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Destiny 2’swinter event is here. The Dawning infuses some festive cheer into Destiny 2’s various PvE and PvP activities, adding snowball throwable items and a suite of currency items you may exchange for gift bags. If you’re looking for a good source of Masterwork materials or weapons, the Dawning is the perfect time to jump in.
This event has seen some minor changes this year, notably the introduction of Dawning Engrams and focusing options at Eva Levante. For both New Lights and veteran Guardians, this guide will cover everything you need to know about this year’s Dawning winter event.
What Is The Dawning?
The Dawning is a holiday event that runs fromDecember 12 to January 2.Guardians get to spread festive cheer by turning slain enemies into delicious treats. Gift these treats to your favorite NPC, and you’ll be handsomely rewarded with Dawning Gift bundles which contain Masterwork materials, event currencies, and exclusive Dawning Engrams.
Unlike most quarterly holiday events, the Dawning doesn’t impose any loadout restrictions to receive rewards. You don’t need to equip a mask or specific class item to receive new rewards.Simply kill enemies, bake treats, and earn rewards.It’s effectively a bonus loot event with some unique weapons to chase. This year’s Dawning also addeda new Dawning Mementoyou can earn.
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The Dawning Quest Guide
When you first login during the Dawning,head to the Tower and speak with Eva Levante.She serves as your main contact for this event and is where you’ll purchase most Dawning items from. She will give you “The Dawning” quest to start the event, asking you to bake some Gjallardoodle cookies for Zavala. The quest steps are quite straightforward:
If done correctly, Zavala will give you a Dawning Gift when you next speak with him.You can find and open your Dawning Gifts from the Inventory tab.These bags grant Masterwork Materials, gear from the world loot pool, and Dawning Engrams.
Decrypting Dawning Engrams has a small chance of dropping a Dawning Memento.
Now that you’ve spread some holiday cheer, it’s time to speak with Eva once more. She will give youDawning Spiritas thanks. This is a currency used to purchase new upgrades from Eva, enhancing your baking and snowball-making skills. Purchase the first upgrade, Merrymaker, to finish the quest.
Eva’s Holiday Oven
All of this year’s Dawning goodies are earned throughEva’s Holiday Oven,a crafting interface accessed from the “Quests” tab of the Director menu. Selecting the oven will showcase all of your current holiday ingredients and known treat recipes.You’ll need Dawning ingredients and Essence of Dawning to make treats.You’ll get a handful of supplies at the start of the event after speaking with Eva Levante.
Once you have some materials, inspect the oven to open the baking interface. From here, you’ll be able to insert two ingredient types to craft treats.Combining two compatible ingredients will make a new treat, saving the recipe for future use.you may then bring the treat to the designated NPC in the treat’s description to earn a gift bag. Each NPC awards the same gift bag; there’s no best NPC to gift.
Masterworking Eva’s Holiday Oven
Unlocking every recipe will Masterwork Eva’s Holiday Oven, reducing the Essence of Dawning cost of all recipes from 15 to 10.
If you unlocked every recipe last year, you can Masterwork the oven immediately after acquiring it from Eva.
How To Earn Dawning Ingredients
Dawning ingredients are earned by killing enemies. The enemy type and method you use to eliminate them will determine which ingredients they can drop. For example, Fallen enemies can drop Ether Cane when slain, but if you kill the Fallen enemy with a Sword, they can also drop the Sharp Flavor ingredient. Mix up your loadout throughout the event to earn an even spread of ingredients.
An exact list of ingredient acquisition sources can be found below.
Bow, Scout Rifle, Sniper Rifle, and Pulse Rifle kills.
Auto Rifle, SMG, and Machine Gun kills.
Cabal enemies
Hive enemies
Scorn enemies
Stasis kills
AoE kills (grenades, grenade launchers, rocket launchers)
Arc kills
Fallen enemies
Finisher kills
Solar kills
Void kills
Precision kills
Melee kills
Sword and Glaive kills
Super kills
Taken enemies
Vex enemies
How To Earn Essence Of Dawning
Essence of Dawningis earned by completing activities during the Dawning. Longer activities typically award more Essence, but this isn’t always the case (notably raids). Generally, your best sources of Essence includeweekly campaign missions, dungeons, and ritual activities—Vanguard Ops, Crucible, and Gambit.
If you’re looking to farm Essence quickly, you have three options:
All Dawning 2023 Recipes
There are22 recipesin this year’s Dawning, the same as last year.No new recipes were added, so you can immediately Masterwork your oven if you completed this grind last year. Use the ingredient combinations below to create specific recipes.Creating a new treat will save its recipe. Unlock all 22 recipes to Masterwork your oven, reducing the Essence cost of all recipes from 15 to 10.
Dawning Spirit And Event Upgrades
Eva Levante has some ideas on how to spread holiday cheer, but she’ll first needDawning Spirit.This is an event currency earned by delivering treats and completing Dawning bounties. Once you have enough Dawning Spirit, speak with Eva Levante to browse your Dawning upgrade options. These range from unlocking DawningEngram focusing optionsto buffing snowballs found in ritual content.
Free Dawning Spirit
If you played The Dawning in 2020, you can use theStarfarer 7Mship to generate Dawning Spirit whenever you find Dawning ingredients. This makes farming for Dawning Spirit much easier.
you’re able to find this ship in Collections -> Equipment -> Ships -> Season 12.
All Dawning 2023 upgrades can be found in the table below.
Unlocks access to the Limited Gift Exchange focusing options.
