Dune: Awakening has a comprehensive base-building policy that goes something like this:
- Build a base wherever you want.
That’s pretty much the entire policy.
There are restrictions, of course: build too far out on the sand and a sandworm will show up and eat a hunk of your base—with you in it, if you’re not careful. And you can’t build within a certain radius of an established location like a tradepost or faction stronghold. But that’s about it. Otherwise, you can build wherever you like.
And boy, players have embraced that and built everywhere. Arrakis is covered with bases, some small, some sprawling, as players spread out across the map. And even though most of Dune: Awakening takes place in PvE territory, players have started using this free-for-all base-building system to royally grief each other.
Some bases are just insensitively placed: players build across a gap between rocks that other players use to drive sandbikes and buggies through, for instance. It acts like a roadblock, making everyone go the long way around or even get out and jog for a bit, which sucks if you’re out doing some resource gathering or trying to bang out a few missions.
Other base placements are downright sinister. Players have begun building bases over pockets of resources, like the plants you can harvest water from. Nothing wrong with building near a resource node: it just makes good sense. But building on top of one, essentially meaning other players can’t use it at all? Pretty shifty. On the other hand, this is Arrakis where cutthroat behavior is the norm. All’s fair in the War of Assassins.
Base-building gets downright ruthless with one particular strategy I’ve seen reported a few times now. A player will craft an ornithopter—a tremendous undertaking considering all the resource collecting and refining that goes into it—and take it out for a spin. If they see a spice blow or some other opportunity to harvest resources, they land, hop out, and get to work.
That’s when another player quickly runs up, claims the land the ‘thopter is parked on, and quickly builds a tiny base around it. The pilot returns to discover their ship is now locked within someone else’s walls.
I should mention I’ve not actually seen video evidence of this happening, but I’ve heard it reported by a couple of different players already, including writer Harry Alston over at TheGamer. And to be clear: building a base around someone’s ornithopter doesn’t mean you now own their ornithopter, it just means the ‘thopter owner can no longer reach it. That’s about as griefy as grief can get: you’re not benefiting at all, you’re just making someone else miserable.
It’s devious because there’s no real recourse. You can’t destroy another player’s base to free your vehicle, you can’t dismantle it because it’s behind someone’s walls, and in a PvE zone you can’t even shoot other players just to make yourself feel better.
That means the onus falls upon all you pilots out there. Be careful where you land, because that land might belong to somebody else by the time you get back.