Water is the most important resource on the desert planes of Arrakis and thus, in Dune Awakening. Not only is water a precious resource required to keep you hydrated and alive throughout the game, but it's also, perhaps surprisingly, the most important crafting material as well.
In this article we’ll look at the various ways you can go about collecting water and point you in the right direction for the stage you are at in the game.
How to Farm/Collect Water in Dune Awakening
Farming water is possible through a number of different methods in Dune Awakening. To make things easier, we've broken this down by navigable sections below:
- Early Levels & Staying Alive
- Early Collection Method - Water From Blood
- Mid-Late Game Collection Method - Deathstills
- Mid-Late Game Collection Method - Harvesting Water From Plants
- Mid-Late Game Collection Method - Automated Collection via Windtraps
- General Water Tips & Tricks
Early Levels & Staying Alive
When you first land on Arrakis, your main goal is to stay hydrated long enough to set up a base and get tools. Early on, you're not farming water for crafting, you're harvesting it so you don’t die.
Here’s what helps:
- Harvest the dew from plants. Although it will only fill your hydration bar up 1/3 of the way, it's a great way throughout the game to prevent dehydration.
- Use the tutorial Stillsuit, it gives you a basic drip of moisture, which can keep you stocked up in the early game. Look to upgrade it as soon as you can.
Early Collection Method - Water From Blood
It's a pretty grim thought, but yes - blood is a reliable source of water in Dune Awakening.
Once you have a Blood Extractor, you can extract blood from dead bodies and players. It’s not the most efficient method long term, but early on it’s a lifesaver.
Tips:
- In the early levels, find a Blood Knife (Drinker) that drains blood on hit - the earliest one you can get is the Kaleff's Drinker, which is in Hagga Basin inside the Wreck of the Alcyon, it is a 100% drop from the Ultra Rare Chest.
- Have at least two Blood Sacks with you at all times.
- Upgrade your Blood Extractor when you can so you can extract more blood from each body
- You’ll need a Blood Purifier in your base to get the water from the blood, again upgrade this to Medium when you can as it doubles the conversion rate from blood to water (20% to 40%).
Upgrade your extractor over time to pull more from each body, and have larger Blood Sacks to store more.
Mid-Game Collection Method - Deathstills
Once you reach the Aluminum stage of the game, you'll quickly realise that water becomes the bottleneck for most of your crafting needs. One Aluminum Ingot requires 200 water and you need A LOT of them to craft your ornithopter.
So next, we want to work our way through all eight Trials of the Aql, culiminating in the Footsteps of the Freman which will allow you to research (and craft) Deathstills. These lovely little boxes of joy let you extract all of the blood from a corpse you have collected. To collect a corpse you just hold the F key down on a fallen enemy/corpse. It will enter your inventory but keep in mind that bodies are heavy - 75v to be precise.
Drop your corpse into the Deathstill and one hour later, it will deposit 25,000ml (25 litres) of water into your water storage. You get it all at once at the end of the hour.
This is much more efficient method than collecting blood through Blood Extractors, but you can do both if you are heading out to collect a couple of corpses anyway.
Mid-Late Game Collecting Method - Harvesting Water from Plants
Moisture-rich plants are scattered around the desert. They're the same plants that you use to hydrate yourself that we mentioned earlier. When dew starts to form on these plants at night, you can spot them by their blue glow. Although this might seem like a fairly lacklustre method of collecting water early in the game, if you can find areas with a high density of plants, and if you have a high level Dew Reaper, you can take home crazy amounts of water very quickly.
You will need Literjons to store the water you collect using this method which can be researched in the Water Discipline section.
Key tips:
- The optimal time to harvest dew is just before the dawn. You can press T in-game (status key) and it will show you what time it is in the top right of the screen. Optimal time is when the clock face turns blue.
- Always use the highest grade of Dew Reaper you can craft because the extraction yields increase significantly.
- Check rocky outcrops and shaded cliffs as these have a higher chance of spawning water plants. Once you survey a location you can also see water spawns on the map when you zoom in close.
Mid-Late Game Collecting Method - Automated Collection Via Windtraps
One of the joys of a survival game like Dune Awakening is crafting a well-oiled machine of a base that operates autonomously, removing the busy work involved in keeping your resources stocked up.
That's what Windtraps do for water in Dune Awakening. Windtraps generate water passively over time, and although not as efficient as a Deathstill, they don't require you to go and collect corpses every hour.
A basic Windtrap generates 2,700ml water per hour vs the 25,000ml generated by a Deathstill, however a Deathstill is 200 power and a Windtrap is only 75. Even adjusting for power however, the Deathstill is around 3.5x more efficient.
Also keep in mind that Windtraps require filters from the Survival Fabricator which are not cheap and can add up over time.
General Water Tips & Tricks
- Stilltents passively collect moisture while you rest or just from sitting in place. They work slowly, but stack if you use more than one. You unlock it during the Seventh Trial of Aql.
- If you follow the Planetologist Advanced Trainer quest chain until the end, you are awarded with an exceptional Stillsuit armour piece.
And that's about it for collecting water in Dune Awakening. Check out some of our other farming guides below if your stuck for resources:
