Dune: Awakening | Ep. 30 – New Dune Update, Arrakis Has Changed. Hubert Has Not

We’re heading back to Arrakis to check out the latest Dune: Awakening update and discover what’s changed since our last visit. New adventures, new dangers, new possibilities… and Hubert, who presumably remains entirely unimpressed by all of it.

It had been a little while since our last proper visit because, technically, I had already completed almost everything the game currently has to offer. This time, though, we had what I believe is the final chapter of the Fremen story arc for this first chunk of the game. I had scheduled it across this week and next week. We finished the whole thing in one stream.

🏜️ About the Game

Dune: Awakening is an open-world survival and crafting game set on Arrakis, where you begin by simply trying to survive and gradually become caught up in the wider struggle surrounding the Imperium and the missing Fremen.

Along the way we have built our base, gathered resources, crafted ornithopters, dealt with sandworms and worked through the game’s story content. It can be played alone or with others, although most of this playthrough is now very much a solo affair.

🧭 Where We Are in the Journey

The last time we played Dune: Awakening, we finished the previous DLC expansion, which was mostly repeated arena battles. It was not exactly the strongest bit of extra content, so I was interested to see whether this new chapter would improve things.

Our journal still contains four completed side quests that refuse to disappear, along with Landsraad and dungeon-style objectives that eventually demand difficulty levels around thirty and beyond. Considering I can struggle with some of them at difficulty three and do not have a squad to grind them with, I think those may remain unfinished for a while.

⚠️ What Happens in This Episode

We began the evening by reacquainting ourselves with the base, because Dune: Awakening has not exactly been in regular rotation lately. Before setting off anywhere, I wanted to make sure the place still had power and that nothing important had quietly stopped working while we were away. One generator was still happily running the whole base with around 24 days of fuel left, the storage situation was as organised as ever — meaning I had to remember which chest contained the money — and Hubert could still be heard making his feelings known somewhere nearby.

The journal was less reassuring. Four old side missions that we have already completed are still sitting there and refusing to disappear, along with various Landsraad and overworld dungeon objectives that require working all the way up through the difficulty levels. Some of those eventually want difficulty thirty or beyond, while I can struggle with certain missions at around difficulty three. As I am essentially playing solo these days, without a squad to repeatedly grind those activities with, I think a few of those objectives may be staying in the journal for quite some time.

Fortunately, there was one genuinely new quest waiting for us, which appeared to be the beginning of the latest DLC and, potentially, the final chapter of this first Fremen story arc. The only problem was working out where it actually wanted us to go. I had received a call from an NPC before the stream telling me to meet him somewhere, but the journal was not particularly helpful about the location. My first assumption was Harko Village, largely because almost every quest in the game eventually seems to involve visiting the woman in the bar who insists on calling us “kitten.”

Once we reached the overworld map, however, the proper destination appeared. It was north of Arrakeen, in the same general area where we had finished the previous DLC. Because my private server unloads unused areas from memory to save resources, there was a little waiting around while the location loaded back in. Once it finally appeared, most of the visit amounted to a fairly lengthy cutscene and another encounter with Dune: Awakening’s NPC dialogue.

This remains the one RPG where I have almost no interest in working through every dialogue option. Unless the game locks us into a proper cutscene, the established method is to select the top response and trust that it will eventually point us towards something we can shoot, loot or fly to. In this case, it worked perfectly well and sent us towards the Deep Desert.

That turned out to be a much more productive trip. A new structure had appeared in one of the southern sections, conveniently close to the middle entrance we had chosen. We had brought the wrong flappy flappy for a proper Deep Desert expedition, and I had to remind myself of a few controls after being away from the game, but the enemies did not cause too much trouble. We pushed through the facility, dealt with the guards, opened whatever doors the game wanted opened and, naturally, checked the rooms for anything useful that could be borrowed on the way.

Parts of the underground area looked suspiciously familiar, as if somebody had reused a few existing tunnel sections, but it did the job. By the time we reached the end, the story had given us enough information to send us back to Harko Village — meaning my original guess about ending up in that bar was only slightly premature.

