Mementos are the latest event-specific cosmetic to come to Destiny 2. Unsurprisingly, The Dawning 2023 memento has its own challenges to complete, making any crafted weapon a holiday shade of blue once we have it. Here’s what snowballs have to do with it.
How to Get The Dawning 2023 Memento in Destiny 2
You get Dawning Mementos as a random, rare reward from opening A Gift in Return gift boxes, which you sometimes receive for giving Dawning cookies to NPCs throughout the system. There are a few steps to getting The Dawning Memento this year.
- Complete The Dawning introductory quest, which has you bake your first cookie in the Holiday Oven, give it to Zavala, and speak to Eva a few times.
- Accept the Cookie Delivery Helper quest, then exit Eva’s vendor menu.
- Talk to Eva again and accept the Winter Night quest.
Deadly Snowballs: How to Complete the Winter Night Quest
The Dawning Memento is the Winter Night quest reward, but actually completing Winter Night will take you some time. Two of the steps are easy: defeat enemies with snowballs and give Eva a batch of Classic Butter Cookies. Snowballs only appear when you defeat an enemy with a weapon, use abilities in patrol spaces, or defeat an enemy in any way in the Vanguard Ops playlist.
How to Get Upgraded Snowball Final Blows
The second step in the list, Upgraded Snowball Final Blows, is the kicker. You’ll need to unlock both the Long Winter and Stay Frosty snowball upgrades from Eva, then get 25 additional defeats with upgraded snowballs. To do that, you need 60 Dawning Spirit. You get Dawning Spirit primarily by baking cookies and giving them to your NPC allies, as well as completing Dawning Bounties.
Best Way to Get More Dawning Spirit for The Dawning Memento
Your best bet to get maximum Dawning Spirit so you can unlock the snowball upgrades is to complete both of the weekly Dawning bounties on three characters, and make sure you do your Dailies. Once you have enough Essence of Dawning, spamming Dawning repeatable bounties isn’t only the best Dawning Spirit farm in the game, but it’s an effortless XP and ingredient farm, too.
One Dawning, back when I grinded Destiny 2 hard, I managed over 1.4 million XP through bounties alone. While I think Bungie has since nerfed the XP gains you get from repeatable, spamming them is still a fantastic farm for everything Dawning-related. When you finally get the 25 upgraded snowball enemy defeats, you can head back to Eva for your first Dawning 2023 Memento.
Can You Have More Than One Dawning Memento at a Time?
You can only hold one Dawning Memento in your inventory at a time. Once you have one, you need to go to the Enclave on Mars and apply it to a crafted weapon. You can also dismantle it if you’re a crazy person. While you can only have one at a time, here are my recommendations for farming the item.
How to Farm the Dawning Momento in Destiny 2
Farming Dawning Momentos is farming the Dawning event as a whole. You need a lot of Essence of Dawning and ingredients to make cookies, which you get by playing the game. Then you give cookies to get more rewards and, hopefully, a Dawning Momento.
To farm Dawning Momentos, then, I’d follow these steps:
- Do all your Dawning bounties every day and week. Dawning Bounties are the easiest way to get the Essence of Dawning and the ingredients you need.
- Farm quick, easily completed sources of Essence of Dawning. That means Vanguard Ops, Legend Lost Sectors (if you can do them quickly), and other core Ritual activities as you like.
- Bake cookies until you can’t, then turn them all in. Be sure to always pick up new Dawning repeatable bounties and bake those cookies. If your bounty doesn’t select a vendor in the Tower, and you have the spare Glimmer, discard the bounty and pick up another until you get five Tower NPCs.
- Open every A Gift in Return you get until you receive a Dawning Memento. Keeping in mind that you can only hold one at a time, open enough Gifts until you have a Dawning Memento, then use it on whichever crafted weapon you like.
- Repeat.
The Dawning is going on extra long this year thanks to the delay of The Final Shape, so you have plenty of time to get as many Dawning Mementos as your heart could possibly desire (and throw infinitely more snowballs, too). I just hope you enjoy blue, because that’s the shader color you get with them when your crafted weapon reaches Level 30.
That’s how to get The Dawning 2023 Memento and what snowballs have to do with it. For more Destiny 2, check out our guides on all the cookie recipes and ingredients you’ll be making and scouring for, how to get Balanced Flavors, and more in our D2 guides hub.
