Highlights

  • Destiny 2's Dawning event is highly anticipated by committed players for its unique cosmetic and loot rewards.
  • Snowballs are a key feature of the Dawning event, designed to make tough encounters easier.
  • Unfortunately, the snowball upgrades in the 2023 Dawning event did not work as intended, leading to player disappointment.

Destiny 2 is known for its engaging gunplay and enticing visuals, but its most committed players are always anticipating the game's rotating seasonal events. During these events, players can obtain unique Destiny 2 cosmetic and loot rewards associated with the event's theme, which generally makes participation in every one of them time worth spending. There is no event quite as charming or as memorable as the Dawning, however, which takes place during the closing months of each year.

One of the annual Dawning event's greatest features is its snowballs. While these seasonal items can certainly add to the excitement of the game, they are designed to be more than mere fun, as they can also make some of Destiny 2's toughest encounters significantly easier. Unfortunately, Bungie quite literally dropped the ball with 2023's Dawning snowballs, as they did not work at all how they were intended.

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The Dawning 2023's Snowballs Missed the Mark

How the Dawning 2023's Snowballs Were Designed to Work

Every year during the Dawning, players can visit Eva Levante to begin a quest that involves gathering Destiny 2 ingredients to bake cookies and delivering them to many of the game's biggest NPCs. These ingredients can be obtained through a variety of means and players are rewarded with an item called Dawning Spirit upon delivering the finished cookies to the NPC that favors them.

Dawning Spirit is perhaps the most valuable currency of the Dawning event, as it allows players to purchase gear, focusing upgrades, and snowball upgrades from Eva. At their most basic level, 2023's Dawning snowballs were Stasis snowballs, which allowed them to deal damage to enemies as well as slow them for a duration. Players could then enhance their snowballs by purchasing the following upgrades from Eva:

  • Long Winter — Increases the duration of slow effects applied by snowballs.
  • Longer Winter — Increases the amount of slow effects applied to combatants damaged by snowballs.
  • Stay Frosty — Snowballs leave a Stasis mine on impact.
  • Gift That Keeps on Giving — Shattering frozen combatants causes them to drop snowballs.
  • Longest Winter — Snowballs instantly freeze combatants damaged by them.

Unlocking each upgrade in 2023's Dawning required players to spend 20 Dawning Spirit, meaning they needed to acquire at least 100 Dawning Spirit to fully upgrade their snowballs. This was not — and never is — a simple task, as it usually takes a significant amount of time to gather enough Dawning Spirit to purchase every upgrade. However, it is a worthwhile task, since fully upgraded snowballs can assist in overcoming some of Destiny 2's toughest encounters. Unfortunately, 2023's Dawning event snowball upgrades did not work as they generally have in the past, leaving many players highly disappointed.

How the Dawning 2023's Snowballs Actually Worked

Despite having obtained many or all of the snowball upgrades from Eva during Destiny 2's 2023 Dawning event, many players reported that the upgrades were not functioning as they were designed to function. Below is a list of the issues some players reported experiencing:

  • Long Winter and Longer Winter did not increase the slow effects applied by snowballs.
  • Stay Frosty was not causing snowballs to leave a Stasis mine on impact.
  • Gift That Keeps on Giving was not causing shattered combatants to drop snowballs.
  • Longest Winter did not give snowballs the ability to instantly freeze combatants.

It's no secret that players are consistently looking forward to using overpowered snowballs against their enemies during the Dawning each year, so for these snowballs to fail to work as intended in 2023 left its Dawning event feeling lackluster in comparison to some of Destiny 2's other regular events. It's disappointing, to say the least, considering snowballs are indeed the highlight of the event for most players. If Bungie chooses to continue these events going into The Final Shape, the hope is that it will ensure each event's best features work before the events go live.