Dune: Awakening beta players extracted nearly 9 million liters of blood last weekend, enough to fill 3 Olympic-size, extremely gross swimming pools.

Funcom released some deliciously grotesque statistics from last weekend’s Dune: Awakening beta, and let’s just say things got bloody fast. With blood being the game’s main water source in the early stages, players managed to extract a staggering 8,715,331 liters of it from fallen enemies—and possibly a few unsuspecting critters roaming the dunes.

That’s not a small number. That’s enough blood to fill three full-sized Olympic swimming pools. Of course, there are no Olympic Games on Arrakis (yet), but if there were, what would the events even look like? Sandworm rodeo? The slowest stab wins? Or maybe “hand in the Gom Jabbar box” until the Bene Gesserit grandma knifes you?

Even though the idea of three pools full of blood is stomach-churning, players (usually) didn’t drink it straight from the source. Instead, they dumped it into their blood purifiers and converted it into water. According to Funcom, players consumed 151,749 liters of water over the beta weekend—roughly the volume of two average backyard swimming pools. But in the harsh world of Dune, that’s barely a drop in the desert.

Despite Arrakis being a moisture-starved wasteland, the Fremen possess massive underground water reservoirs. In the original novel, Stilgar mentions “more than thirty-eight million decaliters” in just one cache, which is the equivalent of around 150 Olympic pools. And that’s only one stash—there are thousands hidden across the planet. So yeah, a few swimming pools’ worth of blood or water? Child’s play.

What else were players up to during the test? Well, dying—a lot. Sandworms ate 107,959, 65,000 shriveled up under the brutal sun (read: dehydrated and roasted), and just over 10,000 were obliterated by fast-moving sandstorms that roll through the map every 30 seconds.

As for the violence? Players massacred nearly 10 million scavengers, deployed 1.7 million Mentat turrets, and executed 2.6 million “swordmaster knee charges,” which are essentially airborne tackle moves. But the breakout star of the beta? The shigawire claw. Used for staggering enemies and scaling terrain, this grappling hook was fired 8.4 million times in just four days. Honestly, at least 8 million were mine—I compulsively launched myself at every opportunity, whether I needed to or not. Who walks when you can yoink?

Source: PC Gamer