Echo Dunes

Senses

A silent desert at noon where you can see every sound you make, and the things under the sand can hear it.

At a glance

Kind of world	Senses
Serum in the arrival Box	2 ampoules
Native Serum stand-in	None: bring spare Serum
Quests	None

Screenshot comingecho-dunes-arrival

Rolling golden dunes at noon under a hazy sky, the weathered arrival Box alone on a crest

What happens when you arrive

Rolling dunes run to the horizon under a sun that never moves from straight overhead. There is no wind, no birdsong, nothing. The desert is completely silent until you make a sound, and when you do, you can see it: every noise spreads through the air as a pale ring, like a stone dropped in a pond. Something under the sand can hear those rings.

The rule: they hunt by sound

Danger	What it does	How to deal with it
Your own noise	Breaking or placing a block, hitting something, sprinting and jumping all make a noise. A hunter keeps heading for a noise for 20 seconds after it.	Sneak. Sneaking makes no noise at all. Plain walking on ordinary sand is quiet too.
Singing Sand	Paler patches of sand that chime under your feet as you walk, and every chime is a noise.	Sneak across, or walk around.
Dune Stalkers	Long, low, sand-coloured crawlers, blind. They lie burrowed out of sight and can't be hit. A noise within 32 blocks brings one up in a spray of sand and straight towards it. 24 health, 4 damage a bite.	Stay quiet, and fight them on your terms once they're up. After 10 quiet seconds they burrow again.
The Sand Worm	A ringed column of teeth taller than a church that swims through the sand. See below.	Get off the sand.

Monsters here spawn at full daylight, but never in torchlight: none ever comes up inside the light of a torch. There is no water, no caves and no ores.

Screenshot comingecho-dunes-ripples

A player sprinting across the sand, pale sound rings spreading from each footfall, a stalker bursting up from the dune ahead

The Sand Worm

The worm is rare (worms keep well apart), but you will know it when it comes.

• It feels you walking on sand within 20 blocks (sneaking is quiet enough to pass), and hears noises within 40.
• On the way in it sometimes breaches: its back rolls up out of the dunes in a long arch, plowing a wake. You can see it then, but not hurt it. Look for a running ripple in the sand coming your way.
• Under you, it gives one warning: about one and a half seconds of shaking ground and a rumble at one spot. Move. Anyone still within about 2 blocks of that spot when it erupts is swallowed whole: carried off in the dark, chewed for 1 heart every second, and spat out onto open sand 20 to 40 blocks away. Anything else caught in the eruption takes 10 damage and is thrown in the air.
• If you dodged, it stands up out of the sand for 5 seconds, biting anything within 5 blocks (10 damage) and hurling volleys of packed sand at anyone further off. This is the only time it can be hurt. It has 200 health. Then it dives and rests for 5 seconds before hunting again.

Safe ground

The worm only moves through sand. Sandstone, stone and anything you build stop it, so a single block of cobblestone under your feet is a refuge. It never comes up within 8 blocks of a Box.

Screenshot comingecho-dunes-worm

The Sand Worm erupting from a dune in a fountain of sand, jaws open, a player diving clear

What lives here

Rabbits hop between the dunes in small groups. You'll also find cacti, dead bushes and the odd fossil poking out of the sand. There are no structures: nothing stands on the dunes but the Box.

What to bring home

Find	Where	Why it's worth it
Singing Sand	The paler patches on the dune slopes. Any tool, or none.	Sand that hums when walked on. Take it home for a doorbell path.
Sand Worm Tooth	1 to 3 from a Sand Worm (plus some sand).	A trophy from the hardest kill in the desert.
Leather	0 to 2 from a Dune Stalker.	Useful if you came without any.

Serum and getting home

• The arrival Box's cache holds 2 Serum Ampoules.
• There is no native Serum ingredient here.
• When you've had enough of the quiet, step back into the Box with the Serum still in you and shut the door.

Tips

• Sneak everywhere you don't need speed. It is slow, but it makes you invisible to everything here.
• Ring your camp with torches. Nothing spawns in their light.
• Don't dig or build near a burrowed stalker unless you want it to come up.
• If the ground starts to shake under you, sprint sideways (the noise doesn't matter any more) and then stand on something that isn't sand.
• A bow is great here: a stalker comes straight at the noise, along a line you can predict.

Birds

Birds you can photograph for your bird log here. Open one to turn it round, watch it move and hear its call.

• Hush Sandgrouse: common
• Hollow Lark: rare

Everything this world adds

1 blocks and items (click to open)

Singing Sand

The traveler's tape

Every arrival Box has a chest by its door holding a cassette: the last traveler reading their journal of this world aloud. This is what they say. It gives a lot away.

Read the journal (spoilers)

The sun has not moved since I woke beside the weathered Box, and nothing out here makes a sound unless I do. When I do, I can see it: every noise spreads through the air in a pale ring, like a stone dropped in a pond. The stalkers can't see at all. They lie under the sand, and every ring that reaches them brings them up and toward it: a block broken, a blow, a jump, a run. Walking is safe on plain sand, but the paler sand sings under your feet, and that brings them as surely as a pickaxe. Crouch and you make no sound at all; I crossed every singing patch on my knees after the first. None ever came up inside the light of my torches, so I ringed my camp with them. When you have had enough of the quiet, step back into the Box with the Serum still in you and shut the door, softly.