Destiny 2 The Dawning 2023: How it Works

The holidays have come again, signalling the end of another year in Destiny 2 and the arrival of one of the game’s longest-standing events, the Dawning. While not as lucrative as Solstice, the Dawning has always managed to capture the attention of players with its unique aesthetic, wicked-looking armour and weapons and a unique event loop based around baking cookies. The 2023 version of the event is much the same as it was last year with a few key tweaks and additions, namely a big perk refresh to all of the Dawning weapons and a brand new event-exclusive Aggressive Glaive called the Albedo Wing. With plenty of cookies to bake and rewards to earn, it’s time to kick back and celebrate the holidays in style. 

Here’s everything you need to know about the 2023 version of the Dawning seasonal event in Destiny 2. 

Want more Destiny 2 content and articles? You can find more here on KeenGamer:

1. Destiny 2 Warlord’s Ruin Dungeon Guide | All Encounters Explained
2. Destiny 2 | All Warlord’s Ruin Secret Bonus Chest Locations
3. Destiny 2 | All Bones of Hefnd Locations in Warord’s Ruin (Ahamkara Bones)
4. Destiny 2 Season of the Wish: How it Works
5. Destiny 2 | All Season of the Wish Starcat Locations

The Dawning 2023 Start and End Dates 

The 2023 version of the Dawning starts in Destiny 2 on the 12th of December 2023 and lasts for 3 weeks until the 2nd of January 2024. To mark the occasion, the Tower will be decked head-to-toe in vibrant holiday-themed ornaments.

Speaking of Ornaments, if there’s one thing you can count on a Destiny 2 event for it’s a new slate of gear into Eververse and the Dawning 2023 is no different. This year, all of the Dawning Universal Ornament sets for the Warlock, Hunter and Titan are bird-inspired with clusters of feathers to keep you nice and toasty during these winter months. You can purchase each of these armour sets for 6000 Bright Dust or 1500 Silver (which is roughly $15). As for other wares in the Eververse store, there’s a collection of new Ghosts, Sparrows, and Ships which you may purchase if you’re in the holiday mood. 

Just like with every seasonal event, Eva Levante is waiting for you in the main wing of the Tower, ready to give you presents and gifts galore. She’ll be your main event vendor and the main source of Dawning weapons, gear, and more. Of course, all of this will disappear once that January 2nd date rolls around so be sure to soak in the ambience, play around in the snow and buy any wintery gear you want to get before the end of the Dawning 2023. 

How to Start The Dawning 2023 Quest in Destiny 2

To begin the Dawning 2023 in Destiny 2, log in during the 3 weeks that the event is available and head on down into the Tower. There, search for Eva and accept the seasonal quest simply titled The Dawning which will give you the new and improved Eva’s Holiday Oven 2.1 and take you through the process of baking cookies. 

Progression through this quest will also unlock access to Eva’s suite of Dawning Bounties, which are far more important than in any other seasonal event. The main reason for this is that they award both ingredients (which are used to make cookies) and Dawning Spirit (which is used to purchase upgrades and weapon rolls), two very vital currencies that you’ll want to keep stocked up during the Dawning. As such, you’ll want to pick up as many bounties as you can from her during this event period. 

Introduction to the Dawning

Eva’s Holiday Oven and Baking Cookies

How to Bake Cookies (Ingredients, Essence)

The main gameplay gimmick of the Dawning is baking cookies. Instead of having an event-exclusive playlist to delve into (ala Haunted Sectors), you’ll be spending your time collecting ingredients from the bodies of your fallen foes and turning them into delicious baked goods for your comrades. The way to do this is via Eva’s Holiday Oven 2.1, a Quest item which Eva gives you during the opening quest.

Inspecting the Oven will bring up the Recipes and Ingredients screen. Starting with the former, the Recipes tab contains a list of all the cookies you’ve previously baked, allowing you to easily access them without needing to go to the individual ingredients every single time. Once you’ve hovered over a cookie recipe, it’ll tell you what materials are required to make it as well as how much Essence of Dawning you’ll require. Dawning Essence is acquired from completing various activities and bounties throughout the system.

As for the second part, the Ingredients tab is where you’ll find a list of all your currently acquired materials and where you can combine them manually into new cookies. Ingredients come in two rarities – Uncommon Ingredients and Rare Ingredients – which determine how you can acquire them. Uncommon Ingredients such as Cabal Oil, Dark Ether Cane, and Vex Milk drop from defeating multiple targets from the faction who share the name with the ingredient. Meanwhile, Rare Ingredients can only be earned by defeating enemies via a special method: Sharp Flavour comes from killing opponents with Swords, Perfect Touch comes from killing enemies with Precision Hits, Bullet Spray comes from defeating opponents with fully automatic weapons and so on. 

