studio Funcom has only increased Survival MMO work in the Dune universe.
We had already received initial information about the background of the game and how the gameplay mechanics should interact a few weeks ago, but now there is brand new information about the game that we want to share with you.
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We have an extensive editor for character design and the selection of starting skills and background story own article and would like to focus more on the actual gameplay elements in this article.
If you don't feel like waiting for a playful experience on Arrakis, you are welcome to check us out Dune: Spice Wars take a look, a strategy game also from Funcom.
Collect resources
Despite the fact that Dune: Awakening is an MMO, the focus is heavily on survival mechanics. This means collecting resources, managing needs and building bases.
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In contrast to the setting in the Dune films, according to the creative director of the upcoming action game, the world of the desert planet is not exclusively occupied by sand dunes.
Source: Funcom
Particularly in rocky areas, you can also find vegetation that you can collect as a player, and there are also fragments of machines scattered around the world that come from former conflicts.
Sometimes you put them in your pocket, but for larger items we have to use a kind of laser cutter and essentially disassemble the parts. To do this, we draw bright lines that represent the weak points of the distributed loot, just as we do when mining natural raw materials such as stones.
We need the materials obtained in this way to craft additional items, as in Funcom's predecessor game, Conan Exiles, we will probably have to craft everything we want. At the beginning it's done manually, then later with crafting devices that give us access to crafting options that offer a greater advantage in the game.
The hunt for water
One of the most important and fundamental resources on the desert planet Arrakis, where the adventure takes place, is water. Anyone who walks around in the sun in daylight loses a lot of it and has to drink constantly or can alternatively consume fluids from plants.
Source: Funcom
But only to a very limited extent. Later in the game it is possible to wear so-called still suits, which collect the body water that would be lost through sweating or breathing and feed it back into the body.
In the game, this is represented by another bar next to the water requirement, which represents the supply of valuable water within the suit and can be drunk again.
One of the main ways to get water is by defeating enemies. Anyone who is familiar with Dune or has simply seen Villenueve's second film knows the procedure. Blood is pumped out and filtered to replenish your own water reserves.
In the game we also have to make the tools and the bags for transport ourselves and can choose to drink the unfiltered blood at the expense of our own life or filter it in our base and get clean liquid out.
Source: Funcom
Base construction
In principle, we can build these bases anywhere, but their size is also linked to how much land rights we own, which we can earn by belonging to one of the two starting factions: The Harkonnen or House Atreides.
You can find out more about the faction system and how it should be implemented in the game here Special around the political network within Dune: Awakenings and how you as a player are integrated there.
There we also talked about base building, which is typically modular for survival games. You can first build the entire building as a kind of hologram before you even put any resources into it. By the way, it doesn't matter who brings the required materials.
So one player can take over the entire initial construction as an architect and the rest can then only do the actual construction. The buildings can then be saved as a whole as a blueprint and thus built elsewhere much more quickly. This is practical if you want to have a base in the desert, i.e. the PvP area, without spending a lot of time planning.