Dying by sandworm in Dune: Awakening is way, way worse than any other death you might face

Sandworms in Dune: Awakening are scary as hell. They're huge, they're fast, and they're summoned anytime you cross the big, sandy gaps between rocky areas in the desert because they can sense your itty bitty footsteps. Seeing the dunes shift as they tunnel through the desert is alarming, and seeing them burst through the sand and roar is downright terrifying.

There's another reason to dread sandworms in Dune: Awakening: if they swallow you, you lose everything you were carrying. Permanently.

Death by sandworm isn't like other ways you can die in Funcom's new survival MMO. Get killed in PvE combat and you'll drop some of your loot, but it'll remain where it is so you can come collect it. You'll keep all your weapons, armor, and gear when you respawn. PvP is similar, though other players can loot the resources you drop. In either case, you'll keep all your gear, though it might lose some durability.

But if you're eaten by a sandworm in Dune: Awakening, everything you were carrying is gone. And I mean, gone forever. There's no backpack or gravestone to retrieve items from: everything in your inventory that goes down that sandworm's gullet is lost for good. Weapons, armor, tools, gear, minerals, blueprints, it's all wormfood now.

If you're driving a vehicle when you get eaten and it gets swallowed? It's gone for good, too. That happened to me in the beta and it set me back hours.

Part of the problem was that I respawned at a trading post across the big gap between zones from my only base. (Why wouldn't it let me respawn at my base? Perhaps a beta bug.) I couldn't cross that gap without a speeder bike or I'd get swallowed again.

So, in just my underpants, without so much as a cutteray to gather stone and copper, I had to build a new base just so I could build a new bike to cross the game and get back to my original base. It was basically like starting the game over from the beginning, picking up resources by hand, re-crafting all my tools and clothes, claiming land, building a generator, putting up walls, and finally crafting the machines that would let me craft a new bike. What a pain!

I heard some players, the first time they were eaten while on a sandbike, were given new bike parts as compensation. That did not happen for me! I got eaten while on my bike twice, in two different betas, and I was not given a new bike afterwards either time. Either Funcom hates me or Shai-Hulud does.

There is one resource you're given when you're eaten. When you respawn you'll have a worm tooth in your inventory. That tooth can be used to craft a knife, apparently.

My advice: it ain't worth it. Make a knife out of something else. Avoid those damn worms at all costs.