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⚔️ 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

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🎮 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

These specializations in the first column represent one skill-tree from a class (see picture above). Some of these specializations may not be fully possible if there are more abilities available in a single tree than what can be put on the action-bar. For example, a pure Tactical Tech Trooper has four available “Abilities” in that skill-tree, but the gameplay's action-bar only holds three “Abilities” at the same time (as mentioned  in the "Activating/Equipping Skills" section). This means a lot of roles will utilize more than one skill-tree and they will never be pure. 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 due to hybridization!

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 Prevalent Path Divergent Paths Buffs Utility Target
Trooper Ranged Damage with weapon durability and mastery Area Damage with Bombardments
or
Crowd Control with Snares/Stuns
No Yes Most
Mentat Long-range glass-cannon damage with precision shooting Crowd Control with Shields
or
Single-target Damage with Snares/Stuns
No Yes Many
Swordmaster  Sustained damage melee attacks with minimal stamina expenditure for longer fights Counter Damage with Combos
or
Defensive Stances with Durability
Yes No Few
Bene Gesserit Self-Healing with status resistances and group-buffs Burst Damage with Evasion
or
Single Target Control
Yes No Less
Planetologist Transport, Gatherer, Scout

(High amount of passive skills means all trees will be picked for this class)
(It only has one "ability" that needs to be put on the action-bar) No Yes None