What is the Star Baker Seal?
The Star Baker title is one of Destiny 2's seasonal seals tied to the annual Dawning winter event. It's all about mastering the event's cookie baking system, completing festive activities, and showing up consistently for the holiday celebration in the Tower.
Two tiers exist for completion. The standard version needs eight triumphs that teach you the Dawning systems and get you participating in event activities. Veterans can push further with four additional gilding triumphs that take significantly more time and effort but reward you with gold plating on your title.
Once you earn the Star Baker title, it's yours forever. The gilded version works differently though. Gilding resets at the start of each year's Dawning event, so you'll need to re-complete those four gilding triumphs every year to keep the gold plating. The base title never disappears.
All Dawning triumphs track account-wide. Your cookie deliveries, Event Rank gains, and ingredient collection count no matter which character you're playing. If you've got multiple leveled characters, you can spread the work between your Hunter, Titan, and Warlock to finish faster.
Time Investment
For the standard seal, plan on 10-12 hours spread across the event. Casual but consistent participation in event activities, cookie baking, and triumph progression will get you there. Most objectives happen naturally while you're participating anyway, so it doesn't feel like pure grinding.
Gilding takes 25-30 hours of focused play. The extra time comes mainly from reaching Event Rank 30, delivering 80 total cookies, and tackling the Snowball Specialist triumph in Master difficulty Portal activities.
Accessing the Dawning Oven
The Dawning Oven is your main tool for baking cookies. You can open it three ways:
- Event Hub, bottom tab on the left side
- Your character's inventory screen
- Quest tab
The oven shows all available cookie recipes, your current ingredient stock, and tracks masterwork progress. Each cookie needs specific ingredient combos plus Dawning Essence to craft.
Standard Seal Requirements (8 Triumphs)
The First Gift
Bake and deliver your first cookie during the Dawning event.
Open your Dawning Oven and craft a Gjallardoodle cookie. You'll need Ether Cane and Delicious Explosion ingredients combined with Dawning Essence. Once it's crafted, head to the Tower and deliver it to Commander Zavala.
The triumph functions as the tutorial for everything else, walking you through the crafting interface and delivery mechanics you'll be using constantly.
Cookbook Completionist
Masterwork your Dawning Oven by baking every available cookie recipe.
Pull up your Dawning Oven and check out the full recipe list. You need to craft and deliver at least one of every unique cookie type to masterwork the oven. The interface shows which recipes you've finished and which you still need.
There are over 30 unique cookie recipes in the game. Each vendor, quest giver, and character in the Tower has a favorite cookie type.
Once you masterwork the oven, the Dawning Essence cost per cookie drops from 15 to 10. That reduction accelerates cookie production speed considerably, especially when you're working toward gilding triumphs that need 80 total deliveries.
High Spirits
Collect Dawning Spirits during the event.
Dawning Spirits come from opening vendor return gifts. Craft cookies with your oven, deliver them to vendors around the Tower, then go back to those vendors to grab their return gifts. Opening these packages gives you Dawning Spirits.
These packages also drop enhancement cores and weapon rolls, not just Spirits. Matching a vendor's preferred cookie recipe gets you better rewards from their return gifts.
The triumph fills itself out while you're doing everything else. Every cookie delivery creates chances to collect Dawning Spirits, so you'll finish through normal participation rather than dedicated farming.
Giver of Gifts
Reach Event Tracker Rank 15.
The Event Tracker works like a seasonal rank system just for the Dawning. You gain experience by completing daily challenges, weekly challenges, and other event activities.
Weekly challenges give significantly more experience than dailies. Each weekly challenge awards 2,000 XP while daily challenges only grant 500 XP.
Many weekly and daily challenges overlap with other triumph requirements. Line up your challenge completion with ingredient farming and cookie deliveries to knock out multiple seal objectives at once.
Brisk Boss
Complete Snowball Fight matches during the event.
Open the Event Hub through the Portal interface. Click the Play icon on the left and select the Snowball PvP activity. Finish 10 total matches to complete the triumph.
Wins don't matter. Just finishing matches counts, so it's doable regardless of your PvP skills. The Snowball Fight mode has special rules with infinite ability energy, making it chaotic but fun.
While you're finishing Snowball Fight matches, you're also making progress on Pow-der Snow by getting snowball kills. Use matches to double dip on multiple objectives.
Pow-der Snow
Defeat enemies using Snowballs and Shatter damage throughout the Dawning event. Snowball final blows earn bonus progress.
Snowballs show up in various activities during the Dawning. Grab them and use them to kill enemies. Snowballs hit hard enough to one-shot most red-bar enemies in regular activities.
Shatter damage comes from Stasis abilities. When you freeze an enemy with Stasis and then shatter that frozen enemy, the explosion counts as Shatter damage. An alternate way to progress alongside snowball kills.
Snowball Fight PvP matches have unlimited snowball access. Regular PvE activities also spawn snowballs you can pick up and use.
