One thing I did not realize was all the things I was putting off before I had an Ornithopter. There are a lot of missions to run, and with the ability to fly, I was about to go on a massive mission running spree.

I still had quite a few faction-based missions to run to again, ranking among the Harkonnen faction. Quite a few of them were quite easy. I just had to go out to certain locations and kill a modest number of individuals the Harkonnen would rather no longer see living.

Having an Ornithopter ended up making such missions as those just far too easy. As before, the biggest time consumer was just getting out to each location. While sure I could use trade posts to somewhat move around. Now that I could fly, I was saving my money and time just going where I needed to go.

I’d also learn later that if I flew outside of the Hagga Basin area. That I could then get across the region even quickly. It just came down to knowing where to re-enter. Sometimes doing this trick would end up taking me longer if I found myself not where I was expecting to be. Other times, I was just far too lazy to use this trick and would just fly across the entire map if needed.

Some of the more fun times I ended up having on Arrakis were still running Testing Stations. A lot of the objectives I needed to complete would be found inside them. Things took an even more interesting twist when the unique schematics that I started looting in the end chests for them became quite useful.

You kind of know you found something good. Weeks later, you were still using that item. Even more so when you went back to farm for even further unique schematics. Even picking some up for guild members if you had the time.

Two things I should have done sooner were class missions and main storyline trials. The first would unlock higher tiers in each class tech tree. The second would give me some rather important unlocks I had no idea I was missing out on.

On Arrakis, there are five different classes you can train for. Planetologist, for instance, that I've done in the past, gave me a lot of passives for mining. I was now, however, wanting to unlock a lot more combat and even some mobility options for myself.

Seron Varlin, for instance, is the advanced Swordmaster trainer. He is blind and was left to rot away at a rat in the Harko Village back alleyway. His prized sword was also stolen from him.

While at first it was all about getting parts of his prized position back at first. He then wanted me to get him some new eyes so he could see. While he kept saying he did not want revenge. That is exactly what he ended up going for in the end.

I also went and unlocked further tech skills for Troop. While I would still prefer to use my dagger long into the end game. There was the hook in the trooper skill tree that I'd find to be so useful for climbing, getting around, and even combat. I wanted to train all three ranks of it.

Oddly enough, any time I found myself in the bar, I was always having to ask for a “cidrit twist.” Whether I was after intel or black-market goods. This seemed to be the magic code word with the barkeep that quite a few missions would inform me on using to acquire what was needed. It seems that the code word was not so secret after all, if everyone knew about it.

This was even part of the time where I'd stop to farm any spice sand I'd find in Hagga Basin. The amounts were small. However, since I could now fly. I felt rather safe gathering it as I could fly off anytime a sand worm noticed what I was doing.

After a while, I decided it was just time to get my trial over with. Not all of these trials were about ingesting some spice and going off on some kind of trippy journey. It would seem someone had tampered with some of the locations by smashing the bowl that would contain the spice.

In those instances. I was rather thrilled I had not gotten out to whatever difficult spot the trial was at by sand bike and foot any longer. I’d just hop back into my Ornithopter and head off to the next location. As I was quite on a mission at one point to just get them all done.

The fourth trail ended up being quite important. It unlocked the ability to use spice to enter a prescient state. This increased your combat ability, which you had to test while in the trail itself.

With was not without some consequences. Once you come off spice, you start to see and hear things that are not there. You would see these massive shadows of people or things as tall as buildings sometimes. Not to mention the very strange sounds that would make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

While under the influence of spice. Your eyes would also glow purple. I’d learn later on to run from anyone in dangerous places if their eyes glowed. As they usually had I ill intent in mind.

The fifth trail ended up giving me something I'd not care about till the endgame, and even then, I'd not use it often. I’d be able to craft an item called a thumper. The thumper would attack the worm, and if you can control where the worm is going, away from other things going on. That can be quite useful for large groups. I tend to play as a lone wolf or as a duo, so it was not that useful for me.

To survive the trial, I was being chased by a sand worm the entire time. I had to avoid being eaten. Sometimes, I would use a thumper to distract the worm so I could escape. As if I was not already having nightmares about getting eaten again by one of these things.

The sixth trial was another broken bowl. While I was kind of getting a bit disappointed by this point, every time I'd run into a trial that was like this. I also felt like I was getting closer to the end of needing to run any further of these.

Next up was the seventh trial, and it was about teaching you how to avoid sandstorms. I’ll admit I've only used a tent a couple of times in total, long after I had completed this trial. More times than not, the cargo on my Ornithopter would have items in it. As a result, I'd be better off finding an underpass to hide under to protect my Ornithopter and myself from the winds than just hoping out and hiding in a tent.

Having access to and using a tent felt like something I'd have used before I had acquired an Ornithopter. It was kind of a shame such a thing was introduced so late into my progression on Arrakis.

Then came the final trial test. I won’t spoil too much of what happened during that. It felt like the storyline was progressing along. There were puzzles, a blood sacrifice, and so many other things going on.

Final Thoughts

In the end, it was all worth my time in doing. As I now had the Deathstill schematic unlocked. This would change the way I went about collecting water. Instead of collecting small amounts of water by extracting blood and refining it. I could now just carry back to my base entire corpses and toss them into the Deathstill.

At first, I could only afford to craft a normal Deathstill. That would yield 25k water. Later on, once I could afford the rather expensive advanced Deathstills that produced 45k water. I no longer wanted to go back to gathering water any other way, despite their massive costs and power requirements of having Deathstills in my base.

Information

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