Iron Banner returns tomorrow, Christmas Day, making it possibly the most inconvenient of all Iron Banners. I wont’ be playing on Christmas Day because of family, food, Lego, and movies. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be playing it. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and say that you need to be playing Iron Banner on Christmas Day, and here’s why.
1 – The Dawning
In case you hasn’t noticed, it’s The Dawning! This event means that you’re rewarded for doing certain things anywhere in Destiny 2, and that includes the Crucible. I’m very serious when I say that it’s worth playing through as many matches as possible, because not only can you earn ingredients for recipes, but you can tick off a couple of bounties from Eva Levante at the same time.
If you’re hoping to complete the bounties set out for your Dawning Sparrow, as well as those in the Triumph list, then you need to be baking goods. The only way to bake is to earn Essence of Dawning and ingredients. If you’ve Masterworked your Oven then you can easily plough through some Iron Banner matches and cook up a storm when you’re done with your session. You’ll have those bounties finished in no time.
2 – The Mountaintop
If you’re not aware this is the Pinnacle weapon for the Crucible in the Season of the Forge. This weapon is an absolute monster, but it’s very hard to acquire. You need to earn medals for multikills, and make kills with a Grenade Launcher in order to progress. I’m working on it right now and I can tell you it’s super difficult. If you’re going to be playing through a huge amount of Crucible matches in the Iron Banner anyway, why not also try to work towards The Mountaintop? You won’t be able to again.
3 – Power Level
The Iron Banner is totally different to the Crucible because it takes your Power Level, some call it Light Level but they’re wrong, into account. This means the higher your Power Level compared to others, the easier it is to kill them.
But there’s another aspect to your Power Level you might be thinking about, boosting it. The Iron Banner has mad rewards, and when I say mad I mean mad. You can get drops from random events throughout the history of Destiny 2 for some reason, but they’re also at or above your Power Level. Combine this with increased Prime Engram drop rates from Bungie and you’re definitely going to go up in Power Level during this event.
If you’re like me and you’re making a final push for max Power Level I’d get into Iron Banner right away.
4 – Weapons
Lord Saladin is bringing two weapons that we can earn from him by playing matches this season, as he always does. These are returning weapons, but they’re bloody fabulous. The thing with Iron Banner weapons is that they always have some really nice detailing, and they’re always covered in awesome shaders. These weapons probably won’t be available for you to earn again, at least not anytime soon, so ti’s worth picking them up now. If you’re a collector like me then having weapons that are limited in availability is totally your jam, so get on it.
5 – Armour
I could very well have included this with weapons but I think Armour is too different. The thing with the weapons for this event is that there are only two of them. With armour there’s a Helmet, Gauntlets, Chest Armour, Leg Armour, and a Class item. There’s one of these for every class for this season, and that makes them even more collectible.
The chances are that you’ll only gather one armour set, and that’s for your main class. But this season Iron Banner is beginning on Christmas Day, a national holiday almost everywhere may I remind you. This means that from the weekly reset you can play until your eyes are sore with sleep, and then some more, because Boxing Day is also a national holiday almost everywhere.
I’m not condoning going without sleep until you’ve collected everything, but I am saying that you should take advantage of these days over which you have nothing better to do than play video games. Get on with this collecting.
If I missed any reasons why you think Guardians should be playing Iron Banner on Christmas Day then let me know in the comments.
