⚔️ Selecting Your Skills

🔓 Unlocking Skills

• There are five classes! And there are trainers for each of these five classes. Each class has three specialization-trees to go into. See picture below
• Each specialization-tree unlocks a progression of abilities. You start from the bottom of the tree and move up. The top one is an ultimate ability
• You can unlock abilities that are NOT of the same tree or NOT even of the same class, as long as you visit the appropriate NPC trainer for unlocking the class
• These unlocked skills in the trees are of different types, such as:
  • Square-shaped are called “Abilities”: You engage those purposefully, as button-presses during gameplay, only if they are in the action-bar
  • Octagon-shaped called “Techniques”: Active all the time when added to the action-bar. They augment your main skills or reduce cool-downs
  • Circle-shaped called “Passives”: Active all the time if unlocked, even if they are not in the action-bar. They add additional ongoing benefits to your character’s stats

🎮 Activating/Equipping Skills

• Unlocking skills is not the same as selecting which skills you have available during gameplay. Only a few can be used at once during gameplay. See picture above for full explanation.
• The limit of the action-bar is six skills at once during gameplay, to which three of them are “Ability” skills (main, square-shaped) and the other three are “Techniques” (attributes, octagon-shaped)
• You can change your equipped “Abilities” and “Techniques” at any time based on the unlocked skills that you have available, with the exception of all unlocked “Passives” (circles-shaped) that are active all the time

🤹 Re-specializing Skill Points

• It takes about 100 skill-points to fully unlock the three trees of a single class and we speculate that there may be about 200 skill-points available per player to distribute in any class (this may change)
• If the skill unlocks are not satisfactory, you can re-distribute your points but you will have a cooldown of 48hrs each time. Some sacrifices will need to be made
• Skills have different levels. Some skills are gated behind others and can only be reached if a level 1 unlock takes place. Going level 1 in almost all trees will sacrifice the magnitude of your skills (aka “jack-of-all trades & master of none”)
• When you see multiple paths in a tree, it may signify that particular tree has more skills allocated than the action-bar may be able to support, which forces you to make decisions as a decision-tree

🧠 Prescience

• Prescience is a gameplay mechanic that allows players to temporarily enhance their combat effectiveness by consuming spice. It can get activated under unexpected circumstances while exposed to spice in the desert
• When activated, Prescience provides the following benefits:
  • Enhanced Enemy Awareness: Reveals enemy health points, ammunition counts, and weak points
  • Improved Combat Performance: Increases damage output and reduces ability cooldown times
  • Engages certain skill-points: Certain “Passive” skills points are dedicated to Prescience and automatically take effect if they are unlocked
• Consuming too much spice can also affect your reputation negatively. See the section “Planning for Reputation”

⛔ No “Holy Trinity”

• The developers highlighted that the game is more of a First Person Shooter at its core, with elements of role-playing mechanics and offered as a massive multiplayer game
• Since there is no significant “aggro” game-mechanic, there is no main tank class meant to absorb damage for other team-members. Tanking in Dune Awakening comes in the form of solo-resistances
• There is no main healing class with an intense capacity for regenerating health-bars of an entire team. Support in Dune Awakening comes in the form of team-buffs

📊 Specialization-based Role Clustering

Some of these specializations may not be fully possible and they only serve as groupings for data visualization and decision-making. For example, a pure Tactical Tech Trooper has four available “Abilities” in that skill tree for us to visualize, but the gameplay's action-bar only holds three “Abilities” at the same time (as mentioned  previously). This means a lot of roles will never be a full tree or just one tree and a lot of hybrid roles will take place. Due to this unlimited hybrid model of customization possible, it’s only viable to depict frames of reference as pure-tree specializations, even if it’s impractical!

