Hogwarts Legacy | Haunted Hogsmeade And More
Hogwarts Legacy Ancient Magic Guide
One of the more powerful things you have access to in Hogwarts Legacy is Ancient Magic. With it, under the right conditions you can topple even the most powerful of foes in a matter of a couple of casts. That however requires a little effort on your part.
At the most basic of its core, Ancient Magic allows you to wield a single target high-damage spell among other things. That single damage spell however requires you to have enough Ancient Magic stored. It can feel like it takes forever to refill that meter and many times you wish it did more damage as well.
Thankfully there are a couple of solutions to these issues. You can increase the number of bars you have by running Ancient magic Hotspots found on the map. In addition, there are talents and traits that you can invest in as well to help speed up the process of gathering Ancient Magic from being in combat.
Ancient Magic Hotspots
Decently early on into the game, you end up coming across what look like abandoned castles or what could have been churches. Some of these places are medium size and others are quite small. They show up on the map as Ancient Sites Hotspots. If you complete enough of them you can unlock additional Ancient Magic bars to store further magic in.
While you might be like me after you have done a few of each of the different sites you find out in the fields of Hogwarts you tend to start skipping over sites in pursuit of main and side quests. While that is quite understandable as things like Treasure Vaults are so plentiful and usually not worth the time. I highly recommend not skipping over any Ancient Sites Hotspots you find.
Early on when I only had one or two bars of Ancient Magic to use I often found myself holding off on using it. I was always waiting for some boss or harder-than-normal encounter to burn the limited supply of it I had at the time.
With five bars of Ancient magic unlocked and some other things added into the mix, I use it with impunity. I end up getting so much back anyways outside of perhaps saving one bar for harder content. It feels like a waste to not use it to quickly vanquish everything that dare stands in your path to power and glory.
Here is a rough location of quite a few of the Ancient Magic Hotspots you can find in the first part of the Highlands map that shows areas such as the Forbidden Forest, Hogsmeade Valley, and North Hogwarts region.
One of the best ways to find out if there are even any Ancient Magic Hotposts to look for in a region is by consulting the map. When you are zoomed out at the region level for instance you can see Hogwarts valley has 6 Ancient Magic Hotspots and I’ve already completed them.
If you are lucky you have already uncovered the locations of Ancient Magic Hotspots in that region and can just zoom in till you see the icon for them. They however tend to be in heavy side activity areas often getting covered on the map making them easy to see.
On top of that, they also seem to be harder to get to show up on the map in general. If you know you are in an area that has some and doesn’t see them on the map. I recommend flying around and spamming Revelio which you can do while on a broom or other flying mounts.
Once you unlock the ability to fly is a great time to start going around and working on the challenges for Ancient Magic. The sooner you get further bars unlocked the easier combat becomes.
You get further bars unlocked at 2, 8, and 20 total Hotspots completed. Getting at least the first two challenges completed is not that difficult. Just one of the areas I showed above alone has six of the sites in it.
As far as running the sites they are a lot easier than they would appear. The biggest trick is most of them can be completed once you interact with the site to start it on a flying mount. While there are a couple of exceptions or places you can’t get to on a mount. It by in large will be a large factor in completing them quickly.
Instead of showcasing running one of the easier Ancient Magic Hotspots on a broom. I thought I’d show one of the more challenging ones I found while I went around and did them.
You first follow the traces once you are close enough to the site till you find the spot you can interact with. On PC you do so by pressing the F key. It then will shoot out some ancient magic hinting at the next location to find the next trace.
If you ever struggle to find them once you start a site just cast Revelio. They show up as odd oval-shaped blue objects.
For this particular run, I needed to go inside the castle. Most times if you fly around on a mount you can find an opening to fit through to get in. I decided going through the front gate was easy enough since I just needed to spam Depulso spell at a cog that will spin till it locks the gate open. I then went inside.
You can see once inside after collecting the first one. I cast Revelio to take a look around making it easier to spot. You can also see I could have just flown right in on a broom.
While Ancient Magic Hotspots are often filled with jumping puzzles. You can see I could not be bothered doing so. I simply hopped on my broom and flew up to the next orb which I was able to collect by getting close enough to it without having to get off my broom.
Keep looking for orbs till you get a cutscene. That is how you know you have collected them all and have gained credit. Many times you won’t see the challenge ticker pop up updating you on the main screen. If you however go into challenges under exploration you will notice you got credit anyways.
Ancient Magic Upgrades Gear And Talents
Beyond just unlocking up to five bars there are some other things you can do as well. There are certain traits and even talent points you can pick up. These take things to the next level as far as using Ancient magic goes.
While you can luck out and loot gear that has things like Ancient magic III, Control III, and Ancient magic Focus III. You can also use the loom to craft these onto your gear.
You can see that adding the trait Ancient Magic III only costs me 1 Kneazle Fur. The hardest part is finding this trait in a chest in the first place to use it and then getting the beast which you will more than likely run into anyways while out and about working on these sites.
Since you only have one slot per piece of gear picking up all three of these traits at least for me was not worth it. I find if I’m tight on trait slots just getting Control is the more important of them all to help me quickly regain the Ancient Magic that I’ve spent. After that Ancient Magic for the increased damage output is a close second.
As far as talents go in the core section you can find things that increase the rate at the meter for Ancient Magic is filling. You can pick Protego Absorption, Basic Cast Airborne Absorption, and Evasion Absorption. If you are tight on talent points at least pick up one of these based on your play style that will generate the most.
If you want to go all out and find yourself disarming creatures a lot you could even pick up Ancient magic Throw Expertise.
Trick For Getting Lots of Ancient Magic Energy
If the Ancient Magic Meter is low and you need to refill it quickly. One great trick is heading to a location that has some Inferius in them. Once you get one alone don’t cast any fire or other spells on it. Just spam the basic attack.
As you can see I maxed out my meter and there are still loads of Ancient Magic to collect. This is also a great way to get over a 100 combo attack for any achievements you might have for such things. I ended up taking this one well past the 130 I took in the screenshot to around 200 before I stopped.
For some added spice in some rather hard combat situations. I might even toss in a Maxima Potion. I will also hold off on using X till the target becomes cursed. Then it’s all about that quick takedown.
Now I can start whatever grand adventure I’ll be up to next on with a full meter of Ancient Magic at the ready. This will also make It quite easy to top off as I kill things, use X for the massive attack, and refill.
The best part is that there is no cooldown on using it. As long as you have enough Ancient Magic stored up you can keep spamming it. In this case, I now have five uses for it. While there is a single more powerful spell in the game that comes in the form of an unforgivable curse that has quite a long cooldown. Unlike Ancient Magic which in either of those ways and just had the limit of how much you have stored up.
Final Thoughts
Ancient Magic can become quite powerful in the end. It all comes down to if you want to put in the time and resources to make it. Naturally the Ancient Magic meter despite how much we wish it would instantly refill to five bars. It might not be on easier fights. So don’t neglect other parts of your combat abilities either.
As sometimes it is best to hold a little in reserve just in case you get in trouble. Such as running into a troll while exploring a forest and taking it down in one shot. They are just that easy to kill.
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Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Hogwarts Legacy.
