A clever Dune: Awakening player has shared a rather bold trick that involves exploiting the qualities of the game's vehicles to get around its most difficult terrain. Dune: Awakening launched on PC on June 10, 2025, dropping players onto a massively multiplayer rendition of the iconic desert planet to compete for dominance.
Dune: Awakening is off to a strong start just off its launch, attracting many players with its combination of survival MMORPG gameplay and the increasingly popular Dune setting. Ever since the recent blockbuster film adaptations hit theaters in 2021 and 2024, a wave of new Dune games and crossover events in popular titles like Fortnite has kept the classic sci-fi franchise at the forefront of popular culture.
Dune: Awakening Review
Dune: Awakening thrives in atmosphere, worldbuilding, and survival depth, even if its combat and grind somewhat drag behind its setting and systems.
As players come to grips with Dune: Awakening, one player who goes by firepixel on Reddit has shared a gutsy trick for getting home safely. In a video clip shared on the game's subreddit, firepixel drives straight off an extremely tall cliff in a buggy full of precious aluminum, free-falling for several seconds and landing completely safely at the entrance to their base. The move takes advantage of the fact that Dune: Awakening buggies and vehicles do not suffer falling damage, allowing players to simply drive off vertical cliffs to get where they're going without having to use a proper route.
Dune: Awakening Fall Damage Exploit Allows Easy Terrain Traversal
Players were amused by firepixel's antics, and praised them for highlighting a point that many players are reluctant to test themselves due to the risk of dying and losing resources. Many players added that the lack of fall damage also applies to other Dune: Awakening ground vehicles like sandbikes and sandcrawlers. By contrast, players on foot can take non-lethal fall damage in Dune: Awakening, making this quirk of vehicle properties something of a light exploit.
While most players acknowledged the usefulness of the trick, they also expressed ambivalence about whether it should remain in the game or be patched out. Some suggested that fall damage be applied only in PVP areas to prevent players from exploiting its absence to gain an advantage over their foes. Others suggested it be patched out entirely because it trivializes the terrain of Dune, which is designed to pose a true challenge to players struggling to set up their bases and resourcing routes. They said that if the fastest way to get off a drop is to spawn a vehicle and suffer no consequences, then many of the challenges and defenses a player can erect will be rendered "pointless."
It looks like Dune:Awakening and its unique version of the original story have captured many players' attention, but still has a ways to go before the experience is optimized. With luck, Funcom will find a way to balance player convenience with designed challenges and strike the right equilibrium to satisfy all parties.
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Survival, MMO