Specs	Class	Abilities / Techniques / Passives	Comparable	Primary Role	Target	Buff	Utility	Strengths & Weaknesses
Gunnery	Trooper	1 / 2 / 6	Marksman, Commando	Ranged Damage	Single	No	No	Heavy-ranged weapons, focuses on weapon durability & mastery with some short bursts Vulnerable to flanks and assassins; Poor in close quarters with or without many mobs
Suspensor Training	Trooper	4 / 2 / 1	Mobile Skirmisher, Acrobat	Crowd Control	Many	No	Yes	Throws devices on the ground that manipulate gravity and stuns enemies Mid-range damage; Light defense; Can be kited or controlled when doing its acrobatics
Tactical Tech	Trooper	4 / 1 / 1	AoE Demolitionist, Engineer	Area Damage	Few	No	Yes	Crowd suppression through bombardments and area denial (rather than crowd control) Inaccurate if outpaced in dynamic fights; Low burst potential; Weak against fast movers or flyers
Mental Calculus	Mentat	1 / 2 / 6	Glass Cannon, Guard	Long-Range Damage	Single	No	Yes	High precision shooting from automatic motion detection deployable that hits weak spots Low self-defense; Team-dependent; Indirect combat output; Weak under pressure or ambush
Assassination	Mentat	4 / 1 / 2	Ranged Assassin, Sniper	Interrupts & Area Damage	Few	No	No	Single-target stuns & burst damage combined with some area damage from traps Fragile; Poor in sustained engagements or AoE fights; Requires high awareness of an opponent’s team-composition
Tactician	Mentat	5 / 1 / 0	Commander, Field General	Crowd Control	Many	No	Yes	Protective area shields, manipulation of gravity against enemies with some utility deployments Indirect impact; Abilities can be situational; Requires spatial awareness and teammates to shine
The Blade	Swordmaster	3 / 1 / 3	Duelist, Rogue	Counter Damage	Few	No	No	Counterattacks, close-range strikes & melee combos with a high skill expression Requires longer animations; Punished by CC; Weak to kiting; Vulnerable to ranged burst; Needs uptime on target
The Will	Swordmaster	1 / 2 / 3	Solo-Tank, Survivalist	Self-Protection	Single	No	No	Defensive stances with resistances, durability and stamina buffs Low damage; Needs team coordination; Susceptible to status effects; Can be kited easily
The Way	Swordmaster	3 / 1 / 5	Monk Fighter, Efficient Tank	Sustained Damage	Few	Yes	No	Efficient melee attacks with minimal stamina expenditure that allows continuous fighting Needs constant motion; Poor against traps or roots; Damage output is moderate
Weirding Way	Bene Gesserit	3 / 1 / 3	Melee Rogue	Burst Damage & Evasion	Few	No	No	Rapid consecutive melee strikes, stuns & staggers with increased damage & mobility Fragile; Requires hit-and-run tactics; Weak to AoE and tracking attacks; Susceptible to coordinated focus
The Voice	Bene Gesserit	3 / 1 / 2	Sorcerer, Warlock	Target Control	Single	No	No	Charm, mind control, confusion, disarm, disables and manipulates one enemy at a time Limited direct damage; Limited against high-will or immune enemies; Susceptible due to long cooldowns
Body Control	Bene Gesserit	1 / 3 / 5	Priest	Self-Healing & Support	Single	Yes	No	Status resistances, immunity with lots of self-healing and strong group buff Low damage; Vulnerable while abilities are on cooldown; Can be ignored in team fights
Scientist	Planetologist	0 / 1 / 6	Forager, Miner, Scavenger	Gatherer	Single	No	No	Increased resource collection yields with powerpack efficiency Operates in contested zones; Low mobility; Requires positioning; Weak if targeted first
Explorer	Planetologist	1 / 0 / 5	Scout, Prospector, Surveyor	Cartographer	Single	No	Yes	Enhanced terrain scanning & traversal tools with hydration self-sufficiency Operates in hazardous terrain and at the forefront of future-contested zones; Susceptible to ganking
Mechanic	Planetologist	0 / 0 / 7	Harvester, Machinist, Repairman	Transport & Gatherer	Single	No	Yes	Mobility with fuel conservation, repair proficiency & spice harvesting efficiency Operates in contested zones; Requires team support and planning to not overextend oneself; May run-out of bingo-fuel

📋 Class-based Role Clustering

• Any “Ability” or “Technique” that is above 3 (in the previous table), means that it would not fit in the action-bar and more likely to become a hybrid spec
• Any “Passive” is much more likely to be fully picked and more likely for the entire class to gravitate towards that spec, because passives do not need to be in the action-bar
• Combining the previous table’s column “Abilities/Techniques/Passives” together, forms a pattern

Class	Primary	Secondary	Buff	Utility	Target
Trooper	Ranged Damage	Area Damage	No	Yes	Most
Mentat	Crowd Control	Long-Range Damage	No	Yes	Many
Swordmaster	Self-Protection	Sustained Damage	Yes	No	Few
Bene Gesserit	Self-Healing	Target Control	Yes	No	Less
Planetologist	Transport	Gatherer	No	Yes	None