Destiny 2 Solstice 2023: How it Works

Solstice is back in Destiny 2 for 2023. The yearly summer event has returned for another bout with the Guardians. Compared to some of Destiny’s other seasonal offerings, Solstice is one of the more rewarding ventures, with an entirely new armour set available for free for each class, alongside an unlockable glow for said armour. This year, we’ll be taking our fifth trip back into the EAZ for some Bonfire Bash fire and, of course, Eververse is filled to the brim with new things to purchase for either Bright Dust or Silver. The somewhat confusing Silver Leaves, Silver Ash and Kindling returns from last year, too, making sure that there’s a lot to remember during this event. 

Here’s everything you need to know about the 2023 version of Solstice in Destiny 2 including a breakdown of the gameplay loop, what different rewards and currencies there are and more. 

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Solstice 2023 Start and End Times

Solstice 2023 starts on July 18th at reset time. The event will last for 3 weeks until the 8th of August, at which point all Solstice armour, Ornaments, the EAZ and all Solstice weapons will become unavailable to earn until next year’s event rolls around.

Speaking of Ornaments, Eververse has come prepared for some summer fun with a whole swathe of new cosmetics and rewards for Guardians to purchase with Bright Dust or Silver. This, of course, includes the elemental glows for the 2023 edition of the Solstice armour: the base armour as well as the neutral white glow are available for free to any who are willing to grind the event, with Eververse’s offering 5 different coloured glows based on the 5 Light and Dark elements. You can purchase all Solstice glows for one character for 6000 Bright Dust or 1500 Silver.

On top of that, the Tower has gotten its seasonal makeover. Just like last year, the Tower grounds are filled with lush green grass, marble statues and standards flying high all over. 

Lush Tower Life

How to Start Solstice 2023 in Destiny 2

To begin the associated Solstice 2023 questline, all you need to do is log into Destiny 2 during the event period. You’ll have a new prompt directing you towards the Tower where you can talk to good old Eva Levante, everyone’s favourite holiday grandma, to truly start the Solstice questline.

Said quest is titled Celebrating Solstice and will you a basic rundown of the entire event. It will take you through the EAZ, introduce you to the Silver Ash and Kindling systems and, most importantly, it will give you a full set of the new Sunlit Solstice armour for absolutely free. The free armour is one of the best things about Solstice and this year’s offering is absolutely fantastic.

Upon completing Celebrating Solstice, Eva will give you another quest called A Guardian in Shining Armor. This quest is a bit more in-depth and will give you directions on how to gain the white glow on your Sunlit armour pieces.

Full Armour Set

Bonfire Bash

For the 5th year in a row, we’re making our way back to the European Aerial Zone, also known as the EAZ. Just like last year, we’ll be entertaining ourselves with the Bonfire Bash, an activity which lets our Guardians do as we do best: slay out and throw balls at stuff.

Once you load into the EAZ, you and your fireteam will be given 10 minutes to hunt down as many high-value targets as possible. You’ll be hopping all around the floating sky islands, taking out any enemy marked on your map. These special enemies are called Ignition Carriers and they’ll drop three Bonfire charges upon death: you then need to pick up these charges and hurl them at the massive bonfire at the centre of the map. Doing so will stoke the flames, increasing the bonfire’s height as well as increasing the amount of rewards you can claim at the end of the mission.

Build the Pyre

The maximum height the bonfire can reach is 30 charges and that will be your aim for every EAZ run. Do be warned that, while the charges do have slight tracking, they can be thrown off course or miss the bonfire if you don’t aim well enough. Additionally, the charges are on a timer once they are dropped from the Ignition Carriers: don’t manage to pick them up in time and they’ll dissipate, leaving you one charge shorter of that 30 charge goal. 

If that wasn’t enough, every 10 charges you throw into the bonfire will spawn a small Taken event somewhere in the EAZ. You must take these Taken out before you can continue your regular scheduled ball throwing, so haul on over to wherever they’re held up and get rid of them. 

After the 10-minute timer comes to an end or you reach 30 charges, you’ll enter the final segment of the Bonfire Bash. In the middle of the EAZ, a Taken Boss will appear and begin wreaking havoc. Your job is to simply take whatever it is out and claim your rewards from the blazing bonfire to signal the mission’s end. 

A Bonfire Bash

Bonfire Bash Rewards

Now that you get the just of Bonfire Bash, why should you do it? 

