The Dawning is here, bringing some holiday cheer and lots of cookies to Destiny 2. Like the Halloween-themed Festival of the Lost, The Dawning is special seasonal event that brings its own activities, materials, and rewards. This year, the event will last four weeks, giving you plenty of time to revel in the festivities. Here’s everything you need to know to get the most out of The Dawning.
How does The Dawning work?
When you first boot up the game, head straight to the tower and jump on top of the Eververse kiosk. You’ll find a new vendor here, the ever-cheerful Eva Levante. Talk to her to receive a whole bunch of quests.
Let’s start with the basics. The premise of the entire event is that you need to gather ingredients that will let you bake cookies and other treats, which can be delivered to different vendors around the game in exchange for loot.
In order to do that, you’ll need to use Eva’s Holiday Oven 2.0, which will appear in your Quests tab. Inspect it, and you’ll be able to start baking. To make a treat, you’ll need three things: enemy-based ingredients, kill-based ingredients, and 15 Essence of Dawn. Once you have all of those, you can throw them into the machine and craft. At first, you won’t know any recipes, so you’re expected to do some trial and error to figure out what you’re making.
The other important aspect of this year’s event are Eva’s bounties. These can grant you different things, from specific ingredients to Essences of Dawn. However, the main draw here is that these bounties will grant double XP upon completion. So if you’re not feeling particularly festive, you’ll still want to pick these up, as they’re valuable when it comes to completing your season pass.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything, here’s the basic flow of the event. Pick up bounties, collect ingredients by playing the game, use ingredients to bake treats in Eva’s oven, and deliver the treats to vendors for rewards.
How do I get ingredients?
Ingredients are random drops that you’ll get from killing enemy types or killing enemies in specific ways. Each ingredient has a random requirement, and you’ll have a chance of getting one for completing it. Eva’s bounties can also reward ingredients, but the easiest method of obtaining them is to play the game.
Here are the requirements for each ingredient.
Oven Slot 1 Ingredients: Enemies
- Vex Milk: Obtained from killing Vex.
- Ether Cane: Obtained from killing Fallen.
- Cabal Oil: Obtained from killing Cabal.
- Chitin Powder: Obtained from killing Hive.
- Taken Butter: Obtained from killing Taken.
- Dark Ether Cane: Obtained from killing Scorn.
Oven Slot 2 Ingredients: Kills
- Delicious Explosions: Obtained by killing enemies with explosive weapons.
- Sharp Flavor: Obtained by killing enemies with swords.
- Impossible Heat: Obtained by killing enemies with Solar weapons or abilities.
- Electric Flavor: Obtained by killing enemies with Arc weapons or abilities.
- Null Taste: Obtained by killing enemies with Void weapons or abilities.
- Flash of Inspiration: Obtained by generating orbs of light with supers or masterwork weapons.
- Personal Touch: Obtained by killing enemies with melees.
- Perfect Taste: Obtained by killing enemies with precision shots.
- Bullet Spray: Obtained by killing enemies with automatic weapons, such as auto rifles and submachine guns.
- Finishing Touch: Obtained by killing enemies with finishers.
- Multifaceted Flavors: Obtained by getting multikills.
- Pinch of Light: Obtained by picking up orbs of light.
- Balanced Flavors: Obtained by killing enemies with sniper rifles, scout rifles, or bows.
- Superb Flavor: Obtained by killing enemies with supers.
Oven Slot 3: Essence of Dawn
For every recipe, you’ll need to put 15 Essence of Dawn in the oven’s third slot. Luckily, these are easy to come by, as you’ll receive them for completing different activities. How many you receive depends on how long the activity is. For example, you may get five Essence of Dawn for completing a regular public event, but closer to 15 for completing a crucible match. Some bounties will also give you these, but as long as you’re playing the game like normal, there will be no shortage.
What are the recipes?
Now that you know how to cook and where to find all the ingredients, what can you make? The oven will show you everything that can be made, but won’t show you how to make it until you’ve successfully baked it once. If you don’t want to spend hours in a test kitchen, here’s how to make everything and who you need to deliver it to.
- Vanilla Blades (Shaxx): Cabal Oil + Sharp Flavor
- Gjallardoodles (Zavala): Ether Cane + Delicious Explosion
- Traveler Donut Holes (Ikora): Cabal Oil + Flash of Inspiration
- Chocolate Ship Cookies (Amanda Holiday): Cabal Oil + Null Taste
- Telemetry Tapioca (Banshee-44): Vex Milk, Bullet Spray
- Elinski Birdseed (Hawthorne): Ether Cane + Personal Touch
- Gentleman’s Shortbread (Devrim Kay): Ether Cane + Perfect Taste
- Alkane Dragée Cookies (Sloane): Chitin Powder + Bullet Spray
- Infinite Forest Cake (Failsafe): Vex Milk + Impossible Heat
- Fractal Rolls (Brother Vance): Vex Milk + Pinch of Light
- Radiolarian Pudding (Asher Mir): Vex Milk + Electric Flavor
- Javelin Mooncake (Ana Bray): Chitin Powder + Sharp Flavor
- Dark Chocolate Motes (The Drifter): Taken Butter + Null Taste
- Candy Dead Ghosts (Spider): Dark Ether Cane + Flash of Inspiration
- Ill-Fortune Cookies (Petra Venj): Dark Ether Cane + Impossible Heat
- Strange Cookies (Xur): Taken Butter + Electric Flavor
- Thousand-Layer Cookie (Riven): Taken Butter + Delicious Explosion
- Fried Sha-Dough (Visage of Calus): Dark Ether Cane + Superb Texture
- Hot Crossfire Buns (Ada-1): Ether Cane + Balanced Flavors
- Ascendant Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (Eris Morn): Chitin Powder + Finishing Touch
- Hackberry Tart (Benedict 99-40): Cabal Oil + Multifaceted Flavors
- Lavender Ribbon Cookies (Saint-14): Vex Milk + Personal Touch
Remember that you’ll need 15 Essence of Dawn to create each recipe, but there is a way to reduce that number. If you bake every recipe, you’ll turn your oven into a masterwork item, which will make it so you only need to spend 10 Essence of Dawn per recipe.
What are the rewards?
The Dawning’s rewards are largely cosmetic, but you’ll get one new gun for starting the quest. After you talk to Eva, she’ll task you with creating a treat for Zavala. Bake it and deliver it to him and you’ll receive a present. Go to your consumables tab, open it, and you’ll receive Cold Front, a wintery submachine gun.
Otherwise, the main objective of The Dawning is to get Alpine Dash, an exotic sparrow. To complete this, you’ll need to bake 50 treats, including Fractal Rolls for Brother Vance and Dark Chocolate Motes for The Drifter. You’ll also be able to upgrade the sparrow by completing additional quests available from Ava, which will require you to bake even more treats.
The good news is that progress from last year carries over here, so if you baked a lot of things in 2018, you’ll see you’ve already progressed towards your goals.
If you missed last year’s festivities, you’ll also get a chance to obtain Avalanche, a machine gun that was only available through the 2018 event. Plus, Ava will give you a quest that lets you obtain last year’s Dawning Cheer exotic sparrow, as well.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Destiny event without a whole load of new cosmetic items available from Eververse. If you want special holiday themed emotes or transmat effects, you can always treat yourself by plopping down some real-world cash.
Want to know more about the latest Destiny 2 challenges? Here’s several of our most recent guides.
- How to unlock and use Destiny 2 Season of Dawn obelisks
- How to acquire Destiny 2’s Lantern of Osiris
- How to earn Destiny 2’s Leviathan’s Breath exotic weapon
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