The Dawning 2023 has arrived, and it’s the holiday event in Destiny 2. It’s time to spread holiday cheer around the Tower, throw some snowballs and have some fun, plus we can pick up some great new loot and bake some holiday treats. Today I’m going to run through how this event works, check out the ingredients, recipes, god roll loot and how to farm Dawning Essence in this Dawning 2023 roundup in Destiny 2.

Lets kick off with how The Dawning works. The objective of The Dawning is to gather ingredients, bake cookies and distribute them to NPCs throughout the solar system. The Dawning starts today and finishes in early January 2024. The event is free for all players, and we’ve got some great loot, which includes a brand new glaive, plus we have all the classic Dawning weapons including one of the best Fusion Rifle in the game, Glasioclasm.

First of all we have to complete a short quest from Eva, which will give us the Holiday Oven, and some ingredients and we’ll deliver our first cookie. To get additional ingredients we have to go out there into the Solar System and kill certain enemies with different weapon types, and then certain ingredients will drop. We can then use the Holiday Oven as a reference for cookie recipes, and tick off the delivery of cookies to all NPCs. Follow along with the introduction quest from Eva and that will give you the basic gameplay loop of The Dawning.

Dawning Ingredients

There’s a couple of types of ingredient types – you have your common and rare ingredients.

Ingredients Source

Balanced Flavors Kill enemies with scout Rifles, sniper Rifles, pulse rifles, and combat bows
Bullet Spray Kill enemies with submachine guns, auto rifles and machine guns
Cabal Oil Kill Cabal enemies
Chitin Powder Kill Hive enemies
Dark Ether Cane Kill Scorn enemies
Dark Frosting Kill enemies with Stasis weapons or abilities
Delicious Explosion Kill enemies with grenades, rocket launchers and grenade launchers
Electric Flavor Kill enemies with Arc weapons or abilities
Ether Cane Kill Fallen enemies
Finishing Touch Kill enemies with finishers
Flash of Inspiration Generate orbs of power
Impossible Heat Kill enemies with Solar weapons or abilities
Multifaceted Flavors Multikills
Null Taste Kill enemies with Void weapons or abilities
Perfect Taste Kill enemies with precision damage
Personal Touch Kill enemies with melee
Pinch of Light Collect orbs of power
Sharp Flavor Kill enemies with swords
Superb Texture Kill enemies with supers
Taken Butter Kill Taken enemies
Vex Milk Kill Vex enemies

Once you have the ingredients, you’ll want to combine them in your oven to create cookies, which you can then deliver to vendors in exchange for loot, which is the basic gameplay loop of the Dawning.

Vendor Recipes

Ada-1 Hot Crossfire Buns Ether Cane + Balanced Flavors
Amanda Holliday Chocolate Ship Cookies Cabal Oil + Null Taste
Banshee-44 Telemetry Tapioca Vex Milk + Bullet Spray
Crow Bittersweet Biscotti Dark Ether Cane + Balanced Flavors
Devrim Kay Gentleman’s Shortbread Ether Cane + Perfect Taste
Drifter Dark Chocolate Motes Taken Butter + Null Taste
Eris Morn Ascendant Oatmeal Raisin Cookies Chitin Powder + Finishing Touch
Eva Levante Classic Butter Cookies Taken Butter + Superb Texture
Exo Stranger Starwort Thins Dark Frosting + Dark Ether Cane
Failsafe Infinite Forest Cake Vex Milk + Impossible Heat
Hawthorne Eliksni Birdseed Ether Cane + Personal Touch
Ikora Rey Traveler Donut Holes Cabal Oil + Flash of Inspiration
Lord Shaxx Vanilla Blades Cabal Oil + Sharp Flavor
Mara Sov Ascendant Apple Tart Taken Butter + Sharp Flavor
Petra Venj Ill-Fortune Cookies Dark Ether Cane + Impossible Heat
Saint-14 Lavender Ribbon Cookies Vex Milk + Personal Touch
Shawn Han Blueberry Crumblers Ether Cane + Bullet Spray
Tess Everis Bright-Dusted Snowballs Chitin Powder + Multifaceted Flavors
Variks Etheric Coldsnaps Chitin Powder + Electric Flavor
Xur Strange Cookies Taken Butter + Electric Flavor
Zavala Gjallardoodles Ether Cane + Delicious Explosion

You will also need another ingredient for baking cookies, and that’s Essence of Dawning. Here’s a few fast ways to get Essence of Dawning.

How to farm for Dawning Essence

For each cookie or treat, it’s going to take a certain amount of Dawning Essence. If you masterwork the holiday oven, then it’s going to be cheaper, so it’s worth masterworking your oven quickly. Dawning Essence can be earned from various activities around the solar system.