Perky Presents
Dawning weapons have a chance to drop with an additional perk in the left column.
Perkier Presents
Dawning weapons have a chance to drop with an additional perk in the right column.
Dawning Event Card Challenges
There are a total of16 challengesin this year’s Dawning, most of which require you to bake treats and defeat enemies with certain elemental damage types.You donotneed to purchase the Event Card to complete these challenges.Each challenge you complete will award Gifts, Glimmer, and Dawning Essence. Complete all 16 challenges toearn the Star Baker title.
Dawn of the Dawning
Complete the Dawning introduction quests, “Bake a Cookie” and “Give a Gift to Zavala.”
Defeat combatants or Guardians with Stasis weapons or abilities.
Defeat combatants or Guardians with Strand.
Defeat combatants or Guardians with Arc weapons or abilities.
Defeat combatants or Guardians with Solar weapons or abilities.
Defeat combatants or Guardians with Void weapons or abilities.
Complete Vanguard Ops or Dares of Eternity activities.
Complete Crucible or Gambit matches.
Snowtruck
Spawn snowballs by defeating combatants with weapons or abilities in valid activities.
Best Dawning Weapon Rolls
Six weapons are up for grabs in this year’s Dawning event. Unlike previous years, these weapons are now acquired throughDawning Engram Focusing.As you unwrap Dawning Gifts, you will earn Dawning Engrams which can be decrypted into one of these six weapons. And thanks to certain Dawning upgrades, you can target-farm the exact weapon you want through this system.
Albedo Wing God Roll
Albedo Wing is a missed opportunity. Bungie unfortunately made this weapon an Arc Glaive instead of the Stasis Glaive many were anticipating. Nevertheless, this weapon does have somesolid perk combinations for Glaive enthusiasts, although it doesn’t push the envelope for what Glaives are capable of.
Beacon RoundsandClose to Meleeis an interesting perk combination. Kill an enemy with your Glaive, and your projectiles will begin to track targets. These projectiles will then proc Close to Melee, increasing your melee damage.Grave RobberandDemolitionistis a solid alternative if you want to auto-load this weapon, but otherwise, Albedo Wing is outclassed by other Glaives.
Avalanche God Roll
Avalanche is a great Machine Gun for newcomers and returning players alike. This 450 RPM Solar MG has a solid perk pool for slaying adds and majors alike.SubsistenceandIncandescentis a fan-favorite perk for clearing adds, causing targets to explode on death while partially refilling your magazine. For more DPS against Champions and majors,Rewind RoundsandTarget Lockare also great options.
PvP players should use Grenade Launchers or Rocket Launchers instead, but Avalanche can get the job done.Dynamic Sway ReductionandVorpal Weaponwill make this weapon feel consistent across all ranges.
Cold Front God Roll
Cold Front’s garbage stats yet again ruin an otherwise solid SMG. This weapon has a shockingly bad 7 stability, the worst in its class, and a middling 40 range.Stats for All,One for All,andFrenzyare the only perks worth considering in PvE, as each perk directly fixes some issue Cold Comfort has.
For PvP, forget it.Perpetual MotionandRampageis as good as you’ll get, but that isn’t anywhere near good enough to warrant farming for Cold Front specifically. If you love SMGs, look elsewhere.
Glacioclasm God Roll
Glacioclasm is a High-Impact Fusion Rifle that deals Void damage. This weapon was notorious for cross-mapping players in the Crucible back in Forsaken, and it was technically possible last year thanks to Kickstart and Liquid Coils, but that playstyle has finally been put to rest.
While you can’t get Kickstart on Glacioclasm anymore, this weapon can getSlideshotandSuccessful Warm-Up.With the right perks, Slideshot will max your range stat and greatly increase your stability, making this gun a straight laser. Successful Warm-Up will then morph it into a Rapid-Fire Fusion for a few seconds after you land a kill. So long as you have ammo, this gun is a straight monster in PvP.
PvE players can also find success with Glacioclasm.SubsistenceandReservoir Burstreturns from last year, allowing you to repeatedly proc Reservoir Burst if you can keep killing enemies. If you care more about boss DPS,OverflowandControlled Burstcan also roll on Glacioclasm this year, making this agreat alternative to The Eremite and Cartesian Coordinate.
Stay Frosty God Roll
Fans of Lightweight Pulse Rifles should keep Stay Frosty on their radar. This Stasis Pulse Rifle has some great perk combinations this year that highly bias PvP play. PvE players can useEnlightened ActionandHeadstonefor a solid workhorse Primary in ritual content. Headstone’s crystal detonation can proc Enlightened Action, greatly improving your reload speed and handling after a Headstone shatter.
Crucible players will need a 5/5 roll, but this gun is quite strong if you manage to get the right perks.EncoreandKill Clipis our recommendation, greatly enhancing your range, stability, accuracy, and optimal TTK after a kill. Kill Clip will dorp the gun’s TTK to 0.53s against T9 Guardians and under. If you hate Resilience gates or tend to miss your shots, giveDesperadoa try instead. Your optimal TTK will slightly decrease, but Stay Frosty will be far more forgiving.
Kill Clip OR Desperado
Zephyr God Roll
Zephyr is the only Stasis Sword in Destiny 2 currently, which makes it the only weapon that can roll withCold Steel.This makes your blade inflict Slow stacks with each strike, capable of freezing targets outright with consecutive hits. Pair it withTireless Bladefor a solid utility weapon. You can also opt forChain Reactionif you don’t care for Cold Steel, but at that rate, you might as well use a different Sword.
