Dune Awakening Survival guide: How to deal with sun and hydration

Dune Awakening is a survival game at its forefront, and the harsh desert wind of Arrakis is highly conductive to that. Chiefly speaking, there are two mechanics you have to juggle at all times: the hydration meter, and your exposure to the sun. Both of these systems feed into each other, and failing to maintain them will eventually puts you in the ground.

In this guide, we'll go over everything you need to know about surviving the dry deserts of Dune Awakening, and how to manage the sun and hydration resources.

What does Sun exposure do in Dune Awakening?

The sun is kind of hard to ignore (Image via Funcom)

Sun exposure is a near-constant threat during the days of Dune Awakening. When the sun is out (and you are out), you will notice a ticking Sun exposure meter at the top half of the screen. This fills all the way up as you remain exposed to the sun, eventually becoming red-hot.

To avoid the sun, you have to basically just stick to the shadows of the mesas, rock faces, and even rubbles of mineable copper deposits. Basically, anything that casts a shadow in Dune Awakening can give you reprieve from the sun.

The main thing to note here is that you need to avoid getting the Sun exposure meter to its fullest. As long it's completely full, it does not inflict any direct debuffs.

However, once it does fill up, it drains your Hydration at a much higher rate. That brings us to the other thing you need to be wary of: water intake.

How does Hydration work in Dune Awakening?

Death from dehydration is slowand sometimes inevitable (Image via Funcom)

At the bottom-right corner, next to your Health in Dune Awakening, a vertical bar represents how thirsty you are. If you're completely drained, the water-drop icon at the corner will start glowing red. This means you're dying from dehydration.

Effectively, what complete dehydration does is rapidly reduce your Maximum Stamina and Health. The reduction of Maximum Health can go all the way down to zero, eventually resulting in your death.

To avoid dehydration, you just have to keep your Hydration meter from going down all the way to zero. In the early game, you are stuck with suckling the moisture out of Primrose Dew. This only fills up your Hydration meter to the "Dew Limit", which is one-third of the full meter.

To fill up the rest, you have to actually drink water. In the early-game, the main way to get water in Dune Awakening is through a Blood Purifier, which basically lets you convert the blood of slain enemies into water. You can also drink blood directly from the pouch to get hydrated, vampire-style, but this comes with the penalty of a temporary reduction to your Maximum Health.

Water can be stored in Literjons in Dune Awakening, and a very small amount can also be stored in Stillsuits in case you don't want another container hotkey.

Later on, you can actually get scythes that let you harvest Primrose Dews to store waters in Literjons, and you can actually set up a water-farm in your house if you build your base on top of a Dew field.

Check out our other guides on the game:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

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Edited by Sambit Pal