Life on Arrakis continues apace.

Yesterday I spent a good amount of time dicking around in an effort to get myself out of my self-imposed slump. While I was enjoying the mechanics of Dune: Awakening, as with all survivalbox games I found myself in that liminal space of having fun, but also being incredibly anxious because I couldn’t seem to get enough water to afford me the freedom to move around.

My current base of operations is located at the nexus of several pathways through outcroppings in the WVG, and these in turn are is surrounded by three “intel sites”. These sites have more enemies than a standard camp and offer more loot, but the first time through, a pack of 5 intel can be had as a pick-up item. I hadn’t yet tackled these sites in any way, but I needed the blood, so I made the rounds to all three.

The problem is that there are a lot of enemies and I am horrible with spatial awareness when the Spice hits the fan. The lag in switching between ranged and melee doesn’t help either so I died once and came perilously close to a repeat performance just a bit later. At one point, another player showed up to “help out” but then started shooting at me when I got close to a body that I had killed. I’m unsure if I was taking damage, though, as I was under the impression that Hagga Basin was PvE except in some clearly identifiable places (such as crashed ships).

I got enough blood to fill not just my purifier, but also my special literjon (not represented above, but pretty close). I also put a stillsuit on — I had been favoring armor for the protection, and that was a massive contributor to my water woes — and also crafted a cistern to slowly collect water at my base, so with enough water to stay live, I decided to head out and see what I had been missing.

Arrakeen

I headed down into Basin South and took an ornithopter to Arrakeen, the Atreides home base. This was a fortuitous trip because apparently, one week in and with the first Landsraad cycle complete, I owed taxes on my house which I could pay while in town. This mechanic is going to be a real pain in the ass, because I don’t want my house repossessed because I haven’t logged in that cycle. We’ll see how it goes.

There’s a lot going on in Arrakeen, but my main reason for going was to find the Bene Gesserit trainer who I assumed would be hanging around Arrakeen and Harko Village, like we’d expect from any other MMO. I have a few skills that require me to talk to an NPC to get advanced lessons, but once I’d paid the 2500 solari to get to Arrakeen, I learned that the Bene Gesserit trainers are out at the Shield Wall, which is not an area my progression missions have sent me to at this time.

Instead, I headed back to Basin South and took the mission to unlock Planetologist.

I hate Lab 2

I had to track down Derek Chinara, Planetologist, who was looking for info that was somewhere inside a dungeon called Lab 2. I had been to Lab 2 twice already, once just because, and the second time because of another mission which sent me there. More fool me for not having gathered my side quests to knock them all out at once; back to Lab 2 I went.

Lab 2 isn’t terrible. There are a good number of NPCs in there and since it’s an open dungeon, other players can appear as well. Once again, I got shot at by another player, but still not sure if it was doing damage or not; I hurried on and wasn’t bothered again.

I had to look this one up because while I’d been in the lab twice before, I couldn’t find the minimic film that Dr. Derek was looking for this time. Turns out it’s in a secret location, and that location almost killed me. On the way out, though, I made sure to hit up all of the shielded rooms to collect as much loot as I could carry, and that maxed out my inventory.

That was about all I got up to yesterday, and I ended the session by starting some home renovations which I completed of a sort. I’m not happy with them, though, because I had one idea in my head, but what I ended up with was nothing like that.