Destiny 2 Solstice of Heroes 2020 armor, rewards, and rules revealed

With the Destiny 2 2020 Solstice of Heroes event kicking off Tuesday, August 11, today Bungie revealed the updated rules of the event and the shiny rewards we'll be chasing.

Solstice of Heroes will run through September 8, giving players a month to complete everything it has to offer. The event will be open to all players, including New Light newcomers. On top of the missing triumphs necessary for the MMXX seal, this includes acquiring and upgrading sets of armor through the European Aerial Zone event, which functions just like it did last year: kill waves of Hive, Cabal, and Fallen to spawn bosses, then kill those bosses to spawn chests. The more stuff you kill, the more loot you get. 

You'll start with a crummy rare armor set, but by completing armor-specific challenges, you can level it up to a Majestic Legendary set. From there, you'll be able to masterwork it by completing the following challenges (which are not retroactive):

• Complete a Nightfall Ordeal on Master difficulty
• Complete a Nightmare Hunt (seemingly on any difficulty)
• Complete the Pit of Heresy dungeon
• Win seven Trials of Osiris matches (not on the same card)
• Complete a Tier 5 Altar of Sorrow three times 

Masterworking a Majestic piece will also add a cool glowing effect to your armor. The glow gets brighter as you gather super energy, as seen here: 

This glow can be further enhanced by purchasing an armor ornament from the Eververse store. These ornaments will be available for Silver or Bright Dust, and adds an elemental hue to your armor glow which matches your current subclass. It will be orange for solar, blue for arc, and void for purple – and dark blue for stasis subclasses when they arrive in Beyond Light. 

That leads us to the most exciting bit about this year's Solstice event. As Bungie explained, "Once you earn your Majestic set it will be relevant up until next year’s event. The elemental glows being made into Universal Ornaments will ensure you can use them on any of your high stat armor going forward." 

This is a direct response to last year's unpopular Solstice arrangement, which saw many players spend real money on ornaments for armor sets that were almost immediately deprecated through the release of Armor 2.0 in Shadowkeep. Meanwhile, this year's ornaments can be purchased with Silver or Bright Dust and applied to any armor piece, and the event armor itself – which you can farm for high stat rolls – will be good for a whole year. 

Naturally, the Solstice will deliver more than armor ornaments. There's a whole suite of cosmetics incoming, from sparrows to ships to Ghost shells, and Bungie says that everything other than one finisher animation will "be available for both Silver and Bright Dust at some time during the event." Here's the bulk of the collection: 

Watch the latest trailer for Destiny 2: Beyond Light for a sneak peek at a new Exotic.