Master the Shotgun Trooper in Dune: Awakening with this guide. This build combines aggressive verticality with devastating close-range firepower. Dive into its skills, weapons, armor, and strategies as you keep reading, and transform your chosen class into an overwhelming force.

Dune: Awakening Trooper Overview

The Trooper is the unyielding backbone of every military might of each Great House in Dune: Awakening. This class is a master of both offense and movement, using skills and tools like the Shigawire Cable for traversing terrains and overwhelming opponents. As a Shotgun Trooper, you’re the embodiment of disciplined application of power and the linchpin of any imperial army.

Shotgun Trooper Skills & Abilities

Gunnery

• Ranged Damage: Your time spent practicing your aim leads to bonus damage using all ranged weapons.
• Disruptor Damage: Using steady hands, you are able to guide the disruptor's rapid-fire darts more effectively to their target, thus increasing your damage.
• Center of Mass: You've been taught to shoot where you are most likely to hit, and you do it by instinct - increasing damage that hits the body, but reducing your damage via headshots.
• Underslung Agility: You have trained yourself to move faster while using heavy weapons such as the Flamethrower, Lasgun, or Vulcan GAU-92.
• Scattergun Damage: You have mastered the spread patterns of the pellet-firing GRDA 44 and Drillshot FK7 scatterguns, thus improving your damage with these weapons.
• Field Maintenance: You know how to strip down and clean your weaponry, slowing the durability cost of firing weapons and tools in hostile environments.
• Heavy Weapon Damage: The bigger the gun, the bigger the mess. Your skill with heavy weapons such as the Flamethrower, Lasgun, Rocket Launcher, and Vulcan GAU-92 leads to more damage when you use them.
• Gunsmith: You are skilled in the repair of weapons and tools, reducing the maximum durability cost of each repair.
• Energy Capsule: You pop an energy capsule, which fills you with a concoction of neurostimulants and pain dampeners. You become detached, allowing better targeting and ranged damage.

Suspensor Training

• Anti-Gravity Field: This device, when thrown, uses a modified secondary phase Holtzman field to negate the effect of gravity in a spherical area. You can use the sphere to lift enemies or prevent fall damage during traversal.
• Suspensor Dash: Your training with suspensors allows you to manipulate your flow of movement. Press the Dash button while suspended to perform a mid-air dash.
• Gravity Field: This device, when thrown, uses a modified secondary phase Holtzman field to amplify the effect of gravity in a spherical area. You can use the sphere to slow enemies and drain their power or decrease the speed of projectiles.
• Suspensor Efficiency: Your practice with the suspensor has taught you how to position yourself in the air to remain aerodynamic - reducing the power drain on your suspensor belts.
• Death from Above: While you are suspended in the air, any attacks using weapons will have a damage bonus.
• Collapse Grenade: This device, when thrown, uses a modified secondary phase Holtzman field to attract anybody within a spherical area. Those inside the sphere are drawn together and temporarily stunned, leaving them open to your area of effect attacks.
• Suspensor Blast: You manipulate the suspensor field generated by your suspensor belt - forcing it to explode around you with extreme force, pushing enemies back, damaging them, and impairing their movement for a short time. You can hold the ability to increase the damage dealt and time the blast release.

Tactical Tech

• Shigawire Claw: You use a wrist-mounted launcher to fire off a claw attached to a cable of shigawire. The extreme tensile strength of shigawire launches you in the direction of the cable. It can also be used to stagger opponents during combat.
• Explosive Grenade: You throw a grenade with an explosive core that detonates in a spray of shrapnel, damaging anybody within the radius. Though the shrapnel is incapable of penetrating a shield, the shockwave of the blast can still damage a shielded enemy.
• Battle Hardened: The inexperienced and untrained will flinch in the heat of battle, panicked and unable to remember their basic training. Trooper training prepares you for the realities of combat and allows you to use your abilities more often.
• Assault Seeker: A modified hunter seeker that will fly in a direct line and explode upon contact with anything. Can be triggered to explode with a second activation. Useful for situations where a thrown grenade is not precise enough.
• Attractor Field: Originally used as a training device to offset poor aim, the Attractor Field uses a modified Holtzman field to draw attacks towards its center. Attach it to an enemy, and any shot fired into the field will redirect into their center of mass.
• Reflexive Reload: When your blood is saturated with the melange, the actions that you have performed a thousand times become effortless. Whenever you throw a grenade or drop a mine, you instantly reload your current weapon – your hands moving before your mind can even think. (Requires Prescience)

Shotgun Trooper Best Skills & Abilities

Gunnery

• Ranged Damage
• Scattergun Damage

The Trooper's best Gunnery skills are generally aimed at improving the class's overall damage output. A shotgun/scattergun-wielding Trooper, in particular, should primarily focus on putting Skill Points into Ranged Damage and Scattergun Damage. Doing so enhances the Trooper’s general firepower for various combat scenarios.

