An important decision awaits you in Dune: Awakening, both during the beta and after the official launch: choosing one out of five classes. In this article, you will find not only an overview of each class's abilities but also their countours and how they shape your gameplay experience.

• What Classes Are Available in Dune: Awakening?
• Class-based Differences in Gameplay
• Bene Gesserit
• Trooper
• Mentat
• Swordmaster
• Planetologist
• Learning Skills and Techniques
• Respec Options

↖ What Classes Are Available in Dune: Awakening?

During character creation in this survival MMO, players can choose from the following five archetypes:

• Bene Gesserit: A feared secret sisterhood that serves as adept manipulators and mental controlled priests. Revered by the nobility while simultaneously dreaded by the empire, within their own ranks, they are highly prized and seen as women of mastery.
• Trooper: Professional soldiers forming the backbone of standing armies and house guards maintained by the Great Houses of the Landsraad.
• Mentat: Members of a mysterious order educated to compute and process enormous data sets with unnatural accuracy.
• Swordmaster: Renowned soldiers from the defunct shrub ginaz school held to be the best melee fighters in the universe.
• Planetologist (not available during beta character creation): Planetologists are trained explorers and researchers that can terraform planets and survive in extremely hostile environments. They accompany the initial wave of colonists into the wildest frontiers.

↖ Class-based Differences in Gameplay

Your selection of class affects some starting abilities and grants a limited exclusive access to certain skill trees. However, there is no class-locked structure you need to follow. Every character can use melee and ranged weapons as soon as they acquire or craft them, including the starting knife that can be made early on.

Your selected class defines the character's starting ability and unlocks three skill trees exclusive to that archetype. However, Dune: Awakening accommodates some degree of flexibility. In any case, you can learn other abilities beyond your primary class by seeking and completing quests with masters of other classes. Ultimately, progression is bound only to the skill points earned during the adventure.

In the following sections, we analyze all classes describing their gameplay, starting abilities, talents, strengths, and skill trees.

↖ Bene Gesserit

Playstyle: The Bene Gesserits are daggers-specialized manipulators, using their "Voice" to control foes both mentally and physically.

Starting Ability:

Voice Compel – Uses the Voice to compel an enemy mote to you.

Talent Trees:

Bizarre Path: Increases proficiency in dagger skills and provides agility-related perks.

The Voice: Improves Other techniques and allows brief summons of enemies or incapacitation.

Body Control: Grants group buffs including Litany Against Fear, self-healing, and resistance to poisons and overheats.

Ideal For:

Offering group buffs while mastering hybrid combat blending melee and ranged for dynamic play. Active NPC manipulation is a specialty.

↖ Trooper

Playstyle: Troopers specialize in heavy and gadgeted trooper, highly effective in long ranged offensive combat.

Starting Ability:

Shigawire Claw: Shoots out a claw that is connected to a shigawire from your wrist. The wire’s tensile strength also pulls you to your target, potentially destabilizing enemies.

Talent Trees:

• Marksman: Passive to specialize in crafted ranged weapons.
• Suspensor Training: Increases mobility while in the air and grants access to gravity field abilities and some special grenades.
• Tactical Tech: Provides grappling hooks, seeker missiles and explosive grenades, and other advanced gear while improving cooldowns for skills.

Ideal For:

Using something like a grappling hook to move with high mobility while engaging in combat from a distance suits these players best.

Tip: There is a rumor that the Trooper master can be found early in the game which allows other classes to unlock Trooper abilities swiftly.

↖ Mentat

Playstyle: Mentats use gadgets for long-range combat and solve using reconnaissance and tactics.

Starting Ability:

The Watcher: Motion-based targeting turret that tracks enemies with suspensor supports via projectile turret.

Talent Trees:

• Mental Calculation: Boosted sniper and pistol use, better repairs, and shield overloading on enemies.
• Assassination: Gains poison capsules, stun darts, poison clouds, and mines this as well as other hidden projectile poisons.
• Tactician: Gain passive defenses like shield walls, gravity mines, and holographic projections.

Ideal For:

Players that prefer a defensive mindset yet enjoy fighting at a distance and using technical gadgets.

↖ Swordmaster

Playstyle: Specializing in long bladed weapons and melee combat, the swordmaster is an agile but aggressive fighter.

Starting Ability:

Knee Strike: A powerful concussive attack that significantly staggers the target but costs stamina to use.

Talent Trees:

• The Blade: Concentrates on enhancing sword techniques.
• The Will: Unlocks defensive skills such as Deflection and bolsters damage resistance.
• The Way: Grants specialized group buffs like Inspiration, optimizes stamina usage, and boosts agility with talents such as Knee Strike.

Ideal For:

Players who enjoy face-to-face encounters and thrive at brawling.

↖ Planetologist

Playstyle: Planetologists are highly skilled as pilots, gatherers of resources, and scanners, along with possessing a talent for Spice harvesting.

Starting Ability:

Suspensor Field: Activates a device to lift you or any nearby actors, aiding movement over obstacles.

Talent Trees:

• Scientist: Enhances water retrieval as well as energy cell and water extraction efficiency.
• Explorer: Unlocks Suspensor Field abilities, climbing, advanced scanning, and mapping of surveyed regions.
• Mechanic: Increases efficiency in scanning and Spice harvesting, repairs and deconstruction of vehicles, reduces their fuel consumption to increase Spice harvesting efficiency.

Ideal For:

Players leaning towards exploring, gathering resources, crafting, rather than fighting.

↖ Learning Skills and Techniques

• In the gameplay of Dune: Awakening, character skills (active abilities), and passive bonuses (techniques) are essential to character development:
• Skills: You may equip up to three active abilities. Skills are freely interchangeable when not on cooldown.
• Techniques: Passive bonuses are fitted through a separate three-slot technique bar. Only equipped techniques are active.

Both skills and techniques earn competency points during your adventure which can be spent at any point to unlock or upgrade them. Some talents may have prerequisites such as a point investment into previous abilities within a skill tree.

↖ Respec Options

Competency Redistribution is a respec option within Dune: Awakening that allows players to reallocate their skill points freely every 48 hours. This enables players to explore different builds risk-free.

Dune: Awakening balances rigid class archetypes for diverse playstyles alongside providing a stimulating degree of class system flexibility. The vast deserts of Arrakis have a tailored path for every player archetype whether you’d like to engage in nimble manipulation, combat from a distance, use gadgets strategically, melee aggressively, or explore.