This is a survival game.

To overcome it and archieve the exalted status of Always Drinker, you need to get into a certain mindset.

A) Always have water. Never be thirsty.
B) Depreciation is real. All things in the game are means to archive other things.
If you loose it- who cares? Build new things.
C) Always be realistic about your situation and environment.

To faciliate that:

-solve your basic (hagga basin) economy right from the start of the game. Starting character class / base location etc. is completely irrelevant if you understand the basics fully.
-once you did that, you have basically "UNLIMITED" resources (below t6 that is, thought.) Once set up, you can farm with high efficiency and replace lost stuff within minutes. More to that later.
-if you have unlimited resources, the DD is piece of cake. I lost 4 assault choppers and 3 buggys with t5 cutters in a single week and didn´t care one bit (as it was worth it- they had already "paid for themselves"). More to that later as well.

There is a lot here, so lets break it down first.

You can actually use the in-game logic to make things more approachable and you should already get into the mindset to see things as seperate systems that need to be approached differently, but all need to be "solved" correctly if you want to fit the pieces together.

Those systems are:
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Resources (Ores / Stones / Cristals - stuff that needs refinement before use)

Spare Parts / Components (they are needed to craft but don´t need refinement)

Inventory Items (I like to refer to this as "wardrobe" items and always keep them seperate.
Weapons, Devices, Armor- everything your character can equip or use.)

Water (Items and Buildings)

Vehicles (Fuel; Vehicle Parts; Vehicle constructors; actual vehicles are seperate from this. this is inventory items dedicated to service and build vehicles)

Base /Misc / Decoration (unrelated items / buildings - basically "vanity" as its not required)

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From the get-go, get into the habit of seperating these things into seperate chests.

You will thank me later.

I repeat: DO NOT MIX STUFF IN CHESTS. Small chests cost nothing. Build a few, group them, keep your mind (and base) organised. We had this in our guild. You will loose tens of hours to bad management just scouring chests for the one item you put into the one chest but can´t remember where.

In the mid-game, begin seperating by putting each "topic" into a seperate room or floor. If you have the space and / or manpower, making a second "garage" base dedicated to farm alu / dura is advised. You won´t regret it.

In the late game, you "home base" must be working properly and act as a sort of "menu" to access all desired functions quickly. Again, loose tens of hours of gameplay to downtime if you disregard this. You will start making expendable bases (DD enforces this) so don´t gimp around with a badly organised home base. Solve hagga basin economy before even attempting to DD (with a few little exceptions. We will talk over those later thought).

If you are working with a guild, enforce that the system is upheld. Name a "base keeper" who is responsible for keeping orderly chests and refueling the power grids, and have him notify others (via discord if must) if things are not running as expected.

Even if joining a guild, it should be expected that everyone retains at least one (if small) base that is serving as their "expanded inventory". Do not leave stuff in shared based that you are dependent on / plan to use for progression. From my findings, repairing can for example accidently drain resources and (that may be a bug) the repair station seems to ignore circuits, so there is the chance for draining others resources.
As a guild leader, communicate to new recruits that guild bases are considered "shared" and any stuff left in there is free-to-use for anyone, even if that causes it to get spent/destroyed/lost.
Do not get into this sort of drama with your guild.

Environmental hazards:
-almost all debuffs can be cleansed by a simple t1 healkit.
-dashing removes almost all cc effects.
-falling to death is also almost irrelevant, as you can just revive.
-this is a never thirsty guide. just drink through heat strokes while farming. I have found no averse effect from heat stroke outside combat. Just drink full over and over again, ignore the red icon.
-if you can´t help getting downed, try using any nearby terrain as cover and revive yourself. The enemies goof off surprisingly often, not finishing you.
-abuse teamwork / party play if possible. Players can shed aggro by hovering. Antigrav grenade isn´t working on teammates, so its free cc.
-a t4 radiation suit is already sufficient to clear irradiated zones. You just need to giddy up. Reset radiation by just leaving the area and waiting. It clears out rather quickly.

First things first. Sorry for the spoilers.

The game forces you to abandon your first base after some quest chains (and that is a good thing).

