It’s that magical time of year in Sol when Guardians come together acrossDestiny 2to celebrate the winter holidays. In-game that means the Dawning is back.
For 2024, things aren’t too different from previous years, ignoring all the bugs, of course. That said, the event features some lovely cosmetics both from the Event Card and via the Eververse Store. And that’s before even mentioning the breathtaking new dragon-themed armor set alongside other fun-themed goodies.
While The Tower is all glossed up with lights and snow for the holidays, Eva Levante sets up shop to begin Dawning celebrations. Players can visit old Eva, and she’ll serve as the main hub and vendor for the event. Primarily, the Dawning centers around baking sweets for the various NPCs across the solar system, but a slew of issues have stood in the players’ way. It seemsWeightgateandTonicgatewere just the start, as theDawning also has its own fair share of bugs. Thankfully, Bungie has worked out many of the problems, so they should be far less prevalent among players.
How to start the Dawning
To kick things off for the holidays, Guardians can head to The Tower and pay a visit to Eva Levante’s setup. Whether players have partaken in the Dawning before or not, Eva will provide a key item needed to participate in the festivities: Eva’s Holiday Oven.
If it’s your first time talking to Eva this Dawning, she’ll give Guardians a handful of ingredients and instruct them to bake Gjallardoodles for Commander Zavala. There’s the possibility that ingredients won’t be provided if players are visiting Eva on a second or third character. In that case, you would have to farm the Gjallardoodle ingredients manually before baking the cookie.
To actually start baking cookies, players need to interact with Eva’s Holiday Oven. This can be found either in the Quests tab of the Director or on the Inventory screen of the Character menu, next to the Tonic Capsule. Interacting with the Holiday Oven opens a separate menu where Guardians can decide what treats they want to create. you’re able to either create by recipe or via mixing ingredients manually, with no downside to choosing one option over the other.
Once players bake the Gjallardoodles, they can deliver them to Zavala in The Tower. As Guardians deliver treats, NPCs may reward them with an item called A Gift in Return. These can be opened in the Inventory menu and offer Dawning rewards. Returning to Eva will see the end of the initial Dawning Quest and open the event up properly. Talk to Eva again afterward; she’ll offer the Cookie Delivery Helper and Winter Night Quests.
Dawning Ingredients
To create each Dawning treat, players will need to combine two ingredients with 15 Essence of Dawning. The Essence of Dawning can be earned by completing activities around the game, from Patrols and Public Events to Strikes. The other ingredients are earned as an automatic drop from enemies and are automatically collected. The ingredients that drop depend on the type of enemy players are fighting and the abilities and weapons being used.
Rare Ingredients
Dawning Recipes
All of the ingredients gathered have one purpose: to be used in Eva’s Holiday Oven to create delicious treats for your allies. While the Dawning used to be a little tougher on players, recipes are all essentially available from the start. Guardians just need the desired ingredients to make something specific. After a recipe is baked for the first time, it will appear fully revealed in the recipe menu, no longer displaying as a mystery treat. There are 20 recipes altogether, with a new option even appearing in 2024 for Nimbus.
Dawning Quests
Cookie Delivery Helper
After players have gotten their initial bearing for 2024’s Dawning, Eva will ask for some help spreading cheer. The Cookie Deliver Helper Quest asks Guardians to bake and deliver specific treats for specific NPCs.
The first step of the Quest demands four different treats for allies across the system. Players will need to produce one Telemetry Tapioca, one Infinite Forest Cake, one Lavender Ribbon Cookies, and one Neomun-Pies. Thankfully, all of these confections use Vex Milk as a base, so it’s just a matter of heading into a Vex-rich environment and using a mix of Darkness damage, Solar damage, melee, and rapid-fire weapons.
Once the ingredients are obtained, players can bake their treats and then head out to Banshee-44 for the Telemetry Tapioca, Saint-14 for the Lavender Ribbon Cookies, Failsafe for Infinite Forest Cake, and Nimbus for the Neomun-Pies. Once those are all passed out, Guardians will get their next set of gift recipients.
