Players are experiencing rather frustrating moments while trying to drive around in the Deep Desert in Dune: Awakening. One player shared his struggle, getting stuck in some sort of death loop caused by one of the biggest bugs in the Deep Desert.
The post, shared on Reddit, describes how they lost both their Assault and Scout Ornithopters, as well as a stash full of resources, after going into D7 of the Deep Desert (DD). According to them, there was supposed to be a massive rock island and Testing Station in that location but instead, the whole area just disappeared. With nothing left beneath them, the game locked them into a sort of unending cycle of falling, dying, and respawning over and over again.
This kind of situation can definitely make you want to quit the game, especially since it was just after deciding to finally try building a Deep Desert base. Going after T6 content, only for it all to end up like this, is pretty annoying.
What Is Actually Going on in the Deep Desert?
If you have ever noticed weird rubberbanding or quicksand patches near zone transitions in the Deep Desert, you are not alone. The Deep Desert is built on a 9×9 grid, with every 3×3 part running on its own server. That means Deep Desert is basically a set of interconnected servers, and crossing between them (especially between columns C-D, F-G or rows 3-4, 6-7) can cause a ton of desync issues.
That includes stuff not loading, rubberbanding, or worse, getting stuck in invisible places and dying on repeat. Vehicles can’t even cross the grids at all, even tho ground-based PvP is supposed to be part of the Deep Desert.
Some players think that the quicksand patches often seen around these transition zones might have been placed as a sort of visual warning, but not sure that it really tells you anything.
Any Way to Escape the Bug?
A few players have managed to survive or recover from this bug, but keep in mind that it is not a guaranteed fix.
For example, someone said that they got this bug multiple times over the past few weeks and usually manage to escape it by relogging repeatedly until everything loads normally. However, they did lose their Assault Ornithopter in the process once.
In most cases, the Ornithopter spawns on solid ground after a few tries, and then you can hop in and fly out. But it does not always work, sadly.
Another player said that having a second vehicle like a Scout in your pocket can be a lifesaver. After disconnecting mid-flight and getting stuck in quicksand, they managed to take their Scout out, leave the zone, and eventually recover their Assault that had landed nearby. So basically try to always have the backup tool with another vehicle in your inventory. It could maybe save you if you encounter this bug.
But well, keep in mind that those are just sort of random solutions to very specific situations, and they might not work for you. It is not a real solution. Also remember that you probably will still lose some stuff such as Fuel cells and various resources. Overall, what we need is a proper fix for this kind of issues in the game.
The only thing to do is maybe avoid crossing the grids until Funcom addresses the problems.
Keep an eye on our latest news, where we will update you if any fix is coming!