Dune: Awakening — Swordmaster Build Guide

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Dune: Awakening

When you first make a character in Dune: Awakening, you’ll be asked to select from a handful of different starter classes. One of these is the swordmaster class. By selecting this class, your character will have an innate prowess with blades and other martial weapons, as well as access to a handful of unique skills that can help with melee combat.

If you’re interested in fighting in close quarters and becoming a master of the blade, the swordmaster is the class for you. So, if you’re diving into Dune: Awakening for the first time, here’s what you need to know to build a great swordmaster.

Level 20 Swordmaster Build

After you’ve progressed through the main tutorial of Dune: Awakening and have more free rein to select skills, you’ll want to tailor your build around the ing abilities, techniques, and passives.

Keep in mind, you’ll likely gain other passives beyond the three listed above. These are just the three most important for your build.

Abilities

Knee Charge

This is one of the starter abilities you get when you select swordmaster as your class, but it’s also one of the most helpful, especially early in the game.

With this ability equipped, you can take down early-game enemies in a single hit, charging them and either killing them or staggering them.

This ability doesn’t work against enemies who have a body shield.

Deflection

This ability is another starter swordmaster ability, but it’s also incredibly helpful, especially against large swarms of enemies.

With this ability equipped, you can deflect incoming dart fire from enemies as long as your stamina keeps up.

Foil

Because swordmasters are likely to be in close combat most of the time, you’ll also want to prioritize the Foil ability, which allows you to counterattack after you are struck in melee.

When you do so, you numb the enemy’s arm, reducing their damage output. This is a great Hail Mary move if you’re in over your head and need to escape combat.

Keep in mind, at the start of the game, you’ll only have two active ability slots available, so you’ll need to select just two of these abilities to begin.

Techniques

Dance Of Blades

The Dance of Blades is one of the most important early-game swordmaster techniques you can have equipped.

When you have this technique equipped, you’ll gain a significant damage boost to your next attack after felling an enemy. Your weapon of choice will glow green when the damage boost is active.

This is extremely important, as executing combos against swarms of enemies allows you to keep your damage output high. Play aggressively.

Disciplined Breathing

Unlike troopers, or other classes that focus on gunplay, the swordmaster is heavily reliant on their stamina reserves.

That’s why you’ll want to equip Disciplined Breathing, which allows you to recover stamina more quickly. You can also improve this ability twice to increase your stamina recovery rate further.

One of the worst things that can happen to a swordmaster is to find oneself depleted of stamina mid-fight, so keep an eye on your stamina meter!

Reckless Lunge

There are a lot of open areas in Dune: Awakening, meaning you’ll need to use your sprint ability constantly.

Combining this with Reckless Lunge, which increases your damage mitigation during a sprint attack, is a great boon for swordmasters.

Passives

Field Medicine

Particularly if you’re playing in a group, your party is going to expect you to take a decent amount of damage.

That’s why you’ll want this passive equipped, which allows you to regain more health than you normally would when healing.

General Conditioning

This next passive synergizes well with Disciplined Breathing, as it increases your maximum stamina reserve.

Again, as a swordmaster, you’re going to want to try to max out your stamina as much as possible so that you can stay in the fight longer, and not get caught out with no gas left in the tank.

Confidence

Midway through your Dune: Awakening run, you’re going to start encountering a lot more enemies with shields, which require slow blade attacks to penetrate.

Confidence is a passive that increases your damage mitigation when you attempt slow blade attacks, meaning you’ll be more successful when you make these attacks, and you’re far less likely to take critical damage that might take you out of the fight.

While the above abilities are only available in the swordmaster skill tree, you should also prioritize completing the trooper training, as you won’t be able to fight in melee for every single combat encounter in Dune: Awakening.

Best Starting Weapons For The Swordmaster

Early on in Dune: Awakening, you’ll only have access to short blades and daggers. While these are useful, you’re going to want to prioritize a long blade as soon as possible.

Within the game’s opening hours, you’ll be prompted to construct a Kindjal, which is a decent enough short blade.

However, once you progress to the Vermillius Gap, your first task should be fabricating a Standard Sword. The range on this weapon is slightly better, and you can hit multiple targets at once.

Plus, once you progress to the Vermillius Gap, you’ll have a lot of access to Iron, and the Standard Sword requires Iron Ingots to craft. So, taking this time to craft the Standard Sword is going to be the best use of your early hours in Dune: Awakening.