Evacuate your Deep Desert tents, Dune: Awakening’s latest patch enacts a timer tweak aimed at eliminating cheeky PvP zone border camping. It’s also added some extra rewards to the Landsraad and switched up how goodies are distributed to PvE players.
This patch comes as Funcom continue to respond to player feedback about the endgame loop, having already moved to split the Deep Desert between PvP and PvE in order to placate folks who aren’t a fan of the latter. Griefing’s also been a big topic of debate, with ornithopters proving just as deadly as those big worms.
While Dune: Awaking patch 1.1.15.0 isn’t massive, it’s delivered some changes that’re well worth the attention of those who’ve been sinking as many hours into the game as there are grains of sand on Arrakis.
First of all, the good news. Those who’ve been craving Landsraad rewards that don’t depend on you getting in uber-quick and being the first to complete a task after it goes live can breathe a sigh of relief. You’ll now get a “personal contribution” reward from turning in kills or deliveries on completed tasks, with the winning faction and how many guild votes were awarded staying set in stone.
Beyond that, the patch’s other biggest talking point is that the delay timer you’re hit with when leaving a PvP security zone has been “increased from five to 30 seconds to prevent border camping and allow PvP players to protect their area.” Folks seem pretty split at first glance as to whether this change’ll be good or bad for would-be griefers, so we’ll just have to see how it plays out in practice.
There are also a number of tweaks to crafting component, resource, and unique loot drops/spawns in the Deep Desert. “Tier 6 resources can now be collected across wider areas in the PvE part of the Deep Desert” is the headliner, and Funcom’s added “an element of randomization to the respawn timer of unique loot containers” in the DD.
Rounding out the most noteworthy stuff to my eye, you can listen out for “a new audio alert” signaling PvP zone changes, and they claim they’ve fixed an exploit that somehow let you build vehicles with items from another player’s inventory.
Funcom have also “reduced the cases where the sandworm can push vehicles under terrain”, which is good news for those keen to avoid a gitchy demise. Or maybe you liked having your Sandbike nudged into the terrifying void under the map. To each their own.
