Sometimes you learn things the hard way on Arrakis. Other times, you have learned to take the least amount possible to get to the job done. Either way, it was time to get some grinding underway.

So, I have that forgotten base that I seldom go back to. It’s got just a couple of chests inside and some blood extractors and other things that are powered down. I was kind of shocked that I had not removed it at one point. It, however, served as quite an important market on the map for me.

While sure, I don’t need a base to serve as a marker. It’s always kind of nice when you have somewhere in the middle of the map to hide if a storm is hitting or things are just going rather badly.

I ended up flying out to that forgotten base and stripping down. That's right, I was about to test just how safe farming the flour that was just across a bit of sand was. While it would have been smart to build my base right next to a huge patch of flour sand. I just could not be bothered.

I decided I'd keep my new Ornithopter safe. I ended up bringing a sand bike with me that I'd be leaving behind at the forgotten base. I’d use it to carry flour sand back to the base for storing it. Then using the Ornithopter to fly full of flour sand itself.

I then went on a massive flour sand farming trip. The thing about flour sand is that it tends to spawn in areas where a sandworm can attach you. For whatever reason, however, this spawn seems to be on the edge. Where most of it can be farmed without attracting the attention of a sandworm. I can only guess that some unseen underground rock layers are keeping the sandworm at bay.

I made quite a few trips back and forth between the flour sand and my forgotten base. I filled every single chest with the stuff. There was so much that I even left some to pick up another time.

Flour sand itself is used for crafting silicone blocks. I’d need so much of the silicone that I'd be making weekly trips out to this location and sometimes farming for an hour or longer. I’d even sometimes need to bring extra static compactor tools, as I'd break more than one farming tool so much of it.

The silicone itself is used in a lot of machines, armor, and weapons. It had also been up till this point quite the bottleneck for me. I just never liked standing on the open sand using vibrations to farm for a material. Thankfully, I had run into this spot by mistake, and I did not realize for quite some time how important that discovery was.

I then almost lost my shiny new Ornithopter. I had yet to do any repairs on it; that's how new it was. I decided to go explore areas of the map I had yet been in. One of them was south of the area I started in. I always wonder what was down there.

It turns out that region is called Sheol, and it’s filled with radiation. It also had crystals called Jasmium. I'd be needing along with a ton of aluminum to make my next tier of upgrades with Duraluminum ingot.

I ended up finding a pocket of the crystals I was looking for. They seem to spawn in pools of what I was sure was radiation. I even had a radiation alarm going off. I, however, at least thought I'd have time to farm a single node and then find a better way of going about things.

I landed and got out of my Ornithopter. The radiation warning maxed out so quickly that I thought I was already dead. I did not even set a foot on the ground before I swung myself back inside the Ornithopter.

I should be dead, just getting out into the open. I should be dead before getting out of the radiation zone of Sheol. Somehow, I not only lived but I managed to fly out just in time before certain death.

That would have been quite a sad night indeed. I had not even farmed enough to fully replace my Ornithopter if I had lost it. I also would have had no way of getting back to it either. Getting killed in Sheol was seen in my eyes as a massive risk.

You would think I'd be like nope, I'm not going back there. You, however, would be underestimating my desire to acquire Jasmium so I could refine it into the ingots I wanted.

Back at my base, I took my recently crafted Silicone blocks that were still being produced. Along with a huge chunk of the aluminum ingots I had remaining. I was going to make a radiation suit so I could go back into Sheol. I was just missing one thing.

I lacked enough water to do so. Water was my endless and true bottleneck to my production. It was an endless struggle during the early days. It was even a bigger issue during my later days when I ramped up my production and ability to acquire it. Much later on, I would sometimes be going through millions of them per day. For the time being, I was thankfully just 122 ML short of it.

Behind my base was a scavenger camp. I went up there with a blood extraction tool, and I filled a blood bag. It’s a shame they were not willing to just freely give me their blood as if I were some kind of vampire. I had to kill them. I then extracted the water.

Once I had enough water, I crafted the radiation suit and put it on. Here I am still holding the rather scary-looking blood extraction tool in my new suit. I was on a mission to get some of those crystals, even if it killed me.

The suit would buy me a little time in the Sheol region. Not a long enough time to want to sit around posing for a photo shoot. However, long enough to get a couple of crystals.

I ended up finding out these roundish outcrops of rocks tend to have three to six crystal nodes within a pool of radiation. So, I started flying around and mining up what I could. I then headed out of the region and recovered from the levels of radiation I had picked up before going back in.

Final Thoughts

While farming Jasmium crystals was quite a lot slower than flour sand. It was now at least possible. I also learned the hard way that the radiation suits take a lot of damage if you get shot at. As if having to mine in a radiation area was not enough, you had to deal with other threats as well.

I decided, for my health, to wait a little while before attempting another Sheol run. The last thing I wanted was to lose my Ornithopter and go back to farming the parts for a new one, only using a sand bike.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Dune: Awakening.