For the next phase, we’ll be using lots of Ether Cane, so Fallen/Eliksni will provide the main ingredient. For Hot Crossfire Buns, players will need to defeat enemies with bows, snipers, scout rifles, or pulse rifles to farm Balanced Flavors. Gentleman’s Shortbread requires Perfect Taste, which can be earned via precision damage. Blueberry Crumbles needs Bullet Spray, which comes from auto rifles, SMGs, and machine guns. Finally, Eliksni Birdseed calls for Personal Touch, which is generated from melee kills.
The second batch of cookies will get delivered to another set of friendly NPCs. The Gentleman’s Shortbread is for Devrim Kay in the EDZ, Blueberry Crumblers are a favorite of Shaw Han in the Cosmodrome, and then The Tower hosts both Ada-1 and Hawthorne, who’ll want Hot Crossfire Buns and Eliksni Birdseen, respectively.
The third step only asks for two treat deliveries, and both include Cabal Oil. Aside from the main ingredient coming from the faction bearing the same namesake, players will also need some Flash of Inspiration and Sharp Flavor. Flash of Inspiration is earned by generating Orbs of Power, while Sharp Flavor comes from getting sword kills. The sweets in question are the Traveler Donut Holes for Ikora Rey and Vanilla Blades for Shaxx, both located at The Tower.
Step four has players going back to four goodies, using Chitin Powder as a main ingredient. The Hive are plentiful betweenThe Final Shape,The Witch Queen, and Moon content, so Guardians should head to one of those locales to earn materials. Players will need Finishing Touch, earned from Finishers; Perfect Taste, earned from precision; multifaceted Flavors, received by achieving multikills; and Electric Flavor, earned with Arc kills.
When everything is gathered, Guardians can bring an Ascendant Oatmeal Raisin Cookie to Eris Morn on the Moon, a Lucent Crunch to Fynch on the Throne World, an Etheric Coldsnap for Variks on Europa, and some Bright-Dusted Snowballs for Tess Everis in The Tower.
Step five will require three more tasty creations: Dark Chocolate Motes, Classic Butter Cookies, and Strange Cookies. Thankfully, these all use Taken Butter as a main ingredient, so Guardians will just have to hunt down Electric Flavor with Arc damage, Superb Texture with Super kills, and Null Taste with Void damage. Once made, the Dark Chocolate Motes are for The Drifter in The Tower, Strange Cookies go to Xur in Eternity’s Treasure Hoard, and the Classic Butter Cookies for Eva Levante herself.
The final part of the Quest will ask Guardians to drop off some Starwort Thins and Ill-Fortune Cookies to two ladies fromDestiny‘s past. For these treats, the main ingredient is Dark Ether Cane, plentiful with the Scorn-filled Episode. Elsie Bray will want the Starwort Thins on Europa, which means players will need to use Stasis or Strand damage to get Dark Frosting. Petra Venj, on the other hand, is in the Dreaming City, and her Ill-Fortune Cookies require Solar kills for Impossible Heat.
With the final two treats delivered, Guardians will be able to Masterwork their Holiday Ovens, and the Quest will also instruct them to do so. Players can head back into the Holiday Oven menu and go into the tab to the right of Recipes. The Masterwork process will reduce the Essence of Dawning cost for each recipe, and there’s no cost for the Masterwork other than getting this far in the Cookie Delivery Helper Quest. With the Masterwork complete, players will finish the Quest.
Winter Night
Once settled into the Dawning’s general groove, Eva Levante will offer the Winter Night Quest. This task familiarizes Guardians with the other side of the holiday event: snowballs. Snowballs appear throughoutDestiny 2content during the Dawning, from Strikes to out in patrol zones. Players can grab a snowball and toss it at foes to deal Stasis damage, with options to upgrade the snowballs further at Eva.
