How to Upgrade Gear & Add Traits – Hogwarts Legacy

This guide will introduce you to Upgrading and adding Traits to your Gear in Hogwarts Legacy. Upgrading process will be crucial in improving your gear’s stats to help aid you in exploration and combat — primarily, you will notice that these upgrades will add both general and unique offensive and defensive stats to your items. Below, we will introduce you to the Enchanted Loom, the two ways you can improve your gear, and how you can raid Bandit Camps to unlock more Traits.

How to Upgrade your Gear

Upgrading your Gear is pretty simple — unlike Traits (more on those later), upgrading Gear itself does not require any special recipe. It can be directly done at the Enchanted Loom.

How to Unlock the Enchanted Loom

However, if you haven’t already, you will need to unlock the Enchanted Loom first in the Room of Requirement. To do so, you will need to complete “The Elf, The Nab-Sack, And The Loom”. If you want to find out more in-depth details about the Loom itself, visit our dedicated Enchanted Loom Guide.

Now, all you have to do is walk up to the Loom and press to upgrade your Gear.

What the Gear Upgrades Do

All Gear pieces have three separate upgrades, each subsequent one requiring more materials to complete. Upgrading a piece adds a Secondary Stat to it — depending on the type of Gear that you are upgrading, you will either add Offence or Defence as a secondary stat.

• Keep in mind that you can’t add more Offence to a Gear Piece that already has Offence on it, meaning that you can only add a combination of Defence and Offence at the same time on an item.
• Each gear piece can be upgraded up to three times.
• Each subsequent upgrade will only upgrade the Secondary Stat! For example, if you upgrade your Handwear, you will only be able to add additional Defence on the item, with each upgrade adding more Defence to the item.
• However, the gear quality will not change when upgraded — this means that you will want to acquire Legendary Gear pieces if you don’t want to waste materials upgrading items of lower rarity!
• You can’t upgrade Well-Appointed with your Enchanted Loom!

Gear comes in four different variants:

• Well-Appointed
• Superb
• Extraordinary
• Legendary

All types of gear can be upgraded up to three times, no matter what their quality is.

How to Add Traits to your Gear

Adding Traits to your Gear is a separate process, but can be done in the same way you’ve upgraded your gear! Simply walk up to the Enchanted Loom and use the button to add a