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Destiny 2: Season of Dawn brings back the legendary Saint-14 on December 10th

Who doesn’t love Saint-14?

New destiny 2 season of light
Image: Bungie

Destiny 2 is a living game, getting new seasonal content every few months, and Bungie just revealed Season of Dawn, which drops on December 10th at 10am PST.

With a story that follows hot on the heels of the almost-over Season of the Undying, players are about to get something they’ve been hoping for since the original Destiny came out in 2015: A chance to bring back to the long-dead, legendary Saint-14.

According to the reveal session that just wrapped up on Twitch, here’s what to expect from Season of Dawn:

Mercury: The Sundial

Destiny 2 sundial event
Screenshot from Bungie reveal stream

The biggest new activity happens on Mercury – where you can now summon Sparrows for the first time – and it’s a 6-player battle called the Sundial. You see, tampering with time in the Season of the Undying has consequences and one of those is that the Cabal are now also looking for a way to rewrite history by creating a future where they won the Red War (the first campaign in Destiny 2).

This could technically be accomplished through a form of technology from Osiris: A time-altering device called the Sundial, where you travel to past, present, and future timelines to fight back against the Cabal.

Mechanically, it looks like Sundial is a wave-based fight. In the encounter shown on stream, just one of several coming out over the course of the season, players will have to defeat Cabal champions to steal their beacons. Throw these beacons at the main boss to call down weaponized light from Cabal orbital ships, using their own weapons against them to take down the boss. It looks like these encounters have some sort of thresholds as we saw in Menagerie, but Bungie is being coy about what happens if you reach them as well as what kinds of rewards to expect.

Combat: New artifact, solar subclass updates, new seasonal mods

Destiny 2 lantern artifact
Screenshot from Bungie reveal stream

Destiny 2: Season of Dawn will bring with it a new artifact. Replacing the Eye of a Gate Lord from Season of the Undying, players will get to use the Lantern of Osiris this time around. The Lantern has unlocks for different kinds of champions just like the Eye, but this time around it looks like bows, scout rifles, pulse rifles, sniper rifles, and linear fusion rifles are the stars of the show – Great news for bow enthusiasts like me.

For example, one of the top-tier abilities lets you generate healing orb pickups when making precision kills with precision weapons (scout, sniper, bow, and linear fusion), which sounds absolutely godly. As for class abilities, the Lantern of Osiris will primarily affect solar classes with some unlocks for the void class, too.

Those solar artifact unlocks will be important because Season of Dawn comes with solar subclass changes. Details are scarce so far, so we don’t know exactly what to expect, but I do know this: Solar warlocks get a new melee ability that throws long-range fireballs. I personally don’t need to know more, but if you do you’ll have to wait until the season launches on December 10th.

The last major change is that all armor drops from Season of Dawn will come with new seasonal mod slots. Unlike previous seasons where seasonal mod slots only affected content relevant to that season, these mod slots will have more generalized mods that can be applicable to all Destiny 2 activities. What’s in those mod slots? New mechanics that generate and spend Charged With Light charges. What does that mean? We have no idea. You guessed it: Wait until December 10th.

New lore and cosmetics

Destiny 2 helm of saint 14
Image: Bungie

Just about every Destiny player loves the legendary Titan, Saint-14. Starting as a single piece of exotic armor in Destiny and some scattered Grimoire references here and there, Saint-14 is getting a whole-ass story this season. Since time is fractured, the idea is that maybe we can reach through to a reality where he didn’t die (or hasn’t died yet) and bring him to the present-day.

Will we succeed? Will players get to reunite him with his signature weapon, Perfect Paradox? That story starts presumably starts with “Save a Legend,” set to drop one week into the season on December 17th.

If you love looking like Saint-14, there are new cosmetics that might pique your interest. Included with the season pass, you can unlock a finisher emote where you conjure up the glowing purple mohawk and headbutt your enemies into oblivion. All classes will also get universal ornaments inspired by Saint-14’s armor, so you can look a little bit like him even if you aren’t a Titan.

