Destiny 2 Dawning 2023: Best Way to Farm Essense of Dawning Easily

Essence of the Dawning is a key currency for The Dawning 2023 in Destiny 2. You’ll need as much of the stuff as you can carry for baking cookies. Here are some of the best, easiest Essence of Dawning farming methods I’ve found while playing years prior and during Season of the Wish.

Where to Find Essence of the Dawning During the Winter Event in Destiny 2

There’s a kicker, though. Different Destiny 2 activities grant different quantities of Essence. Where a Heroic Public Event gives five Essence, completing a weekly Crucible or Dungeon Challenge rewards 22 Essence. Farming Essence of Dawning, then, is a matter of finding the fastest activity you can do consistently that gives the most amount of Essence.

Best Dawning Essence Farm: Legendary Lost Sectors

Rather than farming any of the Seasonal activities during Season of the Wish, which only give 10 Essence per completion, the best option is Legendary Lost Sectors. Specifically, you’ll want to farm the ones the ones you can do quickly and consistently. That means two to four minutes tops. There are dozens of Lost Sectors in Destiny 2, and about half of them fall into this category, provided you have the right build to take them on.

Which Lost Sector Activities Should You Do for Essence?

Of the Lost Sectors we’ve seen so far this Season, half of them (again) are worth doing.

• Skydock IV on the EDZ: 2.5 minutes.
• Bunker E15 on Europa: less than 2 minutes.
• Perdition on Europa: about 3 minutes.
• All three Dreaming City Lost Sectors: about 3 minutes or so.

Lost Sectors to Avoid

There are some you want to avoid at all costs.

• The Thrilladrome and Gilded Precept Lost Sectors on Neptune might be cool, but fast they are not.

You’ll want a fairly optimal build to take these Sectors on solo, and you’ll also need weapons that can deal with the Champions scattered throughout each. Provided you have that and work a good strategy, you can make hundreds of Essence an hour and farm some Exotics while you’re at it.

Easiest Way to Farm Essence: Strikes

Here we are again. Yes, Vanguard Ops is probably the easiest overall way to get Dawning Essence for the 7,000th year in a row. Every Strike or Battleground you complete provides between 17-21 Essence, with the only limit on how many you can do being your tolerance for the same Strikes we’ve been doing for what seems like forever.

However, there’s another reason to grind Vanguard Ops these days: focusing a Hothead Rocket Launcher or Uzume RR4 Sniper Rifle. Now that you can focus Vanguard Engrams into some of the best weapons from the activity set for relatively little effort, there’s never been a better time to put on a podcast, stream, or your favorite tunes, and chill while grinding Strikes.

Fastest Cheesy Way to Farm Essence: The First Contact Lightfall Mission

The fastest (and cheesiest) Essence of Dawning farm takes advantage of — and stop me if you’ve heard this one before — the opening mission of the Lightfall campaign. Blessedly free to all players, you can exploit Destiny 2‘s built-in checkpointing system to farm mission completions without needing to, you know, do the mission. The process is pretty simple, but you’ll need to have a second player with you, either a friend or someone from LFG, to take advantage of the trick.

1. Go through the mission until you defeat the Tormentor, then proceed to the drop pods.
2. Leave the activity to save the checkpoint, then load in on another character. Your teammate can do this for you as well. Make your way to the drop pods, and use them to complete the mission and get an easy 17 Essence.
3. Rotate your checkpoint holder each time so everyone gets rewards, and repeat ad infinitum for tons of Essence of Dawning.

Those are your three best ways to farm Dawning Essense during The Dawning 2023. None of it is particularly engaging content, but it’s efficient. For more Destiny 2 content, including a rundown of each of the Spire of the Watcher encounters, check out our guides hub for the game.