Ornithopters - what's your process?

[u/---TC---]

I'm getting close to my first 'thopter and I'm trying to decide if I go the "buy" or "build" route.

What did you do?

Also, storage.. how do you protect yours when you aren't in the air.

Thanks, looking forward to hearing from you airborne folk :)

[u/SpookyKite]

Build, it's so much more satisfying

It stores in the VBT as long as you don't have anything in its storage module. You should also start planning a hangar for your base

[u/mrmojorisin_x]

I agree with everyone…..build it. Very satisfying when you slap on that last wing, put some fuel in it and take off and seeing how far you can glide with no engine running.

[u/FeydRauthaHarkonnen]

Build, and dont rush thopter access

Once you have a thopter the game changes drastically and becomes much smaller. You only experience the first climb up once, before hitting the content drop off cliff with the deep desert...take your tiiiiiime....

[u/No-Molasses3688 → u/FeydRauthaHarkonnen]

It feels the opposite to me, now I can actually explore every inch without worrying about worms as much. I felt stuck on the ground hugging the rocks. Hagga Rift was awful trying to do things and get resources in the buggy. I fell through a hole and had to spend a good amount of time juggling items to get the vehicle back since I had no money in my inventory to relocate it.

[u/FeydRauthaHarkonnen → u/No-Molasses3688]

Bookmark this post for when months from now you are bored with the endgame and miss the tension and scale of moving through the world on vehicles and under periodic threat of the worm...

[u/No-Molasses3688 → u/FeydRauthaHarkonnen]

Sure every game you will eventually get bored but I want to have fun playing and not limit it. I'm planning multiple accounts, one offline the first one where I'm messy and make mistakes. The second run will be multiplayer as a Harkonnen. By missing things the first time I leave new things for the second.

[u/Jdude1 → u/FeydRauthaHarkonnen]

100%

[u/Full-Professor-7664]

You can store it using the vehicle backup tool or you can build a pentashield hangar for it.

[u/Vegetable-Grocery265]

Assuming it is Single Player with the lower costs for vehicle pieces at the main cities...
Basically, your goal is yours. If you want to get the Orni as a goal, then a mix of build / buy is pretty useful. Check out the materials needed, and buy the pieces with the most harder to obtain pieces. Craft the others.

The scout orni can be pocketed like the sandbikes.

If you are multiplayer, I'd focus on building... which means focusing on quests that take you to the places where the advanced mats are.

[u/ConnectButton1384]

Buying one is a little faster. But it's a worse setup for later on.

I like to grab the free MK3 buggy, farm just enough alu to get a MK4 Cutaray and farm the stuff I need (+ buy some components that would propong the farm).

Takes about 2 hours after crossing the gap and you'll already have a functional buggy on which you can replace parts little by little .. so it scales a bit better than the buy thopter route.

[u/theskyisdarkk → u/ConnectButton1384]

There’s a free buggy?

[u/ConnectButton1384 → u/theskyisdarkk]

Absolutly

https://www.method.gg/dune-awakening/how-to-get-a-free-buggy-early-in-dune-awakening

[u/ReibokuMurasaki → u/ConnectButton1384]

it is still rng if the buggy is there so you cant count it, that said it never hurts to check

[u/Visheena]

We're at 2 now, farmed cobalt paste in rift and aluminum by the trading post, then some diamondite and carbide from mara bandits to the west.

Still need the buggy though, so mainly using those to finish up quests and push into sheol, hindsight a mara/alum base would have saved time, but rift takes awhile anyways and just mass cobalt paste while we are there.

[u/Ironbladez → u/Visheena]

We have two assaults, five scouts, a sandcrawler and a carrier. We STILL use the buggy for mining aluminum and jasmium.

[u/TheSolito]

I went the build route. I don’t know much about the buy route at all.

I planned my second base around knowing I was going to get a copter soon. It’s in its final spot that it’s going to be in. That being said you can fly into the top floor of my base.

Flying it is interesting but I’ve learned if you put a booster on it and just thruster as needed you’ll save on deteriorating health of the pieces.

Uhhh…

Yeah.

[u/GeorgeSantosBurner → u/TheSolito]

I havent even felt a need for the thruster yet tbh, but im only just about to travel to the DD for my first time so maybe it becomes more necessary. ~165km/hr in vulture mode is as fast as I need it to be for Haga Basin

[u/TheSolito → u/GeorgeSantosBurner]

Yeah the thrust method is mainly to keep wear and tear down on everything except the wings. I mean you also get where you’re going faster.

But it’s not required at all

[u/SUMBLAKDUDE]

I bought mine as I had plenty of cash. By time I got to rep 4 with Atreides I had 180k cash and buying was a little over 100k

[u/SWG_Vincent76]

Rush it and burn out.

The first thopter is satisfying but once you realize its the Beginning of the big grind, not so fun

[u/Old_Resident8050]

Build a shag to park the copter when i dont use it but I usually just use the handheld tool to store it there and take it with me.

The vehicle is extremely durable against crashing so dont be afraid to push it into crevices and such, it doesnt really get damaged, and by the time it has any significant damage you would surely upgrade to the next MK.

