Steel makes up the third tier of equipment in Dune: Awakening, and as one would expect, it’s significantly stronger than Iron-tier weapons and armor. However, it is also much more expensive to make, as it effectively doubles your water consumption on top of adding a new type of resource into the mix: Carbon.
While players may not necessarily need to upgrade their gear from Iron to Steel, they’ll still need the latter in order to make advanced crafting stations for better items. If you’re wondering how you can move up to this new tier of gear, here’s what you need to do.

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How To Get Copper Ore In Dune Awakening
Players can use Copper Ore to create many useful tools in Dune: Awakening.
How to Craft Steel in Dune: Awakening
To craft Steel, you’ll need to combine Water and Iron Ingots with Carbon Ore. By this point, you should already know how to get Water and Iron, and as for Carbon, you need to harvest Carbon resource nodes in Jabal Eifrit Al-janub and the surface above the Hagga Rift. Both are located just north of Vermillius Gap.
Carbon Ore nodes look much like the other mineral nodes in the game, except they have streaks of white crystals along their cracks and surface area. You’ll need at least a Cutterray Mk2 in order to cut through Carbon nodes, so make sure you’ve upgraded your gear before attempting to cross over to the northern half of Hagga Basin.
There should be plenty of Carbon Ore in the canyon in Jabal Eifrit. However, there’s also a lot of hostile NPCs in this area. If you’re going out for Carbon, bring a Shield and a decent melee weapon so you can protect yourself better.
You may want to harvest during the day while in Jabar Eifrit or Hagga Rift. The Sardaukar presence in these areas is high, and they’re going to make nighttime exploration difficult if you can’t avoid their ships.
Best Iron Farming Spot
You can get a thousand units of Iron Ore by circling around this area of Vermillius Gap. Grab your Sandbike and drive around the perimeter, and make sure to check the little valleys too. Remember that the better your Cutterray, the more ore you’ll get from mineral nodes.
Steel Ingot Crafting Recipe
- 50 Water
- 4 Carbon Ore
- 1 Iron Ingot
Steel Ingots can be made in a Small Ore Refinery, and crafting them requires double the amount of Water than an Iron Ingot. Because of this high Water requirement, we strongly recommend making a base or an outpost near one of the big NPC camps in Jabar Eifrit or Hagga Basin. Scavengers, Kirab Slavers, and Sardaukar troops will fight each other on contact, giving you the opportunity to take all of them down and harvest their blood for Water more easily.
Alternatively, you can build a base near a patch of flowers. Every night, go out and use a Dew Harvester to collect Water from the plants. This isn’t as fast as extracting blood, but it’s a worthy option to consider if you have other plans for your base.