Eva’s Holiday Oven 2.1

Once you’ve got the necessary ingredients and have combined them into the culinary masterpiece of your dreams, you can gift it to whichever ally the cookie is intended for. In return, they’ll give you some Glimmer and Dawning Spirit as well as A Gift in Return. The Gifts are the most important items as they are where you’ll be getting the majority of your Dawning Weapon drops as well as additional chances at this year’s Dawning Memento (which you can learn more about below). 

Lastly, it’s also worth mentioning that the Oven has a Masterwork feature. Once you’ve created one of each cookie, you unlock the ability to Masterwork Eva’s Holiday Oven, reducing the Essence of Dawning cost for all recipes to only 10. If you’re a veteran Guardian and have baked your fair share of cookies in previous years, you can Masterwork the Oven right away to benefit from the lower Essence costs. If you’re a blueberry, we recommend getting one of each cookie before making any in batches as the extra 5 Spirit you’ll save is a real game changer. 

Nice and Toasty

Snowball Takeover 2023

Another returning feature from last year’s Dawning is the Stasis Snowballs. These bundles of ice and snow are a special kind of throwable which Guardians can pick up. When thrown at a target the snowball will explode, dealing a decent amount of Stasis damage and inflicting them with the Slow debuff. This is a small, if fun, way of injecting the holiday spirit into a few areas of Destiny 2 where it may be lacking. 

However, compared to the previous years, the way of acquiring Snowballs has changed. Before, Stasis Snowballs could only be acquired some certain points in the Vanguard Ops or Dares of Eternity playlists. Now, though, kills with Dawning Weapons or abilities will create a snowball spawn point where the enemy was defeated, allowing you to go absolutely wild from wherever you want while in the Vanguard Ops playlist. 

Additionally, you can upgrade the potency of your Snowballs at Eva. For a certain amount of Dawning Spirit, you can purchase special Snowball Upgrades which do everything from increasing the Snowball’s Slow duration to dropping a Stasis mine on impact to even upgrading the Slow to a full-on Freeze.

Stasis Snowballs Galore

Eva’s Holiday Upgrades and Engram Decoding

As we just alluded to, Eva isn’t just your source of Dawning Bounties. She also has an extensive suite of Holiday Upgrades pertaining to everything from increased ingredients gains to Stasis Snowball modifications to Dawning Engram focusing.

In total, there are 12 Upgrades to purchase (7 Holiday and 5 Snowball). Each Holiday Upgrade will cost you 35 Dawning Spirit whereas each Snowball Upgrade will cost only 25 Dawning Spirit. Just remember to not confuse Dawning Spirit, the currency used to purchase upgrades, with Dawning Essence, the currency used to bake cookies. 

• Merrymaker: Receive a Boon of Friendship each day from Eva Levante. 
• Bountiful Harvest: Dawning bounties reward an additional random ingredient. 
• Essential Harvest: Dawning bounties reward a small amount of Dawning Essence. 
• Giftwrapped Exchange Ticket: Unlocks access to the Dawning Engram focusing option. 
• Limited Exchange Ticket: Unlocks access to the Limited Exchange focusing option.
• Pesky 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. 

Grandma Working Overtime for the Holidays

For players hunting down the new batch of Dawning weapons, the most important Dawning Upgrades are going to be the Giftwrapped Exchange Ticket and the Limited Exchange Ticket. Upon unlocking the Giftwrapped upgrade, you can start purchasing Festive Engrams from the Gifts of Dawning Present tab at Eva. These Engrams can be purchased using a Gift in Return and 10 Dawning Spirit and they have a random chance of decoding into any Dawning weapon. If you have a specific target in mind, you’ll need to unlock the Limited Exchange Upgrade so that you can select a specific weapon to decode your Engram into (this will also cost slightly more Dawning Spirit at 25 Spirit). 

In total, there are now 6 Dawning weapons which you can pick up during the Dawning 2023. All of the returning weapons have been given a facelift to match the current Dawning theme as well as a large-scale perk refresh.

• Stay Frosty Stasis Pulse Rifle
• Avalanche Solar Machine Gun
• Cold Front Kinetic Submachine Gun
• Glaciochasm Void Fusion Rifle
• Zephyr Stasis Sword

New Dawning Weapons

The highlight item this year is the new Arc Glaive the Albedo Wing. This is the second Aggressive Glaive to join the game after Season of the Seraph’s Judgement of Kelogorath, giving close-range Guardians another tool if they want something a bit more hard-hitting. Some of the standout perks this can roll with include the new Beacon Rounds perk which will let your Glaive projectiles track to targets, allowing you to dominate from afar and up close. 

All Dawning weapons roll with the Dawning Surprise Origin Trait. Rapidly defeating targets awards a Dawning gift which drops on the field as a small blue cube, with powerful targets counting as more than one enemy. Picking up this Gift will directly award the player with a 10% recharge to all of their abilities – Grenades, Melee, class ability – making it a pretty nice cooldown reduction perk if you’re in an activity with a lot of fodder enemies. 

