Destiny 2: The Dawning 2018 Holiday Event Guide

Each December, the Destiny player base gathers to celebrate the holiday season with The Dawning event. The previous years in Destiny had the Sparrow Racing League (SRL) which is absent in the sequel — although you might find some semblance of that in the Scourge of the Past raid. This year, however, the focus is on baking some goodies. That’s because the Tower’s grandma, Eva Levante, has returned and she wants you to make some tasty treats for various NPCs. Doing so will grant you a couple of powerful gear pieces and even an exotic Dawning-themed sparrow.

Shake And Bake

Once you visit Eva in the Tower, you’ll notice that she feels out of place. She’s not selling shaders or emblems anymore (those are already part of the Collections tab and Tess Everis pushed her out of business). That’s why she’s just around to give Destiny characters some tasty morsels. As for you, well, you’re out to gather the ingredients.

Opening Eva’s Holiday Oven in your Pursuits tab will show you how to mix ingredients. There are three types — common/green and blue/rare, as well as the Essence of Dawning. Thanks to Reddit users Jiberjiber and KrystallAnn, we now know where to obtain all of them:

The common/green ingredients are:

• Ether Cane = Fallen kills
• Chitin Powder = Hive kills
• Vex Milk = Vex kills
• Cabal Oil = Cabal kills
• Taken Butter = Taken kills
• Dark Ether Cane = Scorn kills

The rare/blue ingredients are:

• Null Taste = Void kills
• Electric Flavor = Arc kills
• Impossible Heat = Solar kills
• Personal Touch = Melee kills
• Delicious Explosion = Grenade, Grenade Launcher, or any explosion kill (includes Whisper of the Worm)
• Perfect Taste = Precision kills or sniper kills
• Bullet Spray = Automatic weapon kills (SMGs, LMGs, Auto Rifles)
• Sharp Flavor = Sword kills
• Flash of Inspiration = Creating orbs of light

Essence of Dawning drops from various activities:

• Only a handful (3-5) will drop from easier activities such as patrols, public events, escalation protocol rounds, and the like.
• More (10-15) can drop from lengthier or harder to complete activities such as Heroic Strikes, Gambit, Mayhem, and the like.
• Nightfall completions can even award 23-25 essences.
• Sadly, you don’t get anything extra from a raid completion. I’ve just cleared Scourge of the Past again and didn’t get a single Essence of Dawning.
• Certain bounties from Eva also award you with Essence of Dawning.

Uncommon and rare ingredients are not guaranteed drops so just be sure to kill the correct mobs with the correct weapons/elements depending on the ingredient you want to farm. Essence of Dawning can also be used to purchase these ingredients. Be sure to have a lot of these since each recipe will require one uncommon ingredient, one rare ingredient, and 15 Essence of Dawning.

Dawning Recipes

In order to actually come up with something that you can hand over to NPCs, you need the correct recipe or combination of ingredients. Thankfully, Reddit user Javano was able to discover and compile the correct combinations. Again, you’ll need 15 Essence of Dawning for each item that you bake:

• Gjallardoodles: (Zavala; actually the first recipe that you learn) – Ether Cane + Delicious Explosion
• Vanilla Blades: (Lord Shaxx) – Cabal Oil + Sharp Flavor
• Telemetry Tapioca: (Banshee-44) – Vex Milk + Bullet Spray
• Traveler Donut Holes: (Ikora) – Cabal Oil + Flash of Inspiration
• Dark Chocolate Motes: (The Drifter) – Taken Butter + Null Taste
• Eliksni Birdseed: (Hawthorne) – Ether Cane + Personal Touch
• Chocolate Ship Cookies: (Amanda Holliday) – Cabal Oil + Null Taste
• Burnt Edge Transits: (Master Rahool) – any two ingredients that don’t result in a successful combination (ie. Cabal Oil + Delicious Explosion)
• 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
• Radiolarian Pudding: (Asher Mir) – Vex Milk + Electric Flavor
• Javelin Mooncake: (Ana Bray) – Chitin Powder + Sharp Flavor
• Ill-Fortune Cookies: (Petra Venj) – Dark Ether Cane + Impossible Heat
• Candy Dead Ghosts: (The Spider) – Dark Ether Cane + Flash of Inspiration
• Strange Cookies: (Xur) – Taken Butter + Electric Flavor