The triumph gives bonus progress for snowball final blows compared to Shatter damage. Go for direct snowball kills when you can to finish faster.
Ice Cold
Defeat enemies using Stasis damage.
Equip Stasis subclass abilities and weapons. The requirement accepts any form of Stasis damage, including abilities, weapon damage, and related effects.
A Stasis Machine Gun works well for farming. Machine guns have sustained fire and big magazines, letting you chain kills quickly when there are lots of enemies around.
The triumph synergizes well with Pow-der Snow since both involve frozen enemies and Stasis mechanics. Freeze enemies with Stasis abilities, then shatter them for progress on both triumphs. You can also grab snowball kills in Snowball Fight PvP between Stasis ability cooldowns.
Pick activities with lots of enemies for faster completion. Strike playlists, public events, and certain patrol zones spawn plenty of enemies you can burn through with Stasis damage.
Icy Optimization
Purchase all available upgrades from Eva Levante during the Dawning.
Eva Levante sells multiple upgrades that you buy with Dawning Spirits. You need to grab every upgrade in her inventory to finish the triumph.
Buying all upgrades costs 150 Dawning Spirits total.
Eva's upgrades split into two categories: General upgrades affect your overall Dawning experience, while Snowball upgrades only work in activities where snowballs are available (not Crucible matches).
Gilding Requirements (4 Additional Triumphs)
After finishing the eight standard triumphs and earning your Star Baker title, you can go for gilding by tackling four more challenging objectives.
God-tier Gift Giver
Reach Event Tracker Rank 30.
The triumph is tough because it's time-gated. Getting to Rank 30 needs consistent daily play throughout the three-week event period. You can't cram it into a weekend.
Plan to log in daily for available challenges. Missing several days will seriously hurt your chances of hitting Rank 30 before the event ends.
Reason for the Season
Deliver 80 cookies total to NPCs during the Dawning.
Medium difficulty. The challenge is ingredient farming and Dawning Essence management, not mechanical skill.
Delivering 80 cookies needs a lot of ingredients saved up. Target activities that drop the ingredients for your preferred cookie recipes. Nightfall strikes give Taken Butter while Crucible matches drop Chitin Powder.
Having a masterworked oven makes a big difference. At 10 Essence per cookie instead of 15, you save 400 Essence across 80 deliveries. Masterwork your oven before you start pushing this gilding triumph.
You can deliver cookies to any vendors and characters. Some players cycle through all vendors for variety in return gift rewards, while others stick to specific vendors known for better drops.
Festive Spirit
Spend 200 Dawning Spirits during the event.
Medium difficulty. You need to collect and spend 200 total Dawning Spirits on top of the 150 needed for Icy Optimization.
Dawning Spirits only come from opening vendor return gifts, connecting directly to cookie deliveries. Each delivery creates a return gift that awards Spirits when opened.
The main way to spend Spirits is buying Eva Levante's upgrades. After purchasing all upgrades for Icy Optimization, you need to generate 50 more Spirits to hit the 200 total for gilding.
The triumph progresses alongside Reason for the Season. As you deliver 80 cookies for that triumph, you're also generating the return gifts needed to stack up Dawning Spirits.
Snowball Specialist
Earn points through Stasis damage final blows and snowball final blows in Portal activities at Master difficulty or higher. Snowball final blows grant bonus progress.
The hardest triumph in the entire Star Baker seal. Master difficulty Portal activities have significantly tougher enemies that take multiple snowball hits to kill, and the content needs coordinated team play.
Unlike regular activities where snowballs one-shot most red-bar enemies, Master difficulty enemies tank multiple snowball impacts. Kill speed slows down dramatically and makes snowball final blows harder to secure.
Pick Portal activities you're comfortable running at Master difficulty. Familiar encounters let you predict enemy spawns and position yourself better for snowball kills.
The triumph accepts Stasis damage final blows along with snowball kills. When snowballs aren't available or practical, switch to Stasis weapons and abilities to keep making progress. Just remember that snowball final blows grant bonus progress, making them more valuable when possible.
Cookie Crafting Basics
Every cookie requires Dawning Essence (15 per cookie, or 10 after masterworking your oven) plus two specific ingredients. Each vendor has a preferred cookie type that yields better return gift rewards. The most important recipe for seal completion is Gjallardoodles (Ether Cane + Delicious Explosion), which you deliver to Commander Zavala for The First Gift triumph.
