How Do Circuits Work in Dune Awakening? Circuits Explained

Circuits are a storage management and inventory control mechanism in Dune Awakening that provides you with greater flexibility around how your items are used and stored within your base.

When set up correctly, circuits can allow you to automatically deposit newly crafted items or refined materials into specific storage containers, in addition to controlling which storage containers are allowed to be used for crafting and refining.

Circuits: A Simple Explanation (tl;dr)

1. Match the Input Circuit (left dropdown) of a fabricator or refiner to the Output Circuit (right dropdown) of a container to allow the fabricator or refiner to use all items contained within that container for crafting.
2. Match the Output Circuit (right dropdown) of a fabricator or refiner to the Input Circuit (left dropdown) of a container to automatically deposit all overflow items created by the fabricator or refiner into that container.

How Circuits Work In Dune Awakening

It can be easiest to get your head around the circuit system when considering it from two separate perspectives, that of your containers/chests and that of your fabricators & refineries.

Circuits Explained In Detail

There are two types of circuits:

• Input Circuits (left dropdown)
• Output Circuits (right dropdown)

Fabricator or Refinery > Container Flow

The Input Circuit of a container, when matched with a fabricator or refinery's Output Circuit, will result in all overflow items from that fabricator or refinery being deposited into that container. This will only happen when the internal storage of the fabricator or refinery is full.

This is the same as:

The Output Circuit on a fabricator or refinery, when matched with a container's Input Circuit, will result in all overflow items from that fabricator or refinery being deposited into that container. This will only happen when the internal storage of the fabricator or refinery is full.

Container > Fabricator or Refinery Flow

The Output Circuit on a container, when matched with a fabricator or refinery's Input Circuit, will result in all items within that container being useable by the fabricator or refinery for crafting.

This is the same as:

The Input Circuit on a fabricator or refinery, when matched with a container's Output Circuit, will result in all items within that container being useable by the fabricator or refinery for crafting.

Circuits Explained: Fabricator or Refinery > Container Flow Example

I have a Large Ore Refinery that's producing Plastanium Ingots and I want all of those Plastanium Ingots to go straight to one of my Storage Containers (Storage Container A) when they are refined.

I set the Output Circuit (right dropdown) on my Large Ore Refinery to Circuit 2 and I set the Input Circuit (left dropdown) on Storage Container A to Circuit 2.

Now, whenever my Large Ore Refinery's storage is full, any additional Plastanium Ingots will be deposited directly into Storage Container A (assuming no other Storage Container also has Circuit 2 as its Input Circuit).

Circuits Explained: Container > Fabricator or Refinery Flow Example

I want to craft Duraluminum Ingots with some of my Aluminum Ingots, but I also want to keep some Aluminum Ingots for crafting and repairs. So I place 3/4 of my Aluminum Ingots in Storage Container A.

I set the Output Circuit (right dropdown) on Storage Container A to Circuit 2 and I set the Input Circuit (left dropdown) on my Large Ore Refinery to Circuit 2.

Now, my Large Ore Refinery will only be able to access the resources and materials in Storage Container A (and any other Storage Container that has Circuit 2 as its Output Circuit).

Maximising Value From Circuits - Tips

Tip 1 - Blocking Storage To Guarantee Overflow

This one is important. You might be thinking, but wait isn't this useless since all of my crafted items and refined resources will just get stuck in the fabricator/refinery storage anyway? Well you'd be right - but there is a solution for that.

To ensure that all of the items you craft or refinery go straight into the containers you want rather than first filling up their own storage space, what you want to do is fill the storage inventory of the fabricator or refinery manually.

Basically you want to deposit any cheap/useless item from your inventory (such as 5x light darts) to fill up the storage inventory of the refinery or fabricator you are setting up circuits for, as shown in the image above. This creates forced overflow.

Now whenever an item is fabricated or refined, it will bypass the internal storage and go straight to the correct chest per the circuit set-up.

Tip 2 - Safeguarding your Deep Desert Building Resources

It is advisable that you store all of your Deep Desert base building materials in containers which are separate from the rest of the containers in your main base. This allows you to very quickly grab all the materials you will need to rebuild each week.

To ensure that you don't accidentally use those base building materials on your main base however, you can set the Output Circuit to a circuit that has no corresponding Input Circuit (we use Circuit 8). This ensures that no fabricator or refinery can use the materials.

Tip 3 - Exceeding The Output Circuit Limit (For The Enthusiasts)

If you are a serial organiser and want to set up a separate storage container for each refined resource for example, there is actually a workaround to bypass the eight circuit limit.

Let's use refined ores, ingots, as an example here. First we build seven different storage containers for each of the different ingots (copper, iron etc) and then set them all to the same Input Circuit (can be any, as long as they are the only storage units on the circuit.

Next, fill each storage unit with single ingots until each is full of a different refined resource. For example, if using Storage Containers, then the first will be full of 35 single Copper Ingots, the next 35 single Iron Ingots and so on.

Now, set the Output Circuit of your Ore Refinery to match the Input Circuit of your Storage Containers and when a new Ingot is created, the only container available to it will be the container which already contains the individual stacks of that same Ingot.