So until you have advanced to that point, just play, learn the game, enjoy yourself, and quest. Explore the entire starting zone. Learn new class abilities and classes. Learn to fight and drive etc.

Farm blood, its really the only option early. If you run into dew fields at dawn, fine. Harvest them. But don´t rely on it. Blood farming is easy and necessary. You will also want to fight to learn the game, so grab a blood drinking knife and extractor. Carry a few blood bags but don´t clog your inventory.

Don´t get attached to your first base. Build the basics and be small and efficient. You have all the time to build huge palaces later. Just learn the game and don´t stress out.

Once you reach the quest, you should already have 1-2 bikes. Load your stuff into storage and move out. Or just abandon your stuff- it doesnt really matter. Nothing you own at this point is valuable.

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Apart from that, if you want to "Spike / Tryhard" the game, here is my advice:

a) select any character class you like EXCEPT TROOPER or PLANETOLOGIST, as those can be obtained easily in the starting area.
b) view vehicle and farm progression as priority, always (you can´t build stuff if you cant pick up resources), quests and stuff are second to that. You can´t quest if you can´t defeat the quest enemies or take ages to reach the desired areas and then get killed there.
c) learn shigawire claw / knee charge(or weird step) / bindu sprint as standard layout. It allows to traverse terrain very efficiently and almost regardless of equipment in your hands.
d) get your hands on "emperors wings" blueprints ASAP. This thing in combination with Shigawire allows you to traverse vertically effortlessly. Remeber that Shigawire / antigrav grenade can also save you from falling damage (or just die and revive hehe).
e) begin with sorting stuff into topics (as detailed earlier in the guide), both from architectural and storage standpoints. Save time by cutting unneccessary downtime.
f) You will die, you will get eaten by the worm. Don´t carry everything all the time. Make "equipment sets" for different purpose including a complete throwaway item set for dangerous farms (like Flour Sand, hah!) Only carry stuff you must, but don´t loose stuff unneccesarily.
g) Remember you can craft basic items from fibers / scrap metal. If you "forgot" something (your cutter when entering shipwrecks etc.), check the build menu if you can build it to save yourself from returning to base for items you could just replace by finding a scrap metal nearby.
h) Get in the habit of always collecting plant fibers whenever you can (and don´t need inventory space for the mission / farm you are currently on). You will burn them and the resource always stays relevant.
i) this is opinional, but don´t try to do everything at once. If you can fine. But stay focused on things at hand and don´t get distracted. Set goals when leaving the base like "I must farm iron now" or "I need intel so I will be fighting enemies in bases and maybe even die"
h) If you can (and don´t own high-end pc with 3 screens) use a cheap tablet / cellphone to view auxiliary guides (like method, planetologist etc.). Browse in downtimes (flying, driving, load screens) beforehand to have the maps / guides ready when you reach your destination.

Once you have left the starting area, time to find a home that will probably last you for the rest of playtime on that server.

My suggestions for base locations:

-Near "the Anvil" outpost. Upside: Very good access to t1-3 resources. Vendor / outpost just nearby. Easy map exit by just flying east. Downsides: Far from aluminium / t5/ dura, maybe crowded already.

-Near "the Pallas" wreck. Upside: Very central. Easy access to all t1-t4 resources. Downsides: kinda wonky area to drive in, long sand traversals required, no npc vendor nearby, central map position is annoying lategame as you have to reach the map edge.

I´m basing this on my opinion about my later suggestions how to farm water, focussing your economy on steel products.

You can choose any location you like if you disagree, or don´t care about extended travel times.

General base advice:

example early base: (one level only)
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water room / wardrobe room / resource store
fabrication room / sub-fief / generator room
vehicle garage / drop-off port / pentashield exit ramp
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late game example base: (vertical view)