Ingredient Farming Overview
Ingredients fall into two categories:
Eva Levante's Upgrades
Eva offers upgrades purchasable with Dawning Spirits (150 total required for Icy Optimization triumph).
| Upgrade Type | Upgrade Name | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| General | Merrymaker | Three daily Boons of Friendship |
| General | Quintessence | Bonus Essence from activities |
| General | Season's Spirit | Bonus Spirit from activities |
| General | Bountiful Harvest | Ingredients from challenges |
| General | Essential Harvest | Essence from challenges |
| Snowball | Long Winter | Longer slow duration |
| Snowball | Longer Winter | Stronger slow effects |
| Snowball | Stay Frosty | Snowballs leave Stasis mines |
| Snowball | Gift That Keeps on Giving | Shattered enemies drop snowballs |
| Snowball | Longest Winter | Instant freeze on hit |
Event Weapons
Three weapons drop at better quality during Dawning: Mistral Rift (Void Linear Fusion Rifle), Permafrost (Stasis Wave-Frame Grenade Launcher), and Fimbulwinter Stitch (Arc Precision Sidearm). All drop one tier higher than standard, making the event solid for farming god rolls while working on seal triumphs.
Common Questions
The base Star Baker title stays in your collection forever once you earn it. You never lose access.
The gilded version with gold plating works differently. Gilding resets at the start of each year's Dawning event. You'll need to re-complete the four gilding triumphs every year to keep the gold plating. Gilding is an annual commitment if you want to maintain the look.
Yes. All Dawning triumph progress tracks account-wide across all three character slots. Cookie deliveries, Event Rank gains, ingredient collection, and all other requirements count no matter which Guardian you're playing.
Players with multiple leveled characters benefit significantly. You can split the work between your Hunter, Titan, and Warlock, letting you finish triumphs faster by playing whichever character fits specific activities or challenges best.
For example, you might use your Titan for Master difficulty Portal activities (Snowball Specialist) while using your Hunter for Crucible challenges, all while working on the same Star Baker seal.
Priority Order for Triumph Completion
For Standard Seal:
- Finish The First Gift right away to unlock the cookie system
- Work toward Cookbook Completionist to masterwork your oven early
- Build Event Rank by doing weekly challenges consistently
- Let High Spirits fill in through cookie deliveries
- Get Brisk Boss done through Snowball Fight matches
- Let Pow-der Snow and Ice Cold happen through normal gameplay
- Buy all Eva upgrades once you've got enough Spirits
The order puts the most important unlock (oven masterwork) first while building toward time-gated requirements (Event Rank) steadily. The combat triumphs fill themselves in through regular play.
For Gilded Seal:
- Keep playing daily to reach Event Rank 30 (can't rush this)
- Deliver 80 cookies while stacking Spirits
- Spend 200 Dawning Spirits through upgrades and other purchases
- Tackle Snowball Specialist in Master Portal activities last (hardest one)
The gilding order focuses on the time-gated requirement while building resources through cookie deliveries. Save the tough Snowball Specialist triumph for last when you've got more time to work on it.
Dawning Essence Management
Dawning Essence is your main currency for baking cookies. Without enough Essence, you can't craft cookies even if you've got the ingredients.
Activities throughout Destiny 2 generate Dawning Essence. Just playing the game builds your reserves.
The Quintessence upgrade from Eva boosts your Essence gain from activities. Grab it early if you're planning to bake a ton of cookies.
A masterworked oven cuts the Essence cost per cookie from 15 to 10. That 33% reduction matters when you're baking 80+ cookies for gilding triumphs.
Return Gift Rewards
Vendor return gifts contain more than just Dawning Spirits. Enhancement cores, weapon drops with potentially solid perk rolls, and other useful stuff make cookie deliveries worthwhile beyond just triumph progress.
Delivering a vendor's preferred cookie type improves their return gift quality. Match cookie types to vendor preferences when you can for better rewards.
Some players target specific vendors known for better drops. Experimentation during the event may reveal which vendors provide the best returns for your goals.
Additional Event Content
Beyond seal triumphs, the Dawning includes Eva's introductory quest (teaches event mechanics), Snowball Fight PvP mode (infinite ability energy), and daily/weekly challenges (provide Event Rank experience and ingredients through upgrades). Complete Eva's quest early to understand event systems.
Planning Your Star Baker Journey
The Star Baker seal is achievable for Destiny 2 players during the Dawning event. Standard seal completion takes moderate time investment and doesn't need exceptional skills, making it accessible to casual players who participate consistently.
Gilding takes significantly more commitment. Reaching Event Rank 30, delivering 80 cookies, and finishing Master difficulty content means gilding is for dedicated players willing to engage daily with event activities.
Plan your approach based on available time and what you want to accomplish. Casual players can comfortably earn the base title through normal event participation. Veterans going for gilding should commit to daily play from the event's start to maximize rank progression time.
- Achievable with 10-12 hours of play
- Most objectives complete naturally
- Accessible to all skill levels
- No time-gated Master content
- Permanent title unlock
- Requires 25-30 hours focused play
- Time-gated Event Rank 30 grind
- Master difficulty content needed
- Must re-complete annually
- Heavy ingredient farming required
All progress tracks account-wide, ingredient farming helps with multiple triumphs at once, and masterworking your oven early pays off for everything you'll do during Dawning. Tackle the seal methodically, focus on time-gated objectives, and enjoy the festive celebration in the Tower.