Bungie has officially unveiled Destiny 2: Season of Dawn, Destiny 2’s ninth season of content, with a new trailer and plenty of additional information. Season of Dawn’s new content brings players back to Mercury, where they’ll assist Osiris in saving legendary Titan Saint-14, earn new armor and weapons, and complete new exotic quests. We’ve broken down all the new content coming to Destiny 2 next season revealed in the Destiny 2: Season of Dawn trailer below.
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn | Story content
The Season of Dawn trailer revealed that Guardians will soon be heading back to Mercury. There, Osiris requests their assistance in both saving Saint-14 and stopping a group of Red Legion Psions from undoing the Vanguard’s victory against the Red Legion in Destiny 2’s vanilla campaign. Apparently, Guardians’ victories over the Undying Mind at the end of the Season of the Undying “broke time” on Mercury, allowing the Red Legion the chance to change the Red War’s outcome.
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Throughout the trailer, we see shots of Mercury at various points in its timeline. Destiny 2 has featured most of these before, but we also see a black-and-white environment (not a Taken-corrupted one) that appears to be brand new.
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn | New activities
In order to assist Osiris, Guardians will need to use his Sundial, a device that seems to allow them to visit multiple timelines created by the Vex. This manifests in a new seasonal activity simply called The Sundial. The Sundial is a six-player, matchmade PvE activity, but not much is known other than that. Bungie will likely go into more detail on December 4 during the Season of Dawn Reveal stream. We do, however, see various enemy factions being fought on Mercury, including the Fallen (which weren’t there previously) and new Champion-level Red Legion Cabal.
The Sundial appears to be the season’s main offering and is only available to season pass owners, but there will also be an additional activity available to all players: According to Bungie, all Destiny 2 players will be able to help Osiris “fix the timeline” by “restoring Obelisks” on four of the game’s destinations. It’s not clear where or how robust these activities will be.
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn | Seasonal artifact & season pass
Season nine’s seasonal artifact is called The Lantern of Osiris. Like season eight’s Gate Lord’s Eye, the Lantern will allow players to unlock unique weapon and armor mods and to increase their power level beyond the normal power cap. Judging by the Solar subclass changes coming to Destiny 2 next season, these artifact mods are likely to be Solar-focused. You can learn more about the artifact in our Lantern of Osiris artifact mods guide.
Bungie also revealed all the reward icons for the season nine pass. No item names or details are shown, but several shaders, armor pieces, weapons, finishers, exotics, ornaments, and other rewards are included. You can see the full pass in Bungie’s season nine preview under “Gear & Rewards.”
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn | New armor, weapons, exotics, sparrows, emotes, and more
Perhaps the most exciting part of Season of Dawn’s reveal is all the new loot Bungie showed off. It looks like players will have the opportunity to earn several new exotics, many new weapons, a new armor set, and more. We’ll break down each loot category below.
Season of Dawn exotics
It appears as though Season of Dawn will bring three new exotic weapons to the game, one unlocked through the season pass and two unlocked via exotic quests.
1. Symmetry, an exotic Scout Rifle. Symmetry will be unlocked via season ranks (instantly for season pass owners and at rank 35 for everyone else). PvP gameplay around the trailer’s 1:45 mark shows what appears to be a kind of charge-up mechanic, which enabled the player to one-body-shot several Guardians.
2. Bastion, an exotic Fusion Rifle. While the trailer didn’t give a good look at this weapon firing, the above image’s file name reveals it’s a Fusion Rifle, and the Season of Dawn roadmap revealed its name.
3. Devil’s Run, an exotic Sidearm. Likewise, Bungie did not specify this weapon’s category, but the image file reveals it to be a Sidearm. Its name was also revealed in the roadmap.
Season of Dawn weapons
Throughout the trailer, we see many sleek, metallic, Vex-themed weapons, as well as a few others. The Vex-ish weapons are likely unlocked via the Sundial activity. According to Bungie, players will be able to earn specific weapons by completing “Timelost weapon frames.” These will probably function similar to Ikora’s Season of the Undying weapon bounties. We spotted what appears to be Vex-themed weapons of many categories in the trailer, including a Linear Fusion Rifle.
Additionally, the season rank rewards appear to include two Red Legion-themed weapons: a bulky rocket launcher unlocked at rank 30 and what could be a Scout Rifle or sniper unlocked at 45. Finally, it looks like players will be able to get a year-three version of the Perfect Paradox, Saint-14’s shotgun, which was first available in the Curse of Osiris DLC.
Season of Dawn armor
Through season ranks (and likely through The Sundial, as well), players will be able to earn a seasonal armor set called the Righteous Set. It shares the same metallic, Vex-ish design of the weapons.
Season of Dawn ornaments
The season pass features ornaments for the Cabal-themed weapons, which appear to make them more Leviathan raid-themed, as well as for the Symmetry exotic Scout Rifle. Season pass owners will also be able to earn a set of armor ornaments. These feature similar designs to the Righteous set, but have distinctly Saint-14 tilt to them.
Season of Dawn Sparrows, Ghost shells, emotes, & finishers
In addition to all these other rewards, the trailer showed off two new Sparrows, an uppercut finisher, a backflip finisher, and a Saint-14-themed headbutt finisher. We also see a few new emotes in the trailer (Guardians spike an American football, run a blade across their forearms, and hover on a Micro Mini Sparrow), and there’s a Saint-14-themed exotic Ghost shell unlocked at season pass rank 90.
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn | Returning PvP map
Finally, Bungie announced that the Destiny 1 Crucible map, Rusted Lands, is making a comeback in Season of Dawn. Rusted Lands was a small PvP map set in Earth’s Eastern Flood Zone, characterized by — as the name implies — many rusted structures. According to the trailer, Rusted Lands will be featured in PvP’s Elimination mode, but it’s not known if it will be playable in any others.
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn runs from December 10, 2019 to March 9, 2020.