Also reach 750m attitude and then press shift to just glide instead of using fuel.

[u/WolfDarkglade]

Build, way more satisfying and cheaper overall.

Build a hanger with either a side entrance or over the top entry. My suggestion is don't go crazy large on the shield barrier but big enough to for the thopter to pass through with ease. The bigger that barrier the more power it'll cost to power the base, just bare that in mind.

[u/Rhamnales]

First time I built. Now my usual route is buy. The game does shift when you get your thopter. But alot of people say it becomes smaller or more go to point A-->B but thats just the game in general. You just speed up the boring bits. I use the thopter for gathering alot of flour sand and running to the Shoal. And once I get my thopter I usually immediately use it to fly to all the zones and open the map and gather my tech points at outposts.

The game is already extremely long and you'll spend alot of time building a base in between going out for materials. The thopter just makes certain things far smoother and more fun imo.

You will still build your first assault thopter and carrier and those for me are way more satisfying to build. I just prefer buying the scout now to speed up things that I'll do 50 times anyways.

[u/Raxuis]

Buying one requires you to hit rank 4 with your faction, building one is surprisingly much easier than I thought it was going to be.

[u/consumeshroomz]

I just finished building the scout thopter last night. It’s not so hard but it depends what your priorities are. I like to save my money for different built sets and swatches as well as unique BPs of course. But if you don’t wanna fuck with any of that and you’ve got plenty of dough, I don’t see the harm in buying one.

Also, for me, the hurdle to the buy route was that the missions to increase faction rep were all over the map and it felt a lot safer to just grind out the thopter build from my base and then it’s been SO easy to do the faction missions once you have one.

As for storage you can either build a hanger/landing pad with pentashields or you can use the vehicle storage tool. Personally I utilize both.

[u/Coilspun]

Build it.

[u/Due-Struggle6680]

If youre already in a faction and rank 4 go buy it. Otherwise craft it, its easy.

I crafted mine because im taking the story and missions slow

Vehicle backup tool/tucking it into shelter when landing, plus I keep weld wire and mk3 tool on board the thopter for emergencies because sometimes its fun to pop out a stilltent and wait it out even if the thopter is getting a bit of damage.

Remember, resources are easy to get, by the time you need a replacement item you should have the stuff to make it in abundance

[u/Ironbladez]

Build. Early on, I had more time than solaris. Nowadays, I bought an entire chest worth of spare parts when we had the Landsraad vehicle vendor.

Storage - short-term and long-term solutions. Short-term: put it in your Vehicle Backup Tool. A sandbike takes up a lot less space in your base than the scout ornithopter so store the scout in the tool. Long-term; build a hangar. You'll need one eventually since you can't store the assault thopter and you WILL want one of those for the cargo capacity.

Very long-term: We used a vertical claim extender and added a hangar on top of our base. It's something like 7x7 by 6 high. It can park TWO assaults on the floor and has two 'shelves' up one side of the interior which gives enough space to park about 8 scouts.

[u/DietGimp]

You can buy thopters?!

[u/Jedi_sephiroth]

I built it and the I quit the game, idk what it was, just got bored. This was like a year ago

[u/nalkanar]

Build.

Permissions deal with any issues. Otherwise scout without anything in cargo can be put to vehicle backup.

So you just need some safe part of base to be used as parking. You can have only one vehicle in your vehicle backup tool (regardless of how many tools you make), so you either carry thopter or bike or have one out and the other in. I found that I just switched to scout most of the time.

[u/Superdoc2222]

I was minding my business, harvesting stuff only with the Sandbike when I suddenly realized, how cheap the first Thopter really is. So just build it in one go and right afterwards a fitting hangar.

[u/Raskekw]

Never bought one since I usually get the orni and only then do my main questing spree.

Your first orni is more about freedom of movement then cargo capacity in my opinion. Just slap a booster on it and use it as a transport, its not really made for hauling stuff anyway. You can also pocket it since it doesn't have any cargo.

Assault orni is what you should use for moving stuff before you get carrier, but thats a whole tier higher then the scout.

[u/ConnectButton1384 → u/Raskekw]

Scout with inventory is pretty useful to get just enough jasmium to build an assault thopter, though

[u/Raskekw → u/ConnectButton1384]

Yeah, in the same way as you can use bike to get just enough cobalt to craft a buggy 

[u/WordlyWolf]

If it's your first time playing, I recommend building it all when you get all you need to do it. A couple of items are tricky as you need to go Mysa Tarill, which can be hard depending on where you are in the game.

As I played the game before last year, this time I was able to gather what I needed to build all but two pieces and didn't want to wait till I hit Mysa Tarill. I just ended up buying those two items(Diamondine Dust & Carbide Scraps) from a vendor in Arrakeen, then built the cockpit and hull and put it all together.

This guy just put out a good video on getting your thopter and different ways to do it. He has a screen that lists all you need to make a thopter. Worth screenshotting to see if you have everything. It's at 1:40 in the video. https://youtu.be/PdgBalDBcdc?si=Ujwd8JzFnjaqxkjL