Hogwarts Legacy: 26 Tips I Wish I Knew Before Playing

Hogwarts Legacy can be an overwhelming experience. Like gaining admittance to an unfamiliar school in your final year, there’s a whole lot you’ve got to learn — and not much time to do it. After playing through Hogwarts Legacy for more than 40 hours, we’ve learned a few details we wish we’d known sooner. This game is throwing tutorials at you up until the very end of the story, and still there are features that were left unexplained that we had to figure out on our own. There’s a lot to learn here, and we’re going to break it down as simply as possible. Here are 26 tips and tricks that can make your time at Hogwarts so much better.

More Hogwarts Legacy guides:

Beginner’s Guide | 26 Tips & Tricks

No wasting your time. Here are 26 tips we’ve picked up while playing dozens of hours of Hogwarts Legacy. Hopefully some of these will be useful to you. No story spoilers here.

#1. Flying is too important to miss. Early in the Summer season, you’ll unlock Broom Travel. Unlock this first before you even consider exploring. Get around the map becomes infinitely easier with the broom. You can still explore on-foot, but now you have a backup escape method.

#2. Don’t let your inventory fill up. Sell everything you don’t currently have equipped. Every model is unlocked permanently as a cosmetic, so there’s no reason to keep any gear that you don’t have equipped. You can fast-travel directly to Hogsmeade to sell.

#3. Press [Square / X] on the gear menu to Change Appearance. You can do this at any time for free. All gear you collect will unlock as an ‘appearance’ — even gear you don’t collect if your inventory is full.

#4. Further character customization can be done in Hogsmeade. Look for the scissors icon. You can change your hairstyle and other cosmetics at the stylist — just don’t expect to change your face or skin color. Not even magic can change that yet.

#5. To save yourself money, don’t buy potions or resources. Grow them in the Room of Requirement with seeds or collect materials from the open-world — you’ll have to learn all this anyway to unlock every spell.

#6. Build as many Potion Stations and Potting Stations as possible when you unlock the Room of Requirement. You can place 7 of each — and there’s no reason not to place all 7. These cost Moonstone, which you’ll have in abundance. The cost is also fairly cheap. The most expensive part is buying the schematic for gold.

#7. To get a lot of money fast, open the Eye Chests in Hogsmeade. You’ll need the invisibility spell to unlock them. Many can be found in town and in Hogwarts. Each Eye Chest rewards you with 500 coins. Very, very useful in the early game when you need to purchase schematics, recipes and other items to progress your quests.

#8. Wait 3 days to respawn resources. This includes resources in the green house. Very useful for collecting extra plants to throw in combat. If you find a location with plentiful ingredient materials, you can wait 3 days to harvest the area again.

#9. To craft potions, buy Dittany Leaves from the seed shop in Hogsmeade and collect Horklump Juice from Horklump Hollow. Like stated above, you can just wait three days to get more juice. And there’s a way to skip 12~ hours ahead.

#10. On the map screen, press [R3] to wait. This changes the time — you’ll jump from day to night, or night to day. Resting twice will move the timeline forward one day. Some events are limited to specific times of the day, so this can be very useful for night activities like hunting Demiguise Statues.

#11. Creatures will also respawn after a few days. Return to Beast Dens with a Nab-Sack to earn easy money. Each beast can be sold at the beast shop in Hogsmeade for 120 coins. You can easily collect 10+ per den.

#12. Beast Symbol Doors are easy to solve when you know the trick. The symbols start from 0 (bottom-left) to 9 (bottom-right). The numbers follow in a linear pattern from 0-to-9. Once you know the symbols start at 0, the simple math equations are a cinch to solve.

#13. Many puzzle objects in Hogwarts can’t be solved until you complete the side-quest associated with the object. You can’t solve Moth Mirrors or House Cabinets until you complete a small side-quest near them. The solutions won’t even appear in the environment until the side-quest is complete.

#14. You can explore the far south of the map even very early in the game. Lower the difficulty to get through the Level 20 enemies. The south of the map is packed with enemy bases. If you want to fight more and do more activities, it is a treasure trove.

#15. Stealth is incredibly powerful. Upgrade with talents early. There are two talents you can get immediately that make you harder to spot. Get the talent that freezes multiple enemies when performing a stealth takedown. This makes an already overpowered ability completely unstoppable.

#16. To find easy Demiguise Statues, travel to the small towns on the map. This makes unlocking the Level 2 unlocking spell much easier. Each small town will have 1 Statue, usually available to collect in the open or behind a Level 1 lock.

#17. Upgrade Gear Capacity by completing Merlin Trials. Merlin Trials are unlocked early in the story. You can’t solve them all until you unlock more spells, but you can complete at least two to quickly enhance your gear.

#18. Upgrade Ancient Magic Capacity by completing Ancient Magic Hotspots. These are often easier to complete than Merlin Trials, but you won’t find many until you search the world map via broom stick.

#19. To actually unlock these upgrades, go to the Challenges menu in the Field Guide. You need to collect the rewards before the upgrades take effect.

#20. Use the Combat Arena in the northeast corner of the map to quickly gain levels. Turn down the difficulty and complete these in less than 10 minutes — you’ll earn enough XP to level up until much later in the game.

#21. During story missions where you’re with an ally, you don’t have to slowly walk. Sprint and your ally will sprint ahead. Your ally will also light up the darkness with you if you use the light spell.

#22. Easily defeat enemies during many missions by using Depulso or other spells to send them flying off ledges. This is obvious, but it took us time before we realized just how powerful this technique is. Launching an enemy off a ledge is an instant kill.

#23. After using Expelliarmus on an enemy wielding a weapon, you can use [R1] Ancient Magic Throw on the weapon to deal extra damage. Many enemies like Trolls or Rangers have long-range attacks you can block, then throw their projectile back at them.

#24. Every enemy has a specific weakness or counter. Use Levioso before a giant frog uses a tongue attack to pull the tongue out, exposing its weak point. Descendo can be used on giant spiders while they’re digging to stick their head underground. There are many, many more — so experiment often!

#25. To unlock Dark Arts, complete Sebastian Sallow side-quests. They’re not part of the main quest. You have to agree to learn them in text — if you refuse, you’ll lose access to the spells permanently. You can still complete his side-quests even if you don’t want to learn these evil-aligned spells. You don’t have to become a bad guy.

#26. Don’t know what to do next? Check the Owl Post. You’ll need to read messages sometimes to progress the main story and side-quests. Normally, a quest will appear alongside an Owl Post letter — but sometimes you have to read the letter to actually move things forward.

That’s everything we wish we knew. There’s so much to discover in Hogwarts Legacy, we might’ve missed something. Got more tips you wish you knew before starting the game? Let us know!