Dune: Awakening’s mid- and endgame content has now been revealed, and boy, oh boy, is it a lot more than I ever expected. We’ve known about the Deep Desert for a while – that large, open PvP area accessed at the end of the leveling progression – but the Funcom developer livestream on May 27 explored a lot more than sand dunes and Ornithopters. Where do we even start? Um. With the worms, of course. Get a load of this big one.
This is about four or five times larger than any worm you encounter in the Hagga Basin and other starting zones. That’s a proper Shai-Halud. It’s so big that I think pretty much anything caught in the middle of its mouth is guaranteed worm food. The sheer scale of it has me excited for these massive PvP events, with up to 300 players on a single Deep Desert server, connected to potentially over 15+ individual Hagga Basin servers. But of course, there’s a lot more to the endgame than just giant worms and PvP.
Excuse Me, Did You Say Smuggling? Wait, You Can Be A Cartographer In This Game?
At one point during the developer livestream, there’s a very brief mention of “smuggling.” Now you have my attention. The idea that perhaps you need to transport some Spice secretly through trade networks or smuggle other illicit substances via landcars and Ornithopters sounds like such a fun way to play the game. Rather than be involved in large-scale PvP (which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea), you can instead dedicate your time to shifting illegal cargo. I’m sold.
If smuggling isn’t your bag, the Deep Desert is a massive 81 zones. The size of a zone is already enormous, and when you stitch 81 of them together…it starts to get a little silly. These zones reset each week, and completely shift and change. If you want to find the new Spice veins, you’ll need to find them yourself…or pay a cartographer (a player, not an NPC) to go and find one for you. Maps will be currency. If your guild finds where the Spice is first, you’ll have a better chance of pulling off a big harvest. This is such awesome detail and a great concept for emergent gameplay. It’s also indicative that maybe there are multiple ways to play Dune Awakening in the endgame, rather than just PvP.
Contractual Busywork In The Dune Universe
There’s also a big focus on House contracts. These are objectives you complete for your faction to earn the trust of the various houses. Convince enough Houses that you’re the right faction for them, and your faction will gain control of the Landsraad and gain access to a number of decrees that will shape how the world plays out over the next weekly wipe, whether that be full-loot PvP (your loot drops when you die), or your faction gets crafting bonuses.
These contracts are not just PvP contracts. While we haven’t seen all that’s on offer, there are plenty that involve killing AI enemies, collecting resources, and manufacturing vehicles and weapons. All of these added together seemingly create a wealth of activities to do if you prefer mining to shooting, or gathering over worm-herding. The scale of some of the factories in the livestream convinced me that Dune Awakening understands its audience: people like to craft, people like to build, and people like to automate. Especially if they’re given a common goal. Dominance of Arrakis.
I love guild politics in multiplayer games. You don’t get to experience it often because games this big with this much ambition really don’t come around too often. There was even this little hint that player names, guilds, factions, etc., won’t show up during certain Deep Desert events. You can spy on enemy guilds. I love it! If Dune Awakening does a good job of fusing player agency with huge consequences on how the next week of gameplay is going to progress, I can see people getting heavily invested in the game. Which is what any developer wants, obviously.
The ongoing success of Dune Awakening very much relies on the potency of its endgame. Plenty will enjoy climbing the survival-crafting pyramid, but it’s those who stick around and duke it out for control of the Landsraad that will keep the game alive for years to come. While Dune Awakening seems to have dropped most of its “MMO” spiel from its marketing, the endgame is definitely shaping up to be massively multiplayer in the best way.
Dune: Awakening
- Released
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June 10, 2025
- Developer(s)
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Funcom
- Publisher(s)
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Funcom
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
