Acquiring a sandbike is one of the first things you'll likely want to do in Dune: Awakening. These three-wheeled desert racers let you speed around Arrakis, cross larger stretches of desert without getting swallowed by sandworms, and they even protect you from heatstroke while you're riding them… somehow.
If you're following the quests, they will walk you through how to get a sandbike once you've progressed enough, but if you've chosen the game version with the entire tech tree unlocked, the info below will tell you how to build a sandbike earlier. I've also included some handy tips the game doesn't give you, about repairing your sandbike, making sure it doesn't get destroyed or stolen, plus an easy method of replacement if it does get totalled.
How to build a sandbike in Dune: Awakening
To craft a sandbike, you're first going to have to research the Sandbike Mk1 Assembly schematic kit in the vehicles section of the research menu. If you're playing the guided mode, this means you'll need to progress until you reach the Across the Gap quest which sees you ransacking Imperial Testing Station 2 and fabricating a sandbike.
For the actual sandbike, here's what you'll need and what it costs to craft:
- Sandbike PSU Mk1: 5x copper ingots, 3x Particle Capacitors
- 3x Sandbike Tread Mk1: 9x copper ingots, 3x Advanced Servoks
- Sandbike Engine Mk1: 5x copper ingots, 3x Particle Capacitors
- Sandbike Chassis Mk1: 12x copper ingots, 5x Advanced Servoks
- Sandbike Hull Mk1: 12x copper ingots, 5x Advanced Servoks
You can find a Sandbike Engine Mk1 and a Sandbike PSU Mk1 inside chests in Imperial Testing Station 2, along with the Advanced Servoks and Particle Capacitors you need to make each piece.
You'll also need copper ingots, but these are easy to get—just mine blue rocks with your cutteray to get copper ore, then research and use the small ore refinery to turn that into ingots. If you're playing the guided version, you'll already have done this during the A Touch of Civilization quest.
You'll then also need to craft or acquire:
- Welding torch
- Small or medium vehicle fuel cell
The welding torch is a building tool required to actually assemble your bike, while the fuel cell is necessary to keep it fueled—though this item will degrade as you use it like a power pack. You can craft fuel cells in the small chemical refinery, but first you'll need to research and construct it. You can also often find small vehicle fuel cells in scavenger camps and outposts.
Once you've got all your pieces, it's simply a matter of putting your bike together. Equip the welding torch and then place and attach each of the vehicle modules until the bike is finished. Now interact with the bike to open its mini menu and choose the fuel option to fill it up.
How to repair your sandbike in Dune: Awakening
When your sandbike inevitably gets damaged by some trigger-happy scavenger, you'll need to repair it by fabricating welding wire. Simply equip your welding torch, cycle to the repair function on the right, and then hover over the various modules of your bike to see their health. You can click to weld with the torch, repairing your bike and gradually consuming the wire.
Sadly, you can't repair your bike fully with welding wire—there's a red portion that remains—so be careful about taking too much damage. If your bike does get scrapped, i.e if you leave it near a bunch of angry scavengers or don't protect it during a storm, you can disassemble each of its modules into items using the detach function of the welding torch and repair them individually at the repair station once you've researched and built one.
How to protect your sandbike in Dune: Awakening
If you leave your sandbike lying around while you're logged out or off exploring, it's going to get wrecked. Either another player will steal your bike or a sandstorm will roll in and smash it up. You have two main options if you want to avoid this:
- Build a garage in your base so your sandbike is locked behind a door and protected from storms.
- Research and craft the vehicle backup tool and store your bike within it. If your bike is wrecked, you also still store it and bring it back to base with you.
The first option is the best if you're always going to be heading back to your base. Provided you keep it powered with fuel cells, random passersby won't be able to just wander inside and take it. This option also lets you keep your sandbike inventory module attached with stuff inside.
The second option is better if you're out exploring and need to log off. If you equip the vehicle backup tool, you can simply vanish the bike into your inventory, and restore it later on when you return. The only downside to this is that you can't store a vehicle with items in its inventory, which means that if you have a sandbike storage module attached, you'll have to empty it out—very annoying if you've got no space to pick anything up.
Can you steal sandbikes in Dune: Awakening?
Once you leave Hagga Basin South and use your own sandbike to cross the sands to the more northerly regions, you can sometimes find sandbikes at settlements that you can claim ownership of. At The Anvil in Eastern Vermillius Gap, I've frequently found unclaimed sandbikes in the sandbike hangar—the space marked with a bike hologram on the east side of the outpost.
It's unclear whether these are player vehicles that have spawned there, or those that have simply been abandoned for whatever reason. Either way, it's a great method of getting a bike if yours has been destroyed. If you can get a lift across the sands with a friend—you can craft a second seat module for the sandbike—or find a way on foot, you could potentially grab a free sandbike without ever having to bother crafting one.
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