How to get Dawning Essence in Destiny 2’s The Dawning

If you’re looking to bake cookies in Destiny 2’s Dawning event, you’ll need a slew of ingredients, including the mystical Dawning Essence. This resource is a core part of the Dawning’s recipes and cookie-baking, and you’ll need lots of it to make the most out of the celebrations.

All Dawning recipes require three different ingredients: an enemy-based ingredient, a kill-based ingredient, and Dawning Essence. Enemy-based ingredients are straightforward: they have a chance of dropping whenever you kill a specific enemy type. Defeating a Cabal enemy, for instance, can drop Cabal Oil. Likewise, killing an enemy with a Void sword can drop Sharp Flavor or Null Taste.

No matter the ingredients you obtain, though, all Dawning recipes have another aspect in common: they all require Dawning Essence. Here’s how you can get this resource.

How to get Dawning Essence in Destiny 2’s The Dawning

Dawning Essence drops from a multitude of activities in Destiny 2, and you can get this resource by doing pretty much anything in the game. Even a meager Lost Sector gets you three Dawning Essence and a heroic public event gives you five. Neither of those is the best farm in the game (unlike farming Candy in Festival of the Lost), though.

Best Dawning Essence farms in Destiny 2

Not all Dawning Essence farming methods are made equal, and usually, the higher-difficulty ones have a better payoff. Still, speed and efficiency are key if you want to obtain as much Dawning Essence as possible.

Legend Lost Sectors

Legend Lost Sectors are on the higher end of the difficulty spectrum, but they definitely pay off if you want to farm. Their short length means they can be done fairly quickly, even when soloing. If you have a fireteam, though, they can turn into a quick and easy task that will give you around 20 Dawning Essence in a matter of minutes. In our experience, we were getting 16 to 17 Dawning Essence from completions, plus another three from the Lost Sector chest.

The downside of running it with a team is that you miss out on the chance of getting Exotic drops. But if you’re focusing on Dawning Essence and nothing more, bringing a squad will help you hoard Dawning Essence in no time.

The clear time for Lost Sectors can put this method among the best or the worst. Perdition and The Broken Deep are two different experiences, and one of them isn’t a nightmare to run.

Dungeon encounters

Some dungeon encounters can be cleared pretty quickly, and arguably, the main target is the Shattered Throne’s final boss, Dûl Incaru. Every few months, guardians line up at her door to beat her up and get some resources. This is one of the quickest boss checkpoints in the game thanks to the absurd damage buff you can get during her fight, and if you have a teammate and a spare character to save the checkpoint with, you’re golden.

You can also farm other quick encounters, such as Rathil in Warlord’s Ruin or the first encounter of Vesper’s Host. Even raid encounters can work, if you can clear them quickly enough—though the best way to do that would be the recently removed Consecrated Mind glitch in Garden of Salvation.

Ritual activities

Rituals are among the most popular activities in Destiny 2, so it’s only natural you’ll run them throughout the event. Nightfalls can be a great painless way to stock up on Dawning Essence if the rotation favors you. Easier activities like Birthplace of the Vile will grant you around 20 Essence in 10-15 minutes, which is a solo-friendly way to farm. Onslaught doesn’t seem to grant you many drops as completions, but you do get an okay amount of them from kills. Crucible matches are generally shorter, too, and give you a good amount of drops.

Masterwork Eva’s oven

While this method doesn’t fill up your wallet with Dawning Essence, it does make your resources drain more slowly. Baking one of each available cookie will masterwork Eva’s oven, so each cookie requires 10 Dawning Essence instead of 15. If you’ve already created all recipes from past years, the only one you need to bake in 2024 is the newly introduced Neomun-Cake, which is a treat for Nimbus in Neomuna. It’s one of the easiest ways to save Dawning Essence, so it’s almost indispensable to do this before crafting in bulk.