Destiny 2 Solstice 2023 Event: Start Date, New Rewards, And Everything We Know

Next week will see the return of Solstice, one of Destiny 2's big seasonal events in which players can come together to celebrate their achievements. An annual event that has been around since the early days of Destiny 2, Solstice takes place during summer and offers some of the best armor in the game, which you can tweak to create a desired roll. If you're looking to craft armor that lets you use your grenade ability more often or offers a higher chance of survivability, these are some of the best pieces of gear to focus on. [Update: The event is now live, so be sure to check out our Solstice guide that details how to get Silver Leaves and everything else you need to understand.

Solstice start date

Kicking off after the weekly reset on July 18, Solstice will once again take place in the European Aerial Zone and will see teams of Guardians face off against waves of enemies so that they can earn rewards, including new armor and the first Strand rocket launcher.

Solstice changes

Last year's Solstice was notable for how it streamlined the armor upgrading process and allowed Guardians to craft pieces of gear with customized stat rolls, like high resilience, intellect, or recovery.

This year, Bungie says that Solstice will see enemy density and the overall difficulty of the Bonfire Bash mode overhauled to be more challenging, and two new buffs are being introduced. More difficult content like this was introduced this year with the release of the Lightfall expansion, which made the game more challenging with tougher patrol zones and missions.

Solstice buffs

The first new buff for Solstice is Firebound, which gives you increased recovery and Super regeneration when you're close to a fireteam member. This can motivate Guardians to stick together in the EAZ, which is a large and open area teeming with enemies.

The second buff, Flare, causes you to unleash damaging waves of paracausal energy when you rapidly defeat enemies. Both of these abilities are only available in Bonfire Bash, but Flare will also be added to the Vanguard Ops playlist for the duration of Solstice.

Solstice armor and upgrades

For the armor upgrades, you'll once again need to find and spend Silver Leaves, Silver Ash, and Kindling. Silver Leaves can be earned by completing activities throughout the game and completing Bonfire Bash activities will transform your Silver Leaves into Silver Ash. You'll be able to reroll Solstice armor stats by spending Silver Ash to help you chase down that perfect stat roll.

For Kindling, this currency can be acquired by completing Solstice challenges. Kindling can be used to upgrade your armor stat roll potential, and each piece of armor can be upgraded three times. Every time you upgrade a piece of Solstice armor, the changes are permanent and shared across all Solstice pieces for that armor slot. It's worth noting that this is only per class, so if you want perfect Hunter, Warlock, and Titan helmets, you'll have to put in some work.

Gallery

This year's Solstice armor features both free and paid glows like in previous years, and fully upgrading a piece of armor with Kindling will cause it to glow. As for this year's armor sets, Guardians can rock some new threads that have a very regal theme to them.

Solstice Strand rocket launcher

On the weapons side, Destiny 2's first Strand rocket launcher can also be earned during Solstice, and it has a similar design theme. Since the start of Lightfall this year, Bungie has slowly been adding more Strand-energy weapons to the game, and with rocket launchers still the best DPS weapon archetype in the game, it's going to be interesting to see how effective this is and if it'll be a must-have item.

In other Destiny 2 news, the game's new Exotic Wicked Implement will see its catalyst buffed and a mid-season Crucible update will add some requested respawning changes to the game's PvP.