Looking for some tips for beginners before you jump into the world of Hogwarts Legacy? What a coincidence, that’s exactly what we’re covering here!
Hogwarts Legacy is an action role-playing game where you’ll be able to become a student and explore the famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as well as its surroundings while trying to reveal its secrets and the secrets behind your own power.
Life of a student of magic arts is not an easy one but it surely isn’t boring either. As you play, you can expect some interesting twists and a thickening plot as the story progresses, leading to a conflict that puts the safety of the entire wizard world at stake.
The game is good at explaining its core mechanics so you shouldn’t have too much trouble going in blind and experiencing the game as it is, but if you want to make sure that your first few hours are a smooth ride, we’ve got something just for you.
Let’s dive into some of the most useful Hogwarts Legacy tips and tricks that will give you the upper hand in the upcoming encounters.
Don’t Go Exploring Too Soon
While it may be tempting to start exploring the school of magic and its surroundings right away, we strongly advise sticking to the main quest for some time before wandering off.
As the game progresses, you’ll get access to some useful spells and more areas will become available, making exploration more worthwhile. Otherwise, you’ll often find yourself stuck or not being able to interact with certain mechanisms, simply because you haven’t learned the relevant spell yet.
This, in turn, will introduce a lot of backtracking, forcing you to return to previously visited locations, which you may or may not like.
To be more precise, you may want to postpone your exploration efforts at least until you’ve gotten yourself a broom and raised the lockpicking spell to level 3.
Pick Up Your Loot
In Hogwarts Legacy, you need to manually loot the items. Make sure you pick up everything; you wouldn’t want to accidentally leave behind a piece of powerful equipment.
Collecting gear is how you make your character stronger, so it’s only natural to pick up all the items while looking for possible upgrades.
And even if the item turns out to be mediocre at best, it can still be of value to merchants. Selling the gear will be a significant source of your income in the early stages of the game, so don’t neglect it or you may find yourself short on gold soon enough.
Don’t Destroy Redundant Items – Sell Them
If you find yourself in a situation where you’ve got no inventory space left, you may be tempted to clear some room by deleting items.
While it’s okay to occasionally remove some cheap stuff if you’re in dire need of emptying your pockets right away, it’s more reasonable to sell those pieces instead.
It may feel like a bit of a hassle, as you need to physically visit a vendor to sell the gear, but it’s worth doing in the long run; otherwise, you’re just voluntarily making life harder for yourself.
This is especially important in the early game where the resources are scarce and consumables such as potions can drain your wallet quickly if you’re not playing carefully.
Extra Inventory Space
Speaking of inventory space, it’s also worth knowing that it’s possible to increase the initial limit of 20 items that can be carried at any given time.
There are a lot of items lying around but it would be incredibly inconvenient to go back to the shop each time you pick a few new pieces of gear to sell.
Complete Merlin Trials to get more slots, so you can haul more items at a time back to the vendor. 4 extra slots will be rewarded after completing 2, 6, 10, 14, and 20 Merlin Trials, making it 20 total, which means you’ll have 40 slots when you’re done with that part.
You Can Reset Talents Now
This option didn’t exist when the game came out, but it’s here now; it’s a great addition as it gives players more flexibility and allows them to experiment more.
You’re not locked into your talent choices anymore, so there’s no need to be extra careful about spending your points and feeling like you wasted some on things that ended up being less useful than you initially thought.
Don’t go too crazy on this, though – it’s not a particularly expensive option, but it’s not free either.
No Need to Keep Transmog Items
In Hogwarts Legacy, you can change the appearance of your gear, which is often referred to by the community as “transmog”. To do so, just equip an item, then hover over the item slot, and you’ll see the “change appearance” option there.
What you can transform the look of your item into depends on the items you collected during your playthrough.
With that being said, there’s no need to keep the item you intend to transmog your gear into; the sheer act of picking it up is enough.
Once picked up it gets recorded and you can safely sell or destroy that item afterward; you’ll still be able to use it as a transmog option to change the appearance of whatever you’re currently wearing. Don’t waste your limited inventory space on hoarding transmog items.
Using Dark Arts Won’t Make You a Villain
Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t have a morality system, which means you can dab into the evil side without the need to face any moral consequences.
As an extension of this, don’t be afraid of using the Dark Arts if you feel like doing so. You won’t be punished for using forbidden techniques, including the iconic Avada Kedavra, other than possibly ruining the immersion if you’re leaning heavily into role-playing your character as a good guy.
Dark Arts are not necessary to complete the game by any means, but they can turn otherwise difficult encounters into more manageable ones, so keep this possibility in mind if you get stuck on a particularly challenging enemy.
Fall Damage is Dangerous
Some video games follow real-world logic to a certain degree. In the case of Hogwarts Legacy, this applies to falling from heights.
For the safety of your character, don’t try to jump down if the height looks dangerous; if it looks like that, it probably is.
Seek the Eyeball Chests
Keep your eyes peeled as you explore the surroundings and you may stumble upon a peculiar kind of treasure chest with a huge eyeball staring back at you.
Opening such a chest will reward you with an extra 500 gold which can significantly boost your progress, especially during the earlier stages of the game.
To open the chest, you have to get close without disturbing the chest’s eye. This can be achieved by casting Disillusionment Charm while outside the area of the chest’s influence. With the spell active, you’ll be able to approach the chest.
If you don’t have access to Disillusionment Charm yet, just stick to the main quest; Sebastian Sallow will teach you all about it when the time comes.
Remember to use the Revelio spell often to make finding the chests easier or, if you don’t mind spoiling yourself, follow a guide that shows all Eyeball Chests locations.
Level Up Lockpicking
In Hogwarts Legacy, being able to pick locks is a valuable skill that will create a lot of opportunities, especially if you love exploring.
And, as it happens, you’ll be able to learn that skill in the form of the Alohomora spell during the main quest Percival Rackham’s Trial, and after the season turns to fall.
Unfortunately, the default version of Alohomora used for lockpicking can only open locks of level 1.
To unlock more advanced level 2 and 3 locks, you’ll have to upgrade the spell first; this can be done by using Alohomora on Demiguise Statues – small figures of creatures holding a moon and glowing blue. Doing so will give you a Demiguise Moon.
Collect 9 moons to unlock level 2 spell; find 13 more to unlock level 3.
Conclusion
Hogwarts Legacy offers a believable wizardry setting with accessible gameplay that allows even the more casual players to have fun and figure out everything on their own without too much trouble.
However, if you’d rather come in prepared, it’s always a good idea to check out some of the most important things to know before starting.
That’s exactly what we aimed for with our simple Hogwarts Legacy guide and we hope it proved to be useful and gave you a desired head start.