There, our familiar “kitten”-calling contact informed us that we needed 25 spice melange to bribe a pilot. This was not exactly a difficult requirement, because there were hundreds of spice sitting back at the base. It would simply have been more convenient if I had known about it before leaving. So we headed home, collected what we needed and used the opportunity to unload some of the random bits and pieces acquired in the Deep Desert before making the return journey.

After handing over the spice, we were told to meet the pilot at the spaceport near Arrakeen. I took that to mean the spaceport inside Arrakeen, so we wandered around the city for a while inspecting NPCs who looked sufficiently stationary and important to potentially trigger the next part of the mission. None of them did.

Eventually we discovered that the spaceport was actually a separate external location beside the city. Once we reached the correct one, the DLC finally revealed what it had been building towards. The game warned us that we were about to begin an extended story mission and would not be able to return to Hagga Basin for a while.

Then, for the first time in the playthrough, we went off-world.

The change was immediate. Instead of another endless stretch of sand, we arrived on Zanovar, flying down through the clouds towards a ruined, rain-soaked city. For the first few moments it had a definite Blade Runner feel to it, before the full extent of the destruction became visible. After so long on Arrakis, simply walking somewhere wet and green made the whole section feel remarkably different.

Of course, Dune: Awakening still found a way to make us lose hydration while standing in pouring rain. Apparently splashing through water does not count as drinking it.

The city itself was under surveillance, with ships moving overhead and search beams sweeping across the ground. Getting caught in one held us in place and brought enemies down on our position, much like the search ships we had encountered elsewhere in the game. The sensible approach would have been to carefully move between the beams.

Instead, I fired the wire from a decent height, launched myself across the area and discovered that we were high enough to pass straight through the search-beam hitbox. We landed safely on the far side and accidentally skipped a substantial section of the route. Sometimes exploration pays off. Sometimes the collision detection does the exploring for you.

As we pushed further into the ruined city, one object in the distance became increasingly suspicious: a lone, ominous-looking tree. It had the unmistakable appearance of somewhere a game would place a boss encounter, and sure enough, when we reached it, the masked fellow from the story was waiting for us.

For a few minutes the whole thing became Phantom of the Opera with knives.

The fight was nasty because one of his attacks could drop us almost instantly to one HP. There was not enough time between his lunges to apply even a basic bandage before he attacked again, so this finally became the moment to experiment with that mysterious spice ability bound to Z — the power that I have managed to almost completely ignore throughout hundreds of hours of Dune: Awakening.

Chat had spent part of the evening debating what Z actually did, and it turned out to be useful for recovering our health. Unfortunately, even that was not enough to solve the fight because the story apparently wanted us to lose. Once the defeat triggered the next sequence rather than sending us back to a checkpoint, it became clear that this particular death did not qualify for JD’s Death Loop Inc.

The next section certainly did.

We woke up imprisoned aboard a ship in orbit above Arrakis, still carrying all of our equipment and powers for reasons best left unquestioned. I walked out of the cell, was immediately spotted and discovered that the game expected us to complete the area using actual stealth.

This caused a slight philosophical disagreement.

The usual version of stealth on this channel is straightforward: if nobody is left alive to report seeing you, then technically you were never detected. The game wanted the other kind, where you crouch behind things, watch patrol routes and avoid attracting attention. Our glowing blue headgear probably was not helping.

What followed was the evening’s proper death loop. We crept through corridors, tried different routes, got spotted, died, respawned and tried again. Chat quickly embraced the situation, entertainjd brought out the full “JD’s Death Loop Inc.” routine, and sane_psycho_nl suggested that Avada Kedavra or Stupefy might be easier than whatever we were attempting.

Seven deaths later, we finally managed to get through.

Once the forced stealth was behind us, the mission became much more enjoyable again. We reached the next major sequence and awakened the sleeper in the most Dune way possible: by putting a blue tube up his nose. Before that process was complete, the story took us through a strange dreamlike section where we fought figures connected to our character’s past and uncovered more of the story surrounding who we had been.

