The sands of Arrakis are proving to be treacherous in more ways than one. While navigating the deep desert in Dune: Awakening was always a high-stakes gamble against the environment and its monstrous sandworms, a new, more persistent threat has emerged: other players. Yes, the griefers are back, and in 2026, they've evolved. No longer content with hunting each other in the designated PvP zones, these creative nuisances have declared open season on the peaceful PvE community, employing tactics so annoying they'd make a Fremen spit in disgust.

For months, the player base has been vocally divided over the 'Deep Desert' endgame. On one side, you have the PvP enthusiasts who thrive on the chaos. On the other, you have players who just want to harvest spice, build their sietches, and avoid becoming worm food—or another player's trophy. The complaint was simple: if you don't want to fight other humans, the endgame offers little. Funcom, to their credit, has been testing solutions on their servers. But while the developers scramble for a fix, the griefers have been busy perfecting their art of irritation. It's a classic case of player ingenuity outpacing developer patches, and the result is a PvE experience that feels less like survival and more like targeted harassment.

The core of the new 'meta,' as players bitterly call it, revolves around exploiting the very rules designed to protect PvE players. Direct combat is disabled in safe zones, so the griefers have gotten... inventive. Their new favorite pastime? Harassing harvesters and their precious Carry-alls. Imagine this: you're peacefully piloting your heavy harvesting vehicle, scanning for the next spice blow. Out of nowhere, a nimble Scout ornithopter buzzes you, not with lasers, but with sheer persistence. They'll bump you, fly aggressively in your path, and generally do everything short of actual shooting to force you off course or into a fatal mistake—like, say, the path of a conveniently summoned sandworm.

The Griefer's Toolkit (Circa 2026):

• The Bump & Grind: Using lighter aircraft to physically collide with and destabilize heavier PvE vehicles.

• The Worm Bait: Herding or forcing a player-controlled vehicle directly into a sandworm's spawning zone.

• The Ground Force: Relentlessly dogfighting and maneuvering to push another flyer's ornithopter into a crash landing in hostile territory.

• The Psychological Op: Simply existing as a persistent, buzzing threat to shatter any sense of peaceful immersion.

Player reports from the subreddit and in-game channels paint a frustrating picture. One player, xxTRYxxHARDxx, witnessed this new strategy in action multiple times in a single night: a harvester getting mercilessly harassed until it was either destroyed or sacrificed to Shai-Hulud. The sentiment echoed by many is one of resigned exasperation. As one commenter put it, managing to escape a clumsy griefer attack in their Assault craft, "The salt on my server in DD today has been off the charts." It's not just about losing resources; it's about the violation of a perceived safe space and the sheer, pointless negativity of the act.

The underlying issue, as veteran players point out, is a fundamental design tension. When you create a vast, punishing sandbox like Arrakis and then cordon off parts of it as 'safe,' you inevitably create a border. And where there are borders, there will be those who dedicate their playtime to testing its limits. The griefers aren't breaking the rules—they're bending them into pretzels. They've moved on from simply dropping ornithopters on unsuspecting heads (a classic, if crude, tactic) to a more sophisticated campaign of annoyance. It's griefing with a side of psychological warfare.

So, what's a peaceful spice farmer to do in 2026? The community has suggested a few band-aid solutions while waiting for Funcom's official response:

1. Travel in Packs: There's safety in numbers. A convoy of harvesters is harder to harass than a lone one.

2. Embrace the Escort: PvE players with combat-capable ships are stepping up as voluntary escorts for mining operations.

3. Master Evasion: Learning advanced flight maneuvers to outfly pests has become a necessary PvE skill.

4. Document and Report: Clipping these interactions and reporting players for disruptive behavior, even if it's technically within the game's mechanics.

The ball is now firmly in Funcom's court. The test server adjustments are a start, but the griefers have shown they can adapt. The developer's challenge is to create meaningful, engaging endgame content for PvE players that doesn't feel like a consolation prize, while also designing systems that discourage antisocial behavior without resorting to heavy-handed restrictions that could dampen the game's emergent, dangerous feel. Perhaps dynamic events that threaten both PvP and PvE players equally, or bounty systems that make notorious griefers targets for the entire server. The dream of peaceful cohabitation on Arrakis seems more distant than ever, but if anyone can navigate these shifting sands, it's the ones who control the spice... of game design. For now, keep your eyes on the sky and your hand near the flight controls—you never know what's buzzing over the next dune.