Suspension Training

• Anti-Gravity Field
• Suspensor Dash
• Death from Above
• Suspensor Efficiency

A Trooper facing an enemy head-on can mean certain death. Aim to use the skills under the Suspension Training tree mentioned above to control the flow of battle in your favor. The Anti-Gravity Field, in particular, renders some combatants helpless, especially when thrown at blade-using Bene Gesserits who generally depend on a good footing on solid ground.

Tactical Tech

• Shigawire Claw
• Battle Hardened

Although many skills under the Tactical Tech ability tree are useful for the Trooper, it’s ideal to spend your points on Shigawire Claw and Battle Hardened. The former ability’s general use is efficient terrain traversal, but it can also knock an enemy off-balance. As for Battle Hardened, it reduces the cooldown of your skills, allowing you to use them more frequently than normal.

Shotgun Trooper Best Weapons

A Shotgun Trooper in Dune: Awakening can do well with the Adept Burst Drillshot Unique Shotgun/Scattergun. Find this weapon’s schematics at the Edge of Acheron, Sheol. Here, grab the ID band at the center of the outpost to enter the locked area containing the chest holding the weapon. Note: The Adept Burst Drillshot isn’t guaranteed to appear from this container. If it doesn’t appear, wait about 45 minutes for the chest to respawn and try again. Once acquired, craft the weapon in a Fabricator using the following materials:

• 340x Water
• 30x Silicone Block
• 35x Duraluminum Ingot
• 13x Mechanical Parts
• 33x Gun Parts
• 6x Heavy Caliber Compressor
• 9x Spice-Infused Duraluminum Dust

However, don’t heavily rely on the Adept Burst Drillshot for all combat situations. For instance, reloading this weapon in the heat of battle can certify your defeat. So, prepare yourself by bringing a secondary weapon to the battlefield, and the Scrubber can be a great option. Then, use a good melee weapon, like the Kharet Viper, if your enemy comes too close for comfort.

Shotgun Trooper Best Armor

Mendek’s Heavy Armor is arguably the best armor set for a Shotgun Trooper in Dune: Awakening. For starters, it has an armor rating of 5, making it one of the toughest sets in the game and only falling short of the likes of the CHOAM Heavy Armor set. Find the schematics for each component of Mendek’s armor set in chests at various locations, particularly in the Wrecks of Cycliadas, Dioedas, Eumenes, Hyperbatas, and Orsippus. Note that each schematic has a fairly low chance of appearing, so you may need to return to these locations frequently. Once acquired, craft each component of this armor set using its respective materials:

• Mendek’s Helmet: 20x Armor Plating, 340x Water, 23x Silicone Block, 40x Duraluminum Ingot, 13x Plasteel Microflora Fiber, and 9x Spice-Infused Duraluminum Dust
• Mendek’s Chestplate: 26x Armor Plating, 450x Water, 30x Silicone Block, 55x Duraluminum Ingot, 16x Plastieel Microflora Fiber, and 12x Spice-Infused Duraluminum Dust
• Mendek’s Pants: 23x Armor Plating, 400x Water, 26x Silicone Block, 50x Duraluminum Ingot, 14x Plasteel Microflora Fiber, and 10x Spice-Infused Duraluminum Dust
• Mendek’s Gauntlets: 14x Armor Plating, 225x Water, 15x Silicone Block, 30x Duraluminum Ingot, 8x Plasteel Microflora Fiber, and 6x Spice-Infused Duraluminum Dust
• Mendek’s Boots: 17x Armor Plating, 280x Water, 20x Silicone Block, 35x Duraluminum Ingot, 10x Plasteel Microflora Fiber, and 8x Spice-Infused Duraluminum Dust

Note: Prepare 100x Armor Plating, 1,695x Water, 114x Silicone Block, 210x Duraluminum Ingot, 61x Plastieel Microflora Fiber, and 45x Spice-Infused Duraluminum Dust As for the Shield, the Holtzman Shield Mk5 is a great choice, as it helps reduce incoming ranged damage while it’s active. Also, get the Full Suspensor Belt to enhance your vertical traversal.

Shotgun Trooper Build Tips & Tricks

Become a master at using the shotgun as a Trooper in Dune: Awakening by applying the right combat techniques. After all, obtaining the best weapons, armor, and skills is only half the journey to becoming the best of the best in this class. So, here are some tips and tricks to get you started in decimating foes with your shotgun:

Master the Vertical Domain

One of the most defining features of the Trooper is three-dimensional movement. Abilities like the Shigawire Claw allow you to conquer Arrakis’s vertical space. As mentioned earlier, the Shigawire Claw isn’t only for traversal, as launching it towards enemies staggers them, improving your chances of victory.

Know Your Shotgun

Remember, each weapon in Dune: Awakening has an effective range, including the shotgun or scattergun. As a shotgun-wielding Trooper, your job is to close the distance between you and your opponent to maximize damage output. Use your supreme mobility to flank foes and hit them at point-blank range, making you an undisputed fighter within the Dune: Awakening server.

Become the Versatile Combatant

Note that the shotgun or scattergun is ineffective against shielded enemies. The solution? Use a drillshot shotgun, like the previously-mentioned Adept Burst Drillshot, to “drill” through enemy shields. Alternatively, use melee weapons to cut through defenses.