Are you ready for another two-and-a-half hours’ worth of Dune: Awakening previews and discussion? Then you’re set for the latest livestream from Funcom which covers several different topics such as base building, the Landsraad event, and the game’s overarching narrative.
The major piece of news relates to the weekly Landsraad: This covers an entire world, meaning multiple servers are contributing to the vote-earning mechanic that powers the entire thing. Earning votes is done by completing activities that can include crafting and delivering items or PvPing for control points in the Deep Desert. The devs do note here that participation in the Landsraad requires not only alliance with a faction but also membership in a guild.
When one faction wins the Landsraad, guild leaders on the winning side gain access to select from random game-changing decrees like access to unique vendors, reduced crafting costs, or rare ones like PvP deaths in the Deep Desert causing all items to drop. Voting power is determined by how much contribution guild members have provided, so encouraging players to band together is enfolded in Dune’s overall design. With all of this Landsraad talk, fans should note that the mechanic will not be part of the upcoming large-scale beta.
Other portions of the stream discuss several features including base building, the game’s overarching alt universe narrative, and the exchange (aka auction house), which also has postings from multiple servers in a world and will let players sell expected items as well as other things like base blueprints or maps.
Finally, the stream closes out with another Q&A session. Here are some of the more interesting answers provided:
- Faction chat is not a thing, but guild-level chat is. The devs also talk about area-based chat to help guilds in the same faction coordinate moves, though that comes with the cost of having someone listening in.
- There will be systems in place to prevent one faction from dominating the game over and over: One system was not discussed to try to prevent players from gaming it, but a post-launch update will also place a third faction to ensure the Landsraad remains balanced.
- In-game taxes must be paid every two weeks. Failure to pay won’t disengage base shields immediately, granting players another two weeks to pay up all past and current dues.
- Blueprints are one-time consumables, so players who sell blueprints will have to make and post them multiple times.
- Players can have a maximum of three bases. Incidentally, bases cannot be linked to one another, but the permissions system can effectively help players put together coordinated builds, after a fashion.
- Guilds do not have a minimum player requirement to be formed.
And to further intrigue you, Funcom dropped a building trailer this morning:
