Dune Awakening Deep Desert Guide: How to Get There

To get to the Deep Desert in Dune Awakening, finish the Shield Wall questline in Hagga Basin, build or buy an ornithopter, fly into the shimmering wall at the edge of Hagga Basin, and pick one of the three Deep Desert gates on the Overland Map. It's the only source of titanium and stravidium, and it rebuilds weekly.

How to get to the Deep Desert from Hagga Basin

The Scout Ornithopter Mk4 is enough to make the trip, and it fits in a Vehicle Backup Tool, so you can pack it away when you land. Carry fuel: ornithopters run on Vehicle Fuel Cells.

What is the Deep Desert?

The Deep Desert is the endgame region beyond the Shield Wall. On our map it's a 9×9 grid of sectors, A1 to I9, far larger than Hagga Basin. It holds:

• the only Titanium Ore and Stravidium Mass in the game, the inputs for plastanium;
• the biggest spice fields, including large fields worth bringing a Sandcrawler to;
• caves, shipwrecks and Imperial Testing Stations with high-tier loot.

Water taps are few and far apart out there, so bring all the water you need. If you lose your ornithopter, head for one of the three Taxi Service points marked on the map: the pilots there can fly you back to Hagga Basin.

How the weekly layout change works

Once a week the Coriolis storm sweeps the Deep Desert. It wipes player structures, vehicles and deployables there and rebuilds the map: rock islands, wrecks, caves and ore spots all move. It usually hits on Tuesday with the server restart. Hagga Basin is never touched.

Our map always opens on this week's Deep Desert. Two things follow:

• Coordinates for the Deep Desert go stale every week. Never trust a fixed pin from an old guide.
• Check the countdown before you build or start a long run. The overview page shows the current storm timer, the Landsraad decree and this week's map.

The full mechanics are in the Coriolis storm guide.

PvE and PvP zones in the Deep Desert

Patch 1.3.20 changed the rules:

• Every official world has at least one PvE and one PvP Deep Desert instance, and you choose when you enter.
• The PvE instance is fully PvE, shipwrecks included.
• In the PvP instance, combat starts at row B, outside the Shield Wall area, as it did at launch. Row A stays safe.
• PvP areas raise mining and harvesting yields by 2.5.
• The red vibration meter now warns you of worms out to 1,500 m instead of 500 m.

Loot tables also differ between the two instance types. On our map, the Deep Desert has a server switch (PvE, PvP or both), so loot searches show what drops where you'll actually play.

What resources are in the Deep Desert?

A typical week looks roughly like this:

These are spots that can spawn the ore. Most Deep Desert rock can give one of several ores each time a node respawns, so the real number at any moment is lower. The "where is best" finder takes that into account and highlights the sectors where the ore is certain. Iron, carbon and erythrite appear only in small amounts, mostly in caves.

Large spice fields come from spice blows. Players mark active fields on our map with a timer, so you can see which ones are live right now. More on that in the interactive map guide, and on resources in where to find titanium, where to find stravidium and how to farm spice.

How to prepare for the Deep Desert

For your first trip:

• Ornithopter with fuel. A Storage module or Scan Module makes runs far more useful.
• Cutteray Mk5: 30 Duraluminum Ingots, 14 EMF Generators, 12 Cobalt Paste, 8 Ray Amplifiers and 5 Thermoelectric Coolers at the Survival Fabricator. Nothing weaker cuts titanium or stravidium.
• Water: a literjon or Decaliterjon full, and the best stillsuit you have.
• Welding Torch and Welding Wire to repair the ornithopter in the field.
• Healkits and a Respawn Beacon placed on safe rock.

For spice and guild runs: a Sandcrawler (Mk6, plastanium) with Vacuum and Centrifuge harvests spice sand, and a Carrier Ornithopter can haul vehicles across the Overland Map. Both are covered in the vehicles guide.

Plan the metals with the refining guide: one Plastanium Ingot is 6 Titanium Ore and 1 Stravidium Fiber at a Medium Ore Refinery, plus 1,250 ml of water.

Dangers and survival tips

• In PvP, go in pairs: one mines while the other watches the sky and the vibration meter.
• Start in the PvE instance until you know the routes, then move to PvP for the yield bonus if your group can defend itself.
• Scout from the air first: our finder shows where the pure titanium and stravidium islands are this week before you take off.
• Keep a guild marker on the map for meeting points; guild markers are visible to all members.