After the sleeper awoke, the restriction preventing us from properly attacking one particular enemy was finally broken. We teamed up, dealt with the enemies rushing the area and moved into the escape sequence.

From there, things settled into classic video game logic. We ran down a corridor, entered a larger room, killed everyone required to open the next door and repeated the process several times. The ship was supposedly in serious trouble, but that did not stop me checking the occasional side room and container for anything worth taking with us. If a game places loot beside an escape route, it cannot reasonably expect me to ignore it.

Somewhere during all of this, I finally noticed that there was a countdown clock on the screen. Whether it had been there for ages or had only appeared during the final section, I could not say. Up until that point we had been wandering through the exploding ship with considerably less urgency than the situation apparently required.

The final guard was much more suited to our normal approach than the stealth section had been. With the trusty turret deployed, plenty of shooting and the occasional bit of running around in circles, we wore him down. Even the fire covering parts of the floor decided not to hurt us, which I assume was a small glitch rather than the sudden discovery of fireproof boots.

The boss eventually went down, an achievement popped and we reached the escape pod. That sent us crashing back towards the surface, where we were greeted by a rather disgruntled Fremen who had a few things to say about everything that had just happened.

And then the words appeared: End of Book One: Awakening.

That was the surprising part. I had expected this DLC to occupy this stream and probably the next one as well, but we had finished the entire thing in a single evening. The credits rolled — an actual proper ending this time rather than the story simply stopping — and we eventually made our way back to the base.

Once home, we parked the ornithopter, checked through the new items we had picked up and opened the journal to see whether another mission had appeared.

Nothing.

That really was the whole expansion.

It was certainly shorter than I had expected, but I enjoyed it considerably more than the previous DLC with its repeated arena battles. Going off-world gave the game a welcome change of scenery, the story mission had some genuinely different ideas in it, and despite the seven-death stealth excursion, it felt much closer to the sort of additional content I had hoped Dune: Awakening would receive.

For now, though, we have once again reached the end of what the game has available for me. There are resources I could gather and extremely high-difficulty dungeon objectives I could attempt, but without a regular squad there is not much reason to grind them solo. Whether that means another trip to Arrakis next week or a different game taking the slot remains to be seen.

Either way, Book One is complete, the flappy flappy is safely parked, and Hubert is presumably still somewhere nearby being Hubert.

🎬 Watch the Episode

You can see the complete run through the new DLC — from the Deep Desert and our first trip off-world to seven stealth deaths and the end of Book One — in the full episode:

Watch Dune: Awakening Ep. 30 on YouTube

You can also follow the full playthrough through the Dune: Awakening Playlist and find more videos over on Dr Ravenholm on YouTube. If you enjoy the episode, please leave a like, let me know what you thought in the comments and subscribe for more.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The seven-death stealth sections, unexpected glitches and moments where chat remembers what my own controls do all happen live. You can join us on Twitch or YouTube and be there when the next plan inevitably changes halfway through.

This one finished with us raiding into AngryJoeShow, but every stream has its own collection of conversations, distractions and community moments along the way.

📡 Community & Links

If you want to stay around after the ornithopter has been parked, there are plenty of other places to keep in touch, find new content and see what is coming next.

Live — Come and join the next stream as it happens:
Twitch | YouTube

Community — Keep the conversation going between streams:
Discord

Socials — Follow the various signals escaping from the base:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X

Music — There is more than sand and spice coming through the speakers:
Spotify | Apple Music

Support — If you would like to help keep everything running:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs

More — Explore the other projects beyond the stream:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog

🛰️ Book One Complete, Hubert Unmoved

For now, that appears to be the end of this part of Dune: Awakening. Whether we return next week or bring another game into the schedule instead will depend on what there is left to do, because beyond resource gathering and those high-difficulty group activities, I have once again reached the end of the available content.

At least Book One is finished, the flappy flappy is parked safely back at base, and after everything that happened off-world, Hubert is presumably still exactly where we left him.

— Dr Ravenholm