Should you unlock the research menu in Dune: Awakening?

The fight for survival starts right away in Dune: Awakening when you're suddenly given a daunting decision between using either a locked or unlocked research menu, with little context about what it actually does. With crafting being the main focus of a survival crafting MMO, it's pretty important to make the right choice for you.

Below, I'll go over the differences between the locked and unlocked research modes, and how they impact your progression in Dune: Awakening. Spoilers, it's not actually as big of a decision as the menu prompt makes it sound, but there are still consequences to be aware of.

Dune: Awakening unlocked research menu explained

After you've made your custom character in Dune: Awakening, you'll be met with the option to unlock the research menu or stick with the developer recommendation of locking it behind progression.

Recommended for survival game experts, unlocking the research menu lets you learn schematics and craft most items straight away, so long as you have the necessary resources. However, you'll still have the story quests that guide you through most of the game's systems, especially in the early hours which serve as a tutorial. In this way, enabling the setting doesn't remove the emphasis on quests and story in favour of a more sandboxy, open-ended experience at the beginning of the game. Additionally, many late-game blueprints also have intel-investment requirements, which remain even with an unlocked research menu.

I chose this option and ran into two issues: you can get your hands on complex systems well before the tutorial introduces them to you, and you can unlock schematics for items you can't yet craft anyway, sometimes skipping quest steps if you've already completed them. It wasn't as hard or confusing as it sounds (or felt at first), but it's definitely a hurdle that survival game newcomers might struggle with.

For example, I wanted to immediately upgrade my little pistol for a proper rifle, so I spent my intel on the crafting recipe, only to discover that I needed a fabricator to actually make it. So then I had to research the fabricator and figure out how it worked by myself. When a later quest came along asking me to fabricate a specific item, I automatically skipped the step requiring me to research and build the fabricator.

That's where the locked research menu mode comes into play. By default, research is gated by quests. You wouldn't be able to research and craft that rifle like I did, even if you had all the materials required. If you're looking for a more guided and resource-efficient experience, this is the way to go. You'll unlock what you need in the right order and won't waste your research points accessing stuff that isn't all that relevant yet.