Sources of Essence of Dawning

Legendary Lost Sectors 15-17
Dungeons 9
Crucible Matches 10-15
Strikes 5-15
Public Events 5
Patrols 1

Public events are a decent method of farming Dawning Essence. The EDZ is probably the best location for public events, as multiple are running at the same time. Turning public events heroic is going to help you get more Dawning Essence. I’ll update the channel if any more efficient methods turn up after the first few days in the event. If you have the ship, Starfarer 7M, then you can put that on for more Dawning Essence bonuses, which are really going to stack up across the event.

For free to play players you can run Strikes, Crucible or Gambit. If you can get a good team together then Gambit is probably your best bet in terms of fast and efficient farming for Essence of Dawning.

Once you have baked the goods deliver them to the NPC.

How to masterwork the Holiday Oven

One of the first things you are going to want to do is masterwork the oven. This is going to reduce the overall cost of the Dawning Essence from 15 to 10. This reduces the cost dramatically, and is going to help you over the course of the event. To masterwork the oven you’ll want to create one of every treat. Once you have done that you’ll be able to reduce the cost of each cookie, and therefore get more loot.

Talking of the loot, let’s have a look.

Albedo Wing (Glaive)

The Albedo Wing is the new weapon this season. You can acquire this weapon from Event Challenges, weapon focusing, or Festive Engrams, which can be purchased using a Gift in Return and Dawning Spirit.

This is Destiny’s second hard-hitting Aggressive Glaive and can roll some of the new perks from this Season. This one includes the very new, very cool Beacon Rounds perk, which is otherwise only found on Rocket-Assisted Sidearms.

Stay Frosty (Pulse Rifle)

Stay Frosty is a kinetic stasis pulse rifle with a lightweight frame, meaning surperb handling and you move faster with the weapon equipped.

For PVE Tunnel Vision and Desperado and Headstone would be good.

Desperado – Reloading after a precision final blow increases your rate of fire.
Headstone – Precision final blows spawn a Stasis crystal at the victim’s location.

For PVP Killing Wind and Desperado

Killing Wind – Final blows grant increased mobility, weapon range, and handling for a short duration.
Desperado – Reloading after a precision final blow increases your rate of fire.

Zephyr (Sword)

Zephyr is a Legendary Power Sword with an Adaptive Frame. Launch a heavy uppercut attack. Heavy attacks are stronger with full energy. For PVE Relentless Strikes and Cold Steel / Whirlwind Blade would be good. For PVP Thresh and Assassin’s Blade would be a decent roll. To get this one you have to complete the quest called The Pidgeon Provides.

Glacioclasm (Fusion Rifle)

Glacioclasm is a Legendary Energy Fusion Rifle that delivers void damage. It’s a High-Impact Frame meaning it’s Slow-firing and has high-damage. This weapon is more accurate when stationary and aiming down sights. For PVP Killing Wind and Unrelenting would be good, whereas Ambitious Assassin and Demolitionist would be good for PVE. To get this weapon it’s a random drop from opening up packages from vendors during the Dawning event.

Cold Front (Submachine Gun)

Cold Front is a Legendary Kinetic Submachine Gun which is an Aggressive Frame meaning high damage, high recoil. For PVP Dynamic Sway Reduction and Thresh would be a decent roll and for PVE Surplus and Dragonfly would be good. To get this weapon it’s a random drop from opening up packages from vendors during the Dawning event.

Avalanche (Machine Gun)

Avalanche is a Legendary Power Machine Gun which is an Adaptive Frame meaning it has a well-rounded grip, reliable and sturdy and it deals Solar damage. For PVP Zen Moment and Tap the Trigger would be good and for PVE Autoloading Holster and Dragonfly would be a decent roll.

Weapon perks

Here’s some good perks to look out for this Dawning.

Deconstruct – Dealing sustained damage grants bonus damage against vehicles and constructs and partially refills the magazine. Damage with Primary ammo or against constructs provides additional progress. Constructs include barricades, turrets, Stasis crystals, and other objects created in the field. This perk description states that it partially refills the magazine, but we’d like to clarify that this pulls ammo from thin air, not reserves.

Attrition Orbs – Dealing sustained damage creates an Orb of Power.

Cold Steel – Powered Sword hits slow targets.

Beacon Rounds – Final blows with this weapon grant your projectiles tracking. Dealing further damage extends the duration.

Dawning Surprise – Origin Trait

Rapidly defeating targets awards a Dawning gift. Defeated powerful targets count as more than one.
Keep an eye out for Zephyr (the only Stasis Sword for now) with the Cold Steel trait. Also, note that the damage bonus from Deconstruct stacks with the Häkke Breach Armaments origin trait that you can select on Albedo Wing. This is alongside the Dawning Surprise origin trait that appears on all Dawning weapons.

Memento

We also have a new Memento this year: Winter Night. Pick up the Winter Night quest from Eva Levante for your chance to earn the Dawning Memento reward. Additional Mementos can be acquired from opening A Gift in Return once the first Memento is acquired.

Let me know what you think of the Dawning 2023.