Well, firstly, it plays an important role in the main gameplay loop of Solstice 2023. Specifically, it is the main source of Silver Ash, a currency you’ll use to upgrade and reroll the stats on your Sunlit armour (more information on Silver Ash, as well as the various other currencies in Solstice, can be found below). 

Aside from the Ash, there are a few more tangible rewards in the form of gear. Completing a Bonfire Bash will cause the bonfire to spit out a shedload of engrams, each of which contains some sort of Solstice loot. Be sure to look around the entire base of the bonfire so you don’t miss out on any potential loot drops. As for what you can get, you have the chance to obtain: 

• New pieces from the Solstice 2023 Sunlit armour set.
• The Stasis 120 Hand Cannon, the Something New
• The Solar Slug Shotgun, the Compass Rose
• The new Strand Precision Rocket Launcher, the Crowning Duologue

The most important and interesting things there are the three Solstice weapons. All three weapons come with the Dream Work Origin Trait, where once per reload you will overfill the magazine if you assist a final blow for a teammate. The Compass Rose and Something New are from previous years, but the Crowning Duologue is our brand-new Solstice weapon for 2023. As the first Strand Rocket Launcher, it has some potential but it has very steep competition against the reigning champions of the RL meta. 

Crowned Duology

Solstice Currencies and Gameplay Loop

Silver Leaves and Silver Ash

Returning from last year’s Solstice are two new currencies used in the event: Silver Leaves and Silver Ash. These are important currencies to keep track of if you plan on engaging in the core Solstice loop of rerolling armour to achieve high stat rolls. 

Starting with Silver Leaves, you can pick these up from doing anything in the game. By completing any type of activity – whether that’s Strikes, Crucible, Gambit, Deep Dives, Dungeons or whatever – you will earn a certain amount of Silver Leaves for your trouble. Harder and higher difficulty activities such as Dungeons, Grandmasters and Raids will award higher amounts of Silver Leaves so keep that in mind for grinding purposes. Do note that, to obtain Silver Leaves, you need to have one piece of the 2023 Solstice gear equipped.  

Leaves into Ash

When you’ve gathered enough Silver Leaves, it’s time to turn them into Silver Ash. To do so, head into a round of Bonfire Bash. Upon completion, the Bonfire will spit out a certain amount of Silver Ash, consuming your Silver Leaves in the process. The amount of Ash you earn corresponds to how many Leaves you have so try and enter the EAZ once you have a substantial amount of Leaves to lessen the grind, somewhat.

Silver Ash is used, primarily, to reroll your Solstice armour. Just like last year, there are several new slots on the Solstice 2023 armour pieces where you can spend a certain amount of Silver Ash to reroll the stats on that piece. By spending the requisite amount of Silver Ash, you will completely reroll the stats on that specific piece, potentially allowing you to get a much better or more spikey roll. 

Reroll Using Silver Ash

Kindling

Of course, Silver Ash and Silver Leaves aren’t the only things returning from 2022. Kindling is used to upgrade the “potential” of your Solstice armour pieces. Each piece has a maximum potential of Tier 3, with each Tier increasing the odds that you’ll roll higher stats when using Silver Ash to reroll a piece. For example, a Tier 2 Helmet has the chance to roll 60+ stats when using Silver Ash; in comparison, a Tier 1 Helmet can only reach a maximum of 55+ stats when rerolled.

That isn’t the only thing Kindling does, though. Reaching Tier 3 Kindling on a piece of armour will activate the famous white glow on that piece. This means that to attain the white glow on the whole set, you’ll need to reach tier 3 on every armour piece. 

The only way to get Kindling is to complete seasonal event challenges in the Solstice Event Card. In total, there are 18 challenges which award either 1 or 2 pieces of Kindling, allowing you to beautify your entire armour set. Seeing as each piece needs a total of 6 Kinding to reach the Fully Kindled state, you’ll have to complete all event challenges that offer pieces of Kindling to unlock the glow for your entire Sunlit set (the Class Item glow will unlock once all the others have also been unlocked). 

Kindling Tiers

Solstice 2023 Gameplay Loop

So, what does Solstice 2023 look like from a gameplay loop angle? If you played last year’s Bonfire Bash, a lot of this should seem familiar to you: 

1. Gather Silver Leaves by completing any activity in the game. This can be Core Playlist activities, seasonal activities, Raids, Dungeons or more. Playing higher-difficulty activities will award you a larger amount of Silver Leaves.
2. Once you’ve accumulated enough Silver Leaves, head into the Bonfire Bash activity in the EAZ. 
3. At the end of a Bonfire Bash run, you’ll get a certain amount of Silver Ash corresponding to how many Silver Leaves you have. 
4. You can then use that Silver Ash to reroll the stats on your Sunlit armour.