Turning in these baked goodies to various NPCs will provide you with minor rewards. You could end up receiving non-powerful legendaries, or even some Masterwork Enhancement Cores. The main goal, however, is to bake as many goodies as since you can obtain the following:

• Six baked gifts (except Burnt Edge Transits) award Powerful Gear that’s +3 of your current Power Level (PL)
• Twelve baked gifts (except Burnt Edge Transits) award Powerful Gear that’s up to +5 of your current PL
• Likewise, those twelve baked gifts and three for specific NPCs (Hawthorne, Shaxx, Amanda) net you an exotic sparrow bounty from Amanda Holliday. You’ll need to repair the sparrow to unlock its perks.

Since these Powerful Gear can be acquired at your leisure (one’s a bounty, the other can be obtained from the NPC), there’s no rush to pick them up. This boosts the number of ways you can effectively increase your character’s PL. You’ll also be able to get extra enhancement cores, Avalanche solar machine guns, Dawning bounties, and more as you hand out gifts.

Repairing Your Dawning Sparrow

By far, this will be the most time-consuming aspect of the entire Dawning event. You’ll need to bake a total of 120 cookies to fully unlock all the perks for your sparrow. Don’t worry since it’ll count everything you’ve baked up to that point, so you can just craft the ones you have the most materials for barring the select few that are required. There are three main parts of this questline:

• “Titan & Warlock” requires you to bake Donut Holes for Ikora and Alkane Dragee for Sloane. You’ll also need to have baked 48 cookies in total.
• “Sniper & Scribe” has you bake Gentleman’s Shortbread for Devrim and Radiolarian Pudding for Asher Mir. A total of 72 goodies need to be baked.
• “Gunsmith & Navigator” will have you craft Telemetry Tapioca for Banshee and Infinite Forest Cake for Failsafe. You’ll need to have baked 120 gifts in total.
• Once completed, you’ll have all your sparrows perks unlocked and ready to zoom off to parts unknown.

Don’t #RemoveEververse

Last year’s Dawning event was marked by controversy and a ton of backlash from Destiny fans. Owing to disappointments with the vanilla game and Curse of Osiris, and exacerbated by the Star Wars Battlefront 2 loot box fiasco, many vocal gamers felt that Eververse was the reason why Destiny 2 didn’t live up to expectations. Bungie’s forums and the game’s subreddit were bombarded with #RemoveEververse posts as well.

Dawning 2018 doesn’t have the same level of controversy surrounding it. That’s probably due to improvements in previous months with Warmind and Forsaken. That means Tess Everis can still sit cozily in her store while waiting for Fenchurch.

You can obtain new cosmetics from Eververse via Bright Dust, Prismatic Facets, and engram purchases using Silver (real money). Likewise, any level you gain past 50 provides you both Etched and Winterdrift engrams effectively doubling the number of cosmetics you can acquire. New goodies include a snowball ghost which has reindeer horns, a sled, a hockey emote, and more. These, of course, include Dawning-themed armor sets that look eerily similar to last year’s offerings. The latest update also added new paired emotes such as high fives and chest bumps, while also increasing the Prime Engram drop rate across the board.

Overall, The Dawning 2018 is on track to being a decent Destiny 2 holiday event, one that isn’t marred in wacky controversies. It’s the season of giving and harmony, so there’s no room for bickering. Everything seems fine and dandy for the most part.

Enjoy the holidays, Guardians!

The full Dawning 2018 Warlock set (Black Armory shader) courtesy of Reddit user L33tlucid.