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Hogwarts Legacy is the video game playground Potter fans have wanted since the first book came out. For me it lived up to the hype with its Scottish Highland map, great spell design and magical beasts. But before you’re caught up in the magic, here are my top 10 tips to help navigate this beast of a game.
Tip 1 – The Sorting Hat
As Legacy is set many years before the books, the houses don’t have the reputation they do now. Slytherin isn’t pure evil, and Gryffindor hasn’t earned its heroic status. Because of this your house option doesn’t need to determine your characters personality. Of course, the house you choose will determine which common room you have access to. Also, each house has its own unique questline within the story, and you will have different dialogue with some characters.
Those things aside, the story will progress the same and you can decide if you want to be a light or dark wizard despite your house choice.
So, if you are feeling overwhelmed by the choice, just know it doesn’t affect all that much. But Hufflepuff does get to visit Azkaban and Slytherin do have the best common room.
Tip 2 – Progress To The Autumn Term
With most open world games, you get an itchy foot and want to explore everywhere and everything as soon as possible. But Legacy locks most of its spells and useful gear behind story progression. To make things easier, it is best you carry on with the main story until you hit the Autmn term. You will know you have gotten to this point as a cutscene of the weather will play. This happens about 10 hours into gameplay.
You may think that is a long time to wait before you can go frolicking around the Highlands in Hogwarts Legacy, but it is for the best. After this point you will have access to a broom, fast travel, key combat spells, the Room of Requirement and most of the map. It will make exploring easier, and you will be able to engage with most of the collectible activities.
Tip 3 – It’s All About, Revelio
One of the best spells you will learn is Revelio. Make sure you always spam this! Revelio will highlight loot, quest items and field guide pages. Chests will be highlighted in gold and will contain Galleons, decorative items, new wand aesthetics and gear. Quest items will turn blue, so you know what can be interacted with. Finally, field guide pages will be revealed. These pages can be found throughout the map and are a great way of levelling up in the beginning of the game. Whenever, you are in a new area or stuck on a puzzle, make sure you Revelio!
Tip 4 – The Merlin Trials
When you start the game of Hogwarts Legacy, your inventory space is limited. You only have 20 slots. This sounds like a lot but when you are collecting gloves, hats, scarfs, glasses, cloaks and outfits these add up quickly. You will find yourself stuck in a dungeon with no space left. This will result in you passing up on gear or destroying it. This is painful as lower end gear can be sold and money isn’t that easy to come by.
To stop this from happening you will need to prioritise one of the games side collectible quests. This being the Merlin Trials. All you will need to complete these is some Mallowsweet flowers and some of the games key spells. Then fly around and complete these small puzzles. When you complete enough you will unlock additional inventory slots!
Tip 5 – Get Rich
There are a lot of reasons you will need to be minted in Hogwarts Legacy. Decorating your Room of Requirement will cost a bomb as you purchase potion and potting stations. To get some Galleons under your belt you will need to rob Disillusionment Chests. These chests can easily be seen thanks to them being adorned with a watchful eye. If you get to close, these chests will lock tight, and you won’t be able to get the Galleons inside.
If you followed my previous advice and churned through the main story you will unlock the Disillusionment charm quickly. This charm is unlocked after Sebastian’s quest, ‘Secrets of the Restricted Section’. Once you have this you will be able to turn invisible and stalk up to these chests without triggering their locking system. This means you can grab what is inside, which is a whopping 500 Galleons! You can find 10 of these chests in Hogsmeade and plenty more in the castle. This can give you a great starting fund for buying blueprints for your Room of Requirement.
Tip 6 – Moonstone
Whenever, I do a top tip blog for any open world game you will always get the tip – collect everything you can pick up. Hogwarts Legacy is no different. If it isn’t nailed down, grab it! The open world is full of ingredients you will need a stash of if you want to make key potions.
However, the thing you’ll need to make sure you do have, is an abundance of Moonstone. This ingredient is used to construct objects in your Room of Requirement, and believe me, you’ll be making a lot of objects.
You aren’t told about Moonstone till late on in the game’s first act. Yet, there are plenty of opportunities to grab it before then. Moonstone is a striking blue crystal that can be found on many cliff faces. So, get your Accio spell ready and pull it towards your pockets when you can. Moonstone is used to create potting and potion tables. Both of which are integral to your Legacy experience. But Moonstone is also used to create aesthetics in your Room of Requirement. You might not think creating decorations is important but making the Room of Requirement your own is one of the best side activities in the game. Especially for a Sim player, like me.
If you’re a bit low on Moonstone, you can delete every basic item in the Room of Requirement to get 100 Moonstone to play with.
Tip 7 –Talent Trees
Early on in the story, you will unlock Talent Trees. These trees upgrade your magical abilities. However, it is worth noting, once you spend a talent point you cannot undo it and you cannot purchase every talent point on offer. This means you need choose wisely and pick talents that match your play style.
That being said, you will want to buy these talents early on to get the most out of combat.
Spell Knowledge – This talent has 3 upgrades and will let you pin more spells to use in combat. In the beginning you will only have 1 spell wheel of 4 spells. Each upgrade of this talent will add a new wheel. This is essential as you will need to switch between your growing arsenal of spells as you progress.
Basic Cast Mastery – This talent reduces the cooldown on your spells which means you can use them more often. It’s a no brainer.
Swift – This upgrades your dodge and lets your character teleport across the map. It’s handy when getting out of a group of spiders and it also looks really cool!
Human Demiguise – This can be found in the stealth tree and will let you run when casting Disillusionment. I love this one as nothing can slow you down.
Tip 8 – Collect Challenge Rewards
In your field guide you will unlock challenges. These come in various forms, and you will naturally unlock challenge milestones as you go. Yet, make sure you check your challenge guide from time to time as you will need to collect the rewards manually. The rewards are gear and trait upgrades.
Trait upgrades are mainly unlocked through the enemy challenges. These traits can be added to your gear using the Loom in the Room of Requirement. These will help you battle enemies more effectively.
Make sure you check the challenges, as even though you can unlock them through basic play, it is good to actively chase them as the rewards can be great!
Tip 9 – Transmog System
There’s lots of gear to find in Legacy and each comes with its own look and stats. Most of the time you will equip the best gear and then look like you have stumbled through a wardrobe and got dressed in the dark. At one point, I was wearing dragon sunglasses, a witch's hat and pyjamas...it’s safe to say, it wasn’t the coolest look.
Make sure you use the games Transmog System, so you don’t look silly. This is easy to use. When equipping gear, you can change its appearance to any outfit you have previously unlocked. Even though it will look different it will still retain its stats. You can also change your character’s appearance by visiting the hair salon in Hogsmeade. In this shop you can change everything bar you face shape. This means you can mix up your look every season and slay in style.
Tip 10 – Limit The Grind
Now, this final tip is for those that aren’t a fan of some of the mini games in Hogwarts Legacy. In particular, opening locks with Alohomora and catching beasts. Casting the Alohomora spell will put you into a mini game where you must rotate two locks to unlock the door. It's easy, but when you are hunting down Demiguise statues it can be a bit of a grind. The same goes for catching beasts. To get beasts in you Nabsack, you have to freeze them and then hold down a series of buttons to catch them. Sounds easy enough, but each beast breaks out of the spell at a different speed. This means you can end up running round the map after them.
If you are doing these activities in close succession and growing tired of the grind, you can lower the difficulty down to storymode. When you do this, you can auto solve the Alohomora mini game and instantly catch beasts with no fuss.
And there you have it! Now go lose yourself in the wonderous world of Hogwarts Legacy.