Alongside this, you also have the Kindling loop to attain the white glows for your Solstice armour. To do that, you’ll be following this second loop:

1. Gather pieces of Kindling by completing certain Solstice Event Challenges from the free Event Card. 
2. You can then use that Kindling to upgrade Solstice armour pieces, raising their potential. This will increase the odds of that piece rolling high stats when you use Silver Ash. 
3. Upgrade a gear piece to maximum Kindling to obtain the white glow for that piece.
4. Upgrade all gear pieces to Full Kindling to attain the basic glow for the entire set, which you can then turn into a Universal Ornament using transmog.

Outside of the sweet free set of Solstice gear on each character, the main reason to run Solstice and Bonfire Bash this year will be the chance to obtain high-stat armour rolls. If that doesn’t interest you, you can still chase the white glows on the armour, as well as rolls of the three Solstice weapons that drop from Bonfire Bash. 

That Summer Feeling

Flare and Firebound 

Alongside the usual suite of activities and rewards, Solstice 2023 adds two special buffs that Guardians can acquire throughout the event. Those are the Flare buff and the Firebound buff.

While you have the Flare buff active, you will gain an aura for around 10 seconds that sends out a shockwave of Light. This will damage any nearby enemies, essentially turning yourself into a small pulsing death machine. Meanwhile, Firebound will give you faster health recovery and increased Super duration while it is active. 

You can gain both of these buffs by defeating enemies in Bonfire Bash. However, they also seem to be active in other modes such as the Strike playlist. Go out there and be the Sun, Guardians!

Flare and Firebound

The Event Card

Lastly, we have the fabled Event Card. It’s been over a whole year since the introduction of the system. The Event Card is a special triumph-keeping tool available for the duration of Solstice 2023, one which contains several unique triumphs and event challenges for you to undertake.

There are two versions of the Event Card available to players: the regular Event Card and the Upgraded Event Card. The normal Event Card is available to all players for free and contains a laundry list of challenges for you to participate in and complete. These challenges award the much-desired Kindling currency as well as other rewards. From the free track, you can acquire: 

• 19 Solstice Event challenges which will award the Flamekeeper Title upon completion.
• 24 pieces of Kindling, which is required to transform your Sunlit armour and give it the white glow.
• The Ephemeral Spark Exotic Ship.
• A Legendary Emblem.
• A code to purchase a special Solstice-themed pair of Sunglasses from the Bungie Store.
• 5 Enhancement Cores, 3 Upgrade Modules, 3 Raid Banners, Enhancement Prisms and an Ascendant Shard and Ascendant Alloy. 

This is the second year that the Flamekeeper title has been available. If you didn’t get it last year, you can claim it this year by completing all 19 Event Challenges. If you did get Flamekeeper last year, you can gild the title by completing several bonus triumphs, which you’ll find under the Flamekeeper seal. 

The Event Card

Upgraded Event Card

If you have some Silver burning a hole in your pocket, you can purchase the Upgraded Event Card for some additional cosmetics. For 1000 Silver, you’ll gain access to the Upgraded version of the Event Card: this doesn’t change or add any additional triumphs, but it does add the Event Ticket currency. 

Each event challenge you complete will now award an Event Ticket alongside its usual array of rewards. You can take these Event Tickets and exchange them for exclusive cosmetics on the paid track of the Card.

Once you purchase the Event Card, you’ll instantly be given a small number of cosmetics. These include the Liberated Fish Exotic Emote, the Sandrail Exotic Sparrow and the Arboreal Refuge Shader. Then, you can spend your accumulated Event Tickets on the following items: 

• Water Balloon Legendary Emote (8 Tickets)
• Flotation Exotic Ghost Shell (6 Tickets) 
• Hallowed Geometry Transmat Effect (3 Tickets)
• Bobbing Buoy Ghost Projection (1 Ticket)

Warlock Solstice Armour

And that was everything you needed to know about the 2023 iteration of Solstice in Destiny 2. A quick reminder that Solstice will last for 3 weeks, ending on August 8th. Make sure to fully Kindle your Sunlit armour and grab any Solstice weapons you want before that date rolls around. Happy Solstice, Guardians!