I ended up putting in an insane amount of time into my second week spent in the Deep Desert. By this point, I understood how most things worked in there. I also had a bit more confidence in going after the things I wanted. Even if that had a decent amount of risk in doing so.

Naturally, not everything went to plan. There were a couple of key items I was still after for the week. There were also some things I wanted to test out to see if I could make my experience in the Deep Desert better.

I was hoping to just farm the corpses I needed for water. Since the base in the Deep Desert had two caves near it. The NPCs in there proved to be quite challenging. I’d end up getting killed enough times that it was just easier to haul in corpses.

One of the caves was even under our base. So, I could hear every time someone attempted to clear it. The number of times I'd hear people try for ten minutes or longer was shocking. I’d then go down there to see what most of the NPCS were remaining. Whoever attempted to clear out the cave had given up.

Farming as much spice sand and tier 6 ores was one of my priorities in the first week. This time, however, I wanted to farm hard all the testing stations and wrecks in the A row of the Deep Desert. There were quite a few schematics I wanted out of them to make some much-needed upgrades

While the wrecks were PvP spots. I could go up and down the A row, farming the testing stations without issue. Sometimes they would even be cleared out by someone else. So, I would not even have to kill anything. I’d just need to run to the main chest and then back out.

After a couple of trips, I ended up looting the main thing I was after. It was a Compact Compactor MK5. While it did the same amount of spice, sand gathering was what I already had. It had a lower worm aggression rate. That, along with some soft step boots that I had. I could sometimes farm for quite a while if no one else was in the spice field with me, before a sand worm would even care.

The only disappointing thing about row A was that it was tier 5 schematics. There were some materials drops that you could only get in the Deep Desert. So at least I'd stock up on those when I could.

All this looting led to another issue I was not expecting. Where to dump all the loot I was getting? Heading back to Hagga Basin or my main base would take some time. It seemed kind of pointless to take things to the main base in Deep Desert just to need to haul them back to Hagga Basin at the end of the week.

As a result, I ended up building a smaller base in the A row. I ended up calling it just the “dump base.” After realizing how convenient and needed this was. Moving forward, every time I did a week in the Deep Desert, I'd set up a dump base in the A row. It would end up becoming far more useful than I was expecting.

I would end up going off to craft a lot of the weapons I was looting from the testing stations in row A. For the most part, I did not care for most of them. There were a couple of odd upgrades here or there. Nothing huge like I was hoping. I at least scored a couple of other schematics at I was after during the week.

Having a new compactor for farming spice sand at hand. I could not wait till a large spice field was up. Not long after, I found one, but it was quite a distance from my base. After just a single farming round, that was it. The big “pappa” sand worm showed up and ate the large spice field. I was a bit disappointed.

After flying around for a bit. I noticed a large spice bloom off in the distance where the big sand worm had just eaten all the spice. Sure enough, the spice field was up again. However, with how late it was and the long trips back and forth. I only did a couple of trips in my scout ornithopter before calling it a night. It was still quite early in the week, so I did not feel like pushing myself just yet.

In the early morning, while flying around, I found another large spice field. This one had been mostly farmed out. It was still more than enough for my needs. I filled up my cargo hold. After going back for a second trip, it was gone. The pappa worm must have eaten it as well.

After going out into the PvP part a couple of times. I was building up a little bit of confidence to go out and farm some tier 6 ores out there as well. Along with doing some further exploring. I still preferred to farm the ores in the PvE areas. However, if I felt like I had way too much of one ore over the other. I’d do a PvP run and cherry-pick just what I needed to try and balance out what was needed to refine for more plastanium ingots.

At first, if I needed to craft something from a tier 6 machine. I’d break down the large spice refiner and build that machine. Slowly, as the week went on, I started to amass enough resources that I could keep the spice refiner up and have a bunch of other things as well.

I also started to learn the hours that were worth playing in the Deep Desert. While you could go out and murder people in PvP. There were certain times of the day when everyone was just friendly. Spice locations would get shared. People would help each other.

Then there would be those hours of the day when trouble was going to go down regardless. At one point, there were a lot of exploiters, hacking, and grief that it was not worth leaving my base during certain times of the day.

While future wave bans would clear out a lot of the troublemakers in the coming weeks. A couple of days after banning people by names no one had ever seen before, they would show up. Those “new” people seemed to carry with them old grudges and causing similar mayhem those that got banned would create. That went on for a while.

While I am not a huge fan of the chat that was going on in the global Deep Desert. It was at least good at warning of when certain players were online. They just loved to talk endless trash and make fun of people in chat. Along with some people giving out warnings that said players were online.

During those moments when I was not just farming the ores around the island, the main base we had set up was at. I’d just go fly back to row A and do a bunch more schematic farming. Other times, I'd just take a break from the game for a few hours or even the rest of the day.

Final Thoughts

Then came pack-up day. The base was so full of stuff that I'm glad I did not have to haul it all back solo. I had so much stuff in the main Deep Desert base. Along with the dump base having every single chest in it filled with schematics and random loot.

There was just so much stuff I ended up having to haul in for all the new machines I was able to build from all the spice and plastanium. Things were so good, in fact, for the week I took off from the Deep Desert, we were able to have some tier 6 machines set up in Haggga Basin. Things like better refiners for ores and a chemical refiner. While those kinds of things only give a 25-33% higher refining yield. That ends up being a lot in a week.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Dune: Awakening.