Also, in case you think you’d get tired of only headbutting enemies as your finisher, Bungie is adding a much-requested feature: You can now equip up to 9 finishers at a time, pulling from that pool every time you use one. It’s a small but extremely welcome feature.

Finally, for lore enthusiasts, there are going to be new stories on Bungie.net every day from now until the beginning of Season of Dawn. The first is up already.

The Calendar

Here’s the full Season of Dawn calendar, including both The Dawning and Crimson Days holidays for Christmas and Valentine’s Day, respectively.

Season of dawn season 9 calendar
Image: Bungie
  • December 10th: The first Sundial boss is unlocked, unknown Obelisk activities become available, and all general changes are implemented (artifact, seasonal armor, season pass contents, subclass updates)
  • December 17th: New Sundial boss, new obelisks, and presumably the start of the Saint-14 story missions. Start of holiday, The Dawning.
  • December 24th: One week of Iron Banner (go wreck everyone who just got the game for Christmas), new Sundial boss.
  • January 7th: Hard mode for Sundial (note: Regular Sundial is matchmade, but hard mode is not), and an exotic quest for a weapon we know nothing about, Devil’s Ruin. It looks like a sidearm to me, so maybe Bungie is finally making a sidearm that doesn’t suck?
  • January 14th: Players start whining about how there’s nothing to do in Destiny 2.
  • January 21st: Whining reaches a fever pitch. YouTubers get tons of views for their armchair design critiques despite not realizing that making games and playing games are very different things.
  • January 28th: New exotic quest for Bastion. This is almost definitely a scout rifle and the one shown in the trailer (with the trailer showing what is most likely the standard cosmetic and then the Eververse cosmetic that will probably be sold for $8 on January 28th). If I had to guess, I’d say you can charge it up or consume the magazine similar to Izanagi’s Burden in scout rifle form. Scouts really need some love, so here’s hoping it’s good.
  • February 4th: Final Sundial boss, as-yet-unknown “Empyrean Foundation.”
  • February 11th to 18th: Crimson Days holiday event. Will we see the return of the Crimson Doubles PVP mode? Will the holiday bow The Vow come back so I can finally complete my bow collection? Time will tell.

Unanswered Questions

  • Psion flayers play a prominent role this season. Will we get the Destiny 1 flayer cloaks?
  • Does anything happen for players who have Saint-14’s shotgun, Perfect Paradox?
  • Will we actually get to save Saint-14? What happens if we do?
  • Will there be any earnable cosmetics or is everything going to be sold through Eververse and the season pass?
  • Will we ever get to reroll affinity for exotic armor?
  • Will the seasonal achievements be as mind-numbingly grindy as Season of the Undying?
  • What is the Empyrean Foundation? Is it a series of story quests? A new raid? A new area? A new strike?
  • What new gear can we expect this season and where will it come from?
  • If we can rewrite time, can we bring back Cayde-6? What about Praedyth? What about [insert dead or lost character here, ad nauseum]?
  • Will LFG teams finally stop being prejudiced against bows? Is my Subtle Calamity with max accuracy, anti-barrier rounds, an Archer’s Tempo/Rampage roll, and the ability to generate healing orbs not good enough for you, Randy? Are you going to insist on bringing Recluse to everything like a mindless idiot or are you going to actually think about what kind of encounter this is for once? WHAT’S IT GONNA BE, RANDY?

Players can experience Destiny 2 now, with Season of the Undying wrapping up this week and Season of Dawn dropping on December 10th. Season of Dawn includes both free-to-play and paid content, so see the above calendar image for details.

What do you think? Excited for this new season of Destiny 2? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Jake is a writer and game designer in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He loves action, exploration, building, filling bars, and turning numbers into bigger numbers. Someday he'll release a video game.

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