Destiny 2's final Iron Banner in Season of Dawn is almost here

Weeklong Iron Banner Crucible events have been a staple of the Destiny series for what feels like forever, giving players the opportunity to earn knightly rewards in high-stakes, big battle multiplayer matches.

Bungie has finally revealed the next time players across all platforms can dive right into the next Iron Banner event, and it's soon enough that everyone should grind this holiday weekend to get their power level as high as possible.

Bungie announced in the developer's latest weekly blog post on Thursday that the next Iron Banner would begin at 12 p.m. Eastern on February 18 and end a week later on February 25 at the same time. "As Crimson Days comes to a close, Lord Saladin will arrive just in time to fill the hole in the heart of a less decorated Tower," the developer announced. "Red flowers will be replaced with a burning shield as the last Iron Banner of this Season kicks off next week."

This new bout of Iron Banner will immediately follow the Crimson Days seasonal event, which is the annual Valentine's Day-themed celebration within the world of Destiny. Instead of Crimson duos 2v2 matches, players will instead engage in the brilliant chaos of Iron Banners 6v6 battles.

"This is your last shot to finish your Iron Banner quest this Season and pick up any pinnacle rewards from Iron Banner bounties," the blog post also reads, confirming that this will be the last within Season of Dawn before Season of the Worthy begins March 10, 2020.

"Equip your best gear and control those zones!" the final note for Iron Banner reads, confirming that per usual, Control will be the match type.

Hopefully, this new Iron Banner event isn't marred by the same issues all of Destiny 2 encountered over the past week where players lost key materials, leading to all sorts of problems with Bungie's servers. Bungie lamented these problems in a separate blog post this week explaining how it happened in what feels like a master class in video game developer transparency.

"While deploying Hotfix 2.7.1.1, a small number of servers failed to restart with the proper configuration file. This reintroduced a previous issue that caused some players to lose currency," Bungie wrote. "We had to reset the clock again, and roll back character data to ensure that no one’s hard-earned currencies were lost."

Bungie also issued a hotfix on Thursday designer to fix the server bug that triggered these issues, so if all goes well, this next Iron Banner should not run into any problems. Until then, it's best to play your favorite modes and stock up on Xur's new items.

This week's update from Bungie also offers some hints at some upcoming changes for Season of the Worthy. According to Bungie, the next season of Destiny 2 will give players the ability to "change Elemental Affinity on any piece of armor to either of the other two Affinity types directly from the item’s inspection screen by hovering your cursor over the armor's energy icon." For those that re-spec a lot for things like Nightfall that have specific elemental modifiers, this will definitely be a useful feature.

With seemingly no plans for a direct sequel just yet and steep competition from games like Marvel's Avengers, Godfall, and Outriders on the horizon, Bungie definitely needs to keep finding ways to make Destiny 2 feel fresh almost three and a half years after launch. Right now, introducing a ton of cool new content and features in new seasons — and keeping up with staples like Iron Banner — seems like the best way to do just that.