Destiny 2 holiday event The Dawning starts December 19, bringing snowball fights and more

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Guardians have a snowball fight in Destiny 2's The Dawning seasonal event.

Destiny 2's first seasonal event is almost here. Bungie confirmed today that good little Guardians all over the world will get to enjoy the many gifts of The Dawning starting on Tuesday, December 19. The event will end on January 9. What sort of frosty fun can you get up to in those three weeks? Aside from enjoying a brisk snowfall in Destiny 2's public spaces (somebody get poor Sweeperbot a shovel), Bungie's revealed four big facets of The Dawning so far.

Enjoy snowball fights and snowball Strikes

Usually you have to go to the Crucible to lob things at your fellow Guardians, but not during The Dawning. Snow piles will appear across The Tower and The Farm, some of which will harbor handy caches of snowballs. Pick one up and you'll carry it around like an orb until you're ready to deliver your powdery payload. Friendly snow-brawls not good enough for you? Don't worry, snowballs will start appearing in Strikes too. Unleash frozen hell on your enemies to deal a good chunk of damage and stun them. Must've been some ice in that one.

Prepare for Mayhem in the Crucible

The return of Mayhem Crucible modes is Bungie's gift to lovers of chaos everywhere. If you never played them in the original Destiny, Mayhem means your abilities recharge super fast and all of the point values are boosted for quick, deadly matches. Expect flaming swords, void arrows, and electro-stomps everywhere. If you think Bungie tuned down ability recharge rates too much for Destiny 2, this mode will be your long-awaited catharsis.

Give and receive new gear

It could hardly be a Destiny event without new loot, right? Bungie showed off the above new wintry beast themed Legendary armor sets as some of the gear you can earn by completing activities and special Dawning Milestones. You can also look forward to ships, Ghost shells, Sparrows, and emotes; Bungie says all of The Dawning's items will be made available for Bright Dust purchases as well as via Dawning engrams. Players will be able to give rewards to everyone they're playing with by using special new consumable items. And you can even give thanks to your favorite planetary NPCs by using schematics and to craft Dawning Gifts for them from schematics; they'll return the favor with gifts for you, of course.

Play hockey

Forget balls. For The Dawning, it's all about pucks. Won't somebody get these poor Guardians some Exotic ice skates?! 

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.