Greetings, Sleepers!

Update 1.4 is here to give you the opportunity to check out and provide feedback before it’s pushed to the live client. To reiterate, this is a smaller update rather than a whole chapter update; there is more story content, new locations, new features, and even a whole new map coming in the future so stay tuned for more on that!

To assist you with testing, don’t forget to take advantage of the Progression Unlock Panel (only available in the PTC) where aside from getting resources and gear, XP and unlocking Journey chapters, you can unlock faction ranks and crafting materials.

Please note this is still a Work in Progress build and as a result you may found placeholder text and assets in it. This will be polished during the PTC period.

Learn more about our Public Test Clients and how they work here. The best place to discuss the PTC is the relevant Steam Discussion Board and ourPTC Discussion channel on Discord. 

Highlights

• NEW Overland Map locations:
  • The Wind Pass: Once a Harkonnen tech hub, now a key point in Arrakis’ water trade under the control of the Water Shippers.
  • The Old Quarry Testing Station: Players will confront the morally questionable scientist Dr. Jalanta, operating from a hidden laboratory. 
• NEW The first iteration of Self-hosting Servers is now available for testing!
  • Self-hosting is a way to host Dune Awakening world on your own machines and connect to them. Hosts will be able to tweak various settings in configuration files to change the behavior of the game servers to their liking.
  • You can read the full technical documentation on how to set up a self-hosted server in our blog post.
• Fixed an issue where players who betrayed their faction at rank 20 would have to replay faction content for their new faction.

Known Issues

Please note this is still a Work in Progress build and as a result you may find issues and unexpected game behaviour. Of importance during your testing are:

• Due to an issue, Deep Desert servers are back to their pre-1.3.20.0 mixed PvE and PvP state.
• Enemies may not spawn during Art of Kanly.
• Enemies in Arsunt Garrison may not spawn, blocking progress of a related Harkonnen contract.
• You may receive an error when attempting travel to Hagga Basin through the south entry point in the Overland Map.
  • Workaround: Use any other entry point.
• Multiple dynamic encounter contracts cannot be canceled after being obtained.
• Guild member chat notifications might get repeated multiple times.
• Sometimes, when running the installation from scratch, the database may fail with ERROR: relation “encrypted_player_state” does not exist.
  • Workaround: Try rerunning initial-setup.bat
• When running the initial install the first time you may get Missing Configuration on steamcmd.
  • Workaround: Try selecting “y” to retry.

Features And Changes

New Feature: Self-Hosted Servers

• The first iteration of Self-hosting Servers is now available for testing!
  • Self-hosting is a way to host Dune Awakening world on your own machines and connect to them. Hosts will be able to tweak various settings in configuration files to change the behavior of the game servers to their liking.
  • You can read the full technical documentation on how to set up a self-hosted server in our blog post.

Technical and Stability:

• Removed deprecated items from the PTC Progression Unlock Panel.
• Improved building replication performance on the client.
• Improved performance for player and vehicle cameras.
• Adjusted streaming distance on the Wreck of the Delphis for performance.
• Small memory improvement to fabricators, refineries and turbines.
• Improved Solido Projection Rendering when Depth of Field is enabled.

Resources, Building, and Crafting:

• Recycler inventory slots have been increased from 20 to 25 and the maximum volume storage has been increased from 100 to 300.
• Smugglers Building Set now contains a Prudence Door.

Combat:

• Changes to Abomination AI behavior so it becomes less aggressive; abominations should feel slightly easier to fight.

Worldbuilding and Exploration:

• NEW Overland Map locations:
  • The Wind Pass: Once a Harkonnen tech hub, now a key point in Arrakis’ water trade under the control of the Water Shippers.
  • The Old Quarry Testing Station: Players will confront the morally questionable scientist Dr. Jalanta, operating from a hidden laboratory. 
  • These also come with new Landsraad missions.
• Added a blocking volume around bankers in Arrakeen and Harko Village to stop players from blocking interaction with the bankers.

Graphics, Animations, and VFX:

• Improved visuals and performance of all explosion effects used in game.
• Added animation functionality for powering on placeables outside of base power.
• Improved Character Rendering in the inventory/main menu.
• Optimized and improved light animation on fireplaces.
• Various optimizations to ships in the sky and caves in Hagga Rift.
• Optimized VFX assets to decrease their memory usage.

Audio:

• Added unique audio for big garage doors.

Fixes

Technical and Stability:

• Improved recovery from crashing during dialogues. Multiple dialogues can now be resumed instead of just the last one.

Resources, Building, and Crafting:

• Fixed an issue that caused low-tier medical container to contain high-tier healkits.

Combat:

• Fixed Confidence ability not triggering when using Dual Blades.

Worldbuilding and Exploration:

• Fixed the Smugglers Railing Gate so they can be crossed smoothly without getting blocked.
• More reliably cleaned up the corpses after a grand encounter beneath a roaring crowd in Outside the Law.

Story, Journey, and New Player Experience:

• Fixed an issue where players who betrayed their faction at rank 20 would have to replay faction content for their new faction.

User Interface:

• Corrected the tutorial pop-up for flying on the overland map to remove obsolete information.
• The “Dune Man Placeable Set” is now using the correct name of “Desert Mechanic Placeable Set.”
• Improved formatting of text in Respawn pop up.
• Fixed several minor typos across the game. 

Graphics, Animations, and VFX:

• Fixed Base Reconstruction Tool so it’s always properly placed in the hand of the character after switching from a melee weapon.
• Cloth simulations have been improved in the cutscenes leading up to the Mating Index cinematic.
• Improved animation blending when bleeding and under other status effects.