The Albedo Wing Glaive

The Dawning 2023 Gameplay Loop in Destiny 2

So, now that you know all of the pieces, what does the overall gameplay loop look like for the Dawning 2023 in Destiny 2? 

1. Play activities to earn Dawning Essence and ingredients for your cookies. 
2. Once you have enough materials, use Eva’s Holiday Oven to bake cookies for your favourite NPCs. 
3. Give the cookies you make to their respective recipients to earn Dawning Spirit and Gifts in Return. You can then open the Gifts in Return for a chance at Destination resources, Upgrade Modules or Enhancement Prisms. 
4. Use Dawning Spirit to purchase Holiday Upgrades from Eva. 
5. Once you have the Giftwrapped Ticket and Limited Exchange Ticket Upgrades unlocked, use the Gifts in Return and Dawning Spirit to purchase Dawning Weapons from Eva, including the new Albedo Wing Glaive. 
6. Rinse and repeat.

A Warm Celebration

Dawning Memento

Similar to Festival of the Lost 2023, the latest version of the Dawning has one more surprise gift: a new Memento. It seems that Bungie intends to have event-exclusive Mementos as the main driver for seasonal events in the future. In case you’re unaware, Mementos are special consumables which you can slot onto any crafted weapon, granting that weapon access to unique cosmetic features such as a fancy name card, special tracker and, most importantly, a one-of-a-kind Shader. 

The new Dawning Memento fits the frosty, chilly celebrations to a T. Any crafted weapon you apply the Dawning Memento to will gain a nice new icy texture with certain parts becoming cracked and others becoming like soft snow. It’s a really beautiful Memento and a nice tradition carried on from the spooky, all-black Lost Memento from the last Destiny 2 event.

After unlocking the Dawning Memento for the first time via a quest, you have the chance to obtain more copies of it by opening A Gift in Return. However, be quick and efficient if you want to glam up all your crafted weapons as the Dawning Memento will only be able to earn until the Dawning 2023 ends: at which point, you’ll keep any Mementos you have on your person (or in your Postmaster) but lose the ability to earn additional drops.

Dawning Memento

Dawning 2023 Seasonal Event Card

Last up on the docket for the Dawning 2023 is the Event Card. As a mainstay of all current, and future, events in Destiny 2, the Event Card is intended as a way to reward players for engaging in the seasonal event with special cosmetics, additional seasonal weapon drops and more. 

As always, there are two versions of the Destiny 2 Event Card, one paid and one free. The free version is the one that most players will be engaging with and, for what it’s worth, it does give you some structure and some goals to hit during the event while also giving out some okay rewards. There are 16 Event Challenges available in the Dawning 2023 Event Card, all of which award free rewards and resources of varying quality:

• Hiera Hodos Exotic Ship
• Dawning Panache Legendary Shader
• Two free copies of the new Albedo Wing Arc Glaive 
• One free copy of Stay Frosty, Zephyr, Cold Front, Avalanche and Glaciochasm. 
• 45 Dawning Spirit
• 5 Enhancement Cores, 3 Upgrade Modules, 2 Enhancement Prisms, an Ascendant Shard and an Ascendant Alloy

Completing all 16 Dawning 2023 Challenges will net you the Star Baker Title if you don’t already have it from the previous two years. If you do already have Star Baker, you can Gild it by completing 5 new Triumphs which involve defeating enemies with Snowballs, giving Dawning Gifts to vendors, spending Dawning Spirit and defeating combatants with Dawning weapons. Additionally, acquiring the Star Baker Title is a required part of getting the Reveler Title, which celebrates all of Destiny 2’s seasonal events. 

Dawning 2023 Event Card

Upgraded Event Card

Of course, there’s also the paid track of the Event Card. For 1000 Silver (or roughly $10) you can buy access to the Upgraded Event Card. The Upgraded Track of the Event Card doesn’t give you access to any new challenges or exclusive features aside from a handful of special cosmetics which can only be bought with Event Tickets (these drop as additional rewards from all Dawning 2023 Event Challenges while you have the Upgraded Card active). 

After purchasing the Upgraded Event Card, you’ll instantly gain access to a small number of cosmetics. These include the Angelic Wings Exotic Emote, the Frostflower Exotic Sparrow and the Dawning Elan Legendary Shader. As for what you can buy with Event Tickets: 

• Ornamental Exotic Ghost Shell (7 Tickets)
• Slippery Patch Legendary Emote (5 Tickets)
• Festive Entrance Transmat Effect (2 Tickets)
• Tundra Guide Ghost Projection (1 Ticket)

The Dawning 2023

That was everything you needed to know about the Destiny 2 Dawning 2023. Just a reminder that the 2023 version of the Dawning runs from December 12th 2023 to January 2nd 2024 giving you 3 weeks to celebrate the holidays in style: before that date hits remember to grab all of the Eververse Ornaments and God Rolls you want or else you’ll be waiting until next year’s celebrations. Happy Dawning and happy holidays, Guardians!