Dune: Awakening opens its single-player mode on the public test server

Dune: Awakening's single-player mode has gone up for public testing on the survival MMO's public test server, alongside a character management overhaul and a long list of performance and balance changes, MassivelyOP reported.

The offline option arrives with three presets or manual configuration of individual variables. Players can set resource harvesting rate multipliers, sandstorm and sandworm spawns, base decay, base durability and what drops on death, among other settings.

Endgame in solo play

The endgame is present rather than cut down. The Deep Desert's content is all there, though without a map reset, and the Landsraad simulates other players' efforts to dominate the game's political layer rather than leaving it empty. One limitation is fixed: single-player characters cannot be converted into multiplayer characters.

The same build introduces what the developers describe as a character-centric experience. A characters tab lists everything a player has created, the main menu moves to a new cave environment that puts the last played character front and centre, and multiplayer characters gain the ability to change server.

Performance and balance changes

The bulk of the patch is general improvement work across the MMO:

• World streaming and overall performance improved
• Bases can be reconstructed instantly in Hagga Basin South
• Spice melange requirements removed from multiple endgame buildables
• Difficulty and reward scaling for dungeons updated
• NPC combat behaviours improved
• Endgame bosses can no longer be damaged before a fight begins

Those are highlights rather than the full list; the complete PTS patch notes cover considerably more ground. As a public test server build, none of it is live on the main servers yet, and the changes remain subject to revision before they ship.

The single-player option arrives looking as fully featured as the studio had promised, letting solo players run the Arrakis survival loop with the desert and political endgame systems in place rather than a trimmed-down version of them.