[roof: has windtraps / water traps]
[air vehicle hangar. pentashield roof or access. contains vehicle fabricators fuel / spare part chests.]
[fabrication level. contains fabricators.]
[refinement level. contains ore / chemical refineries.]
[water level. contains blood / water related items in chests. contains water tanks.]
__________[ basement: advance sub-fied, resource store] ________[Garage / port]

side facts:
-dismantling walls refunds only 1/2 of the resources. Dismantling buildings will refund fully.
-have sub-fied in a seperate room with doors on ground level. Accidentally removing the ground beneath the console will delete it and remove any expansions you have bought.
-buying expansions ("claim stakes") will not only allow you to build larger, but also raise the amount of buildings you can have per category.
-there are category limits, but they are not very hard early. use them! fill up your chests / water tanks with low tier variants to just have used the capacity until you can upgrade.
-depending on the situation, you may need several refineries of each type to cut production downtimes (this becomes especially important on reaching aluminium, as it takes forever to process). Dismantle and upgrade as desired.
-buildings can be turned off without dismantling them to cycle power / solve power issues when you overbuilt.
-bases are means to produce, thus require care and attention. Remember you must game time towards that aim. Its a survival game after all. Progress comes in game loop steps and is paid for in time and effort. Bases unattended will be lost after not playing for a few weeks, so plan accordingly. If you can´t play, stash in the bank. A single flyer can also be saved by bringing it along to cities.

Congratulations. You have established a home base that will last you for a while.

If you encounter hardships by now:
-Review the basic systems. The game expects you to be able to cope with consumables, pay costs and demands on spending resources continually now. Have the required stuff in your inventory and use it. Farm it if you don´t.
-Remember you can build 3 bases total- but probably haven´t (and shouldn´t). That leaves you with the possibility to build a throwaway base whenever. Granite and scrap metal are everywhere, so don´t be shy to establish a garage in areas you are currently frequenting to provide required consumables (fuel especially as that can´t be crafted from inventory).
-Abuse crowd control: Antigrav grenade, Explosive Grenade and Collapse Grenade are excellent tools that trivialise pve encounters. Learn Trooper class if you struggle with fighting large amounts of enemies (like in research stations).
-If you struggle with combat generally, train vs. low nps with t1 weapons until you master basic moves like Parry or luring enemies around corners to get in shots without return fire.

Going forwards:

-research cutters first when unlocking their tier and build them asap.
-research buggy cutter and t3 buggy ASAP
-skip vanity vehicle upgrades like t3 bikes. Your goal is to reach t4 and be able to build a flyer.
-the buggy is now your main centerpiece. Place a booster bike into vehicle gun for excursion. Plan trips to use the large inventory space you now have access to. Don´t return with empty haul.
-"spider buggy": The terrain is not as it seems. Many terrain pieces can just be driven over or even somewhat be "climbed" by expert drivers. Learn to do that. There is no falling or scrape damage on vehicles, just tear from usage.
-advanced vehicle usage: antigrav grenade lets you (sometimes) free vehicles stuck in terrain. Always carry a vehicle repair torch. Disassemble if a vehicle got stuck entirely (even if you drop/loose cargo). Bumping into vehicles with another vehicle can sometimes unstuck it.
-solve water adequate for your tier. Water is progression. Farm blood. Gather dew only when opportune.
-farm intel whenever possible. There is a lot driving around, so when you are next to a base, just sneak in quickly and grab the intel. It does not use up inventory space and can´t be lost once you learned the intel.
- I don´t recommend to do questing at this point except for the "trials" questline, but keep planetologist up to date. skill "cutter yield" that increases both manual and vehicle farms.
-Do not fly to the cities unless you have several quests to turn in there. It costs a lot of solari and farming solari at this point is wasteful and unnecessary, as you can´t even usefully spend them yet.

Establishing farms:

t1-3 resources can be completely farmed in Vermillius Gap. There is little incentive to return to the starting area except for farming vehicle parts in the research station if you have farmed the vermillius gap stations already.

You need to farm for copper, iron and flour sand at this point. Other resources as desired and required.
Whenever possible, farm with buggy. It may appear tedious at first to drive into the rift or remote areas, but its almost always worth it. The buggy has a very large inventory and can hold lots of volume.

Be aware that this is a grindy game. You need to invest the game time. If you can´t binge, its even more important to run things efficiently if you want to grind up into the endgame at this point. Do expect 50+ hrs AT least to reach DD.

This part of the guide is aimed towards players who have unlocked steel items in their progression. If you haven´t, go back to farming intel (or levels) until you have.