Winter Night has three main objectives, each only requiring some time to be completed. Guardians must defeat 75 enemies with snowballs and then defeat an additional 25 enemies using snowballs upgraded by the Stay Frosty or Long Winter buffs offered by Eva. Additionally, players must bake one Classic Butter Cookie for Eva to enjoy while they’re having those snowball fights.
Once the three tasks are complete, players can return to Eva at The Tower to turn in the Quest. The event vendor will reward Guardians with a Dawning Memento. And with that, the Winter Night will end with players one Dawning Memento richer.
The Dawning Event Card
Like many of the other eventsDestiny 2has housed, 2024’s Dawning has an accompanying Event Card. The Event Card has 16 Event Challenges centered around the holiday. Each Event Challenge has rewards; sometimes that means a new Shader, and other times, it’s materials. Either way, it’s worth knowing what the Dawning Event Challenges are and the rewards that are up for offer, as players will likely knock a couple out just participating in the winter festivities.
As Guardians complete Event Challenges, they’ll earn Event Tickets. These can only be spent if you choose to upgrade to the premium Dawning Event Card (or if you were lucky enough to get it for free while it was bugged). Seven Tickets gets you a Frost Dragon Shell to match your Ghost to that Dawning dragon armor. For five Tickets, players can get the Holiday Dance Emote, two buys a wrapped gift Transmat Effect, and one can be exchanged for an Astral Stasis Drake Ghost Projection.
Rare Dawning Rewards
Alongside the cosmetics players can earn through the Event Card, there’s a chance Guardians can get lucky when opening one of the A Gift in Return packages, which are sometimes earned after delivering baked goods. While these packages typically offer Enhancement Cores, Upgrade Modules, and slightly rarer instances of Dawning Mementos, Bungie added a few extra surprises for 2024.
As noted in aThis Week in Destiny communication, Bungie explained that there would be three new Emblems for the Dawning. Each has bombastic colors and features one of the three Vanguard leaders: Zavala, Ikora Rey, and Crow. Bungie noted that these Emblems would be fairly rare but that a community baking event would help tip the odds in players’ favor.
The studio noted, “As a new addition to the Dawning, this year we have hidden three new and exclusive emblems inside of A Gift in Return packages. They are very cool, but also pretty rare. But don’t worry: Eva loves us so much, and the festive spirit is so strong that she has found a solution: a community event that increases everyone’s chances of getting them. It’s the Dawning Bake-Off!” All three Emblems are available throughout the course of the Dawning, but players can increase the chances of making each appear for everyone by contributing and hitting community milestones. Each week, for three weeks, specific treats will be featured that contribute to the community baking event.
From the start of the event through December 16, Gjallardoodles for Zavala, Bright-Dusted Snowballs for Tess Everis, Starwort Thins for Elsie Bray, and Neomun-Cake for Nimbus earn community progress. From December 17 through December 23, Traveler Donut Holes for Ikora, Classic Butter Cookie for Eva Levante, and Dark Chocolate Motes for The Drifter contribute. Finally, from December 24 through December 31, Vanilla Blades for Shaxx, Lavender Ribbon Cookies for Saint-14, and Etheric Coldsnaps for Variks will be in the spotlight.
What to do with A Gift in Return
After you’ve been baking the ingredients gathered from your foes and delivering them as treats to your allies, you’ll likely have accrued a stash of A Gift in Return items as a means of thanks. These items can be opened individually from the Inventory page for generic crafting rewards, a Dawning Memento, or the rare Emblems discussed above. Otherwise, players can use A Gift in Return items to focus on specific rewards through Eva Levante.
Focusing through Eva costs both 1 A Gift in Return and 25 Dawning Spirit. That said, the Dawning Spirit cost can be lowered via an upgrade that is purchasable alongside Eva’s snowball buffs. There are a couple of stand-out weapons, including the new Minstral Lift, which can roll with the desirable Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch Perk combo.
Eververse Dawning offers
Outside of what’s available to earn through the Dawning Event Card, there’s plenty of other cosmetic swag on offer through the Eververse store. While it’s all optional and costs real money, some of the best event goodies come to Eververse first, usually even exclusively.
