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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99View PC Gaming Show Summer Game Fest Dune: Awakening Elden Ring: Nightreign Recommended reading Dune Awakening base building guide: Best locations and design tips 'Don't leave trash on Arrakis'—Dune: Awakening creative director implores players to 'clean up your old bases' Survival & Crafting I hope Dune: Awakening's base-building get weirder and wilder than what we saw in the beta, because it's going up against decades of killer Dune artwork Here's what happens to your base in Dune: Awakening if you take a long break from Arrakis Survival & Crafting Dune: Awakening's player guilds will be able to pass some pretty OP server-wide laws—including one that means you'll lose everything when defeated in deep desert PvP I just discovered in Dune: Awakening that the only thing worse than seeing a sandworm coming right at you is being stuck in quicksand and seeing a sandworm coming right at you Survival & Crafting Getting around in Dune: Awakening is a blast thanks to grappling hooks, suspensors, and the ability to climb literally anything Dune: Awakening Dune: Awakening players have found a devious way to grief each other outside of PvP zones Christopher Livingston 12 June 2025 A strategically placed base can ruin anyone's day. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Funcom) 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. Related Articles Dune Awakening base building guide: Best locations and design tips 'Don't leave trash on Arrakis'—Dune: Awakening creative director implores players to 'clean up your old bases' I hope Dune: Awakening's base-building get weirder and wilder than what we saw in the beta, because it's going up against decades of killer Dune artwork 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. (Image credit: Funcom) 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. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. 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. (Image credit: Funcom) 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. Dune: Awakening guide: All our tips and tricks Dune: Awakening Trial of Aql locations: Spicy Dune: Awakening trainer locations: Basic and advanced mentors Dune: Awakening sandbike: Get your first ride Dune: Awakening fast travel: Arrakis taxis Christopher Livingston Social Links Navigation Senior Editor Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Dune Awakening base building guide: Best locations and design tips 'Don't leave trash on Arrakis'—Dune: Awakening creative director implores players to 'clean up your old bases' I hope Dune: Awakening's base-building get weirder and wilder than what we saw in the beta, because it's going up against decades of killer Dune artwork Here's what happens to your base in Dune: Awakening if you take a long break from Arrakis Dune: Awakening's player guilds will be able to pass some pretty OP server-wide laws—including one that means you'll lose everything when defeated in deep desert PvP I just discovered in Dune: Awakening that the only thing worse than seeing a sandworm coming right at you is being stuck in quicksand and seeing a sandworm coming right at you Latest in MMO Dune: Awakening Eighth Trial of Aql puzzle solutions You can manipulate time itself in this ambitious MMORPG with soulslike combat Dune: Awakening falls just shy of Steam's top 100 as it nets 142,000 players on its first proper launch day Dune: Awakening's dungeons are so atrocious that I'd rather get slowly digested by a sandworm than fight through another one Anonymous employee accuses RuneScape of kowtowing to Trump as it puts the kibosh on new Pride events: 'The content… is now controversial in a way it didn't used to be' Where to find carbon ore in Dune: Awakening Latest in News FromSoftware left hints for Elden Ring Nightreign's enhanced bosses update in the files and modders have already dug them up Konami announces Metal Gear Delta will include a new multiplayer mode, but don't expect Metal Gear Online 4 because 'the landscape of multiplayer games has changed a lot' 'I don't actually play horror games': Phasmophobia's lead developer had no intention of making a horror game but still kicked off a whole new genre Halo Infinite says 'screw it' and just becomes Halo 3 for a month—complete with grifball Trump's AI czar echoes Jen-Hsun, says China's AI models are 'maybe three to six months' behind the US—while also arguing for ever fewer AI regulations in the US MSI's latest BIOS update hints at new AMD CPUs and I'm hoping it's Strix Point APUs coming to desktop HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested Nintendo Switch 2 review: the latest gaming handheld, from a PC Gamer's perspective The Alters review AndaSeat Novis gaming chair review 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Wireless review Kinesis mWave keyboard review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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