The key item now is the Windtrap, that allows us to gain water with little effort. You will encounter a significant increase in water demand when reaching t4, so we need to prepare for that. Windtraps provide few yield on their own, so massing them is the only answer.

What this means: With windtraps, you can burn steel/fibers for water while you do other things or even while offline. This is the core of this guide.

By now, you should aim to aquire:

-3 improved blood purifiers, serving as or "I am online" boost to water while playing.

-10+ windtraps running permanently as a passive base income.

-Scale water tanks to 200 000ml or more to prevent overflowing too much water when offline. Manage filters to not spill over. Enhance tanks to 500 000 ml eventually as well.

To prepare:

-farm ironwork areas and base areas (middle of map has a giant bases that drop this stuff) for machine parts and calibrated servoks. You need a ton of this to build up.

-side resources will also begin to have relevance. Farm them. For example, Erithrite Cristal for Cobalt Paste with a buggy. Don´t bother with the side areas, just drive the mines and pick up veins on hand.

-use the occasion to farm xp / blood / loot on enemies. Blood draining costs little resources. If you already unlocked deathstills, farm corpses with buggy.

-scale your water economy by first maxing out unused storage slots with copper tanks, then gradually replace them for steel tanks. Cisterns exceeding the steel tank are unneccessary at this point in the games development, except as vanity

-Upgrade your power plants to wind turbines to eventually get rid of fuel based power plants. Remember they can accidently (or malevolently by other players) be shut off by placing something over them. This can also happen while expanding the base vertically. Max out vertical base size to prevent others griefing your buildings entirely.

Once you got it running:

-you now have basically infinite water. Refill your windtraps with filters before going offline to farm passively.

-get medium ore refineries and cutters able to cut t4 resources.

-farm more side materials in areas you can now easily clear with a complete steel set of armor and weapons. Learned skills and character class is irrelevant here. You can clear these enemies if your gameplay is correct and you have steel tier items and weapons.

-You can now go into aluminium areas and grab some. Research and build a t4 vehicle cutter. You don´t need the t4 buggy. You can put the upgraded cutters on the iron buggy as well.

-If you havent yet, grab a booster bike and complete the "trials" questline to aquire death stills.

This section of the guide is aimed towards players who have unlocked t4 / aluminium research. If you haven´t, return to previous sections.

The goal now is to aquire a flying vehicle, the scout ornithopter.

If you followed the guide, you now have a base that is scaled well enough to keep up with t4 resource grinding; you have run farms across the map providing a minimum of side resources in stock to build more advanced buildings and items; your base cisterns can hold 200 000 ml of water or more; you have a steel tier set of heavy armor, weapons and consumable items suitable for exploration of the high end areas of hagga basin.

Your goals are now:

-Farm as much aluminium as possible. It will also be required for making duraluminium later.

-Farm Mysa Taril and Sentinel City. This is non-optional. The parts we need are only there.

-Keep base economy running by occasionally going back to lower farms. Remember, we are burning steel for water. Do not build filters from aluminium yet; that defies the purpose. We want to stack up our reserves of aluminium, and burn now worthless t3 resources to sustain our production.

A few more hours in, you are now able to build scout ornithopers. Reorganise vehicles and delete bikes you have except one booster bike. Select bike or scout to put in storage gun before trips. You still need to buggy farm. Avoid the scout storage except for a few missions to begin aquiring rare resources or blueprints.

This section of the guide assumes you have free access to scout ornithopters, can replace them if one gets eaten / destroyed, and your base economy is keeping up with consumable demands like welding wire, healkits, ammunition, water, fuel, and repairs.

With the ability gained to access anything in the game, you can start exploring the remote parts of the hagga basin, finish most quests available in the game, and even take a few peeks into the Deep Desert.

Going forward, the game now requires additional resources to aquire before being able to build advanced stuff. You are forced to satisfy the water demands for producing it, so we are still burning steel for water passively.

Buggy farming will still make up the majority of resource farming.

Keep scout farming as an option but do not get too used to doing it. Scout farming is bad and wasteful. Efficient farming is either buggy farming or assault ornithopter farming. Use a booster scout, it spares you a lot of frustration.

You are in a transitional phase now, that doesn´t require special activities, just playtime. You will want to level up your character with quests and grab intel. Farm stuff and build some vanity items.

Level up your character by questing. Join a faction and complete their questline.

The Deep Desert awaits, and its a merciless place filled with griefers and trolls.

You will be able to aquire duraluminium tier now. Just play on until you have.

This section of the guide is aimed at players having unlocked the duraluminium tier.

Our goals still remain. We have 4 seperate sets of challenges, to set ourselves up to DD content- all of them include heavy farming and dealing with economic demands.

a) we need t5 or better weapons to compete with enemies there. Depending on your ingame skills, a t4 armor is technically good to clear anything, by just preventing us from oneshots, but t5 armor makes it a lot easier.

b) we now need advanced resources (Spice, Jasmium cristals and many more) who are more difficult to aquire.

c) To cope with the deep desert, we need a garage base there, that has at least two windtraps to generate drinking water, as the deep desert does not provide any water except blood. There is almost no lootable fuel either. Failing this is horrible, as it forces us back into Hagga continually, taxing much more game time than it would be to just have placed a few (by now expandable) buildings.

d) our main vessels need to be assault ornithopters, as deep desert involves a lot of transportation of heavy materials.

To facialite that, we need to scale or economy even more.

-Farming a lot is inevitable.

-Farm the new resources (Jasmium, Spice and advanced components). This may even involve going into DD already. Keep out of PVP for now unless you are prepared and willing to replace vehicles. The recent changes allow us to safely aquire enough to start or t6 economy.

-Upgrade to 15 windtraps to keep up with the increasing water demands.

-Incorporate death stills into your water economy. If you haven´t finished the trials, do the quests.

-Upgrade power to satisfy power demands as well, now using the directional wind turbines who generate a lot of power. Spice generators are not worth it yet.

-Continue to farm water by bloodsooking and dew reaping should it be necessary or opportune to move your progression forward.

-Build medium chemical and small spice refinery. Now you have access to potentially all resources in the game!

This is an economy guide, so I won´t advise on what to do in the deep desert or what are your aims there. With the advise and formulas I provided for base-building, you should by now be able to decide what are your aims for the deep desert.

Instead, I will focus on how to farm the dd efficiently and sustain bases there each week.

Yeah, that is the catch. Bases in DD get wiped every 7 days. That forces us to run throwaway bases there, vacate larger bases before the reset, or be taxed with heavy downtime for travelling back and forth, if we do not want to build there.

-The upside is halved build costs. Use that to temporarily place t6 factories, until you can afford them at home.

-scout PVP areas if you want to farm there. A booster scout is almost impossible to catch. You can be ambushed though.

-If you are afraid of pvp, come during down times (early morning after server reset, 3am etc). You will almost never encounter anyone on that times.

-since the recent changes, building a garage and buggy farming in the A row is highly lucrative and perfectly safe now.

-When the week is over, evacuate yields and dismantle costly facilities. Leave behind trash resources like plastone and below. Do recover spare parts like machinery and servoks that can´t be buggy farmed.

-Dismantle vehicles to work in conjuntion with flyers:
You can fly a carrier and assemble a buggy from inventory in dd. You can´t return it though. The yield must be flown back using assault choppers. Farming with vehicles is highly lucrative. Same for the sand crawler. I don´t advise sand crawling thought atm, unless you are in a larger guild.

Either way, having a robust home / hagga economy and constant passive water economy allows you to easily replace anything, have many t5 vehicles, and eventually gear to t5.5 weapons and armor. With that, its totally possible (if still difficult) to clear t6 research stations, do pvp, or participate in the Landsraad.

You can now get into vanity projects. Build a large spice refinery. Clear all stations and grab powerful t6 weapons. Grief others to your hearts content in the PVP area. Build the last (atm rather unneccessary) vehicles like the carrier or spice crawler.

Use the bank in cities to store dismantled vehicles and t6 resources, for example if taking an extended break (or until new content is released). Vacated bases will be destroyed including everything inside over time, so plan accordingly.

Congratulations. You have basically completed Dune: Awakening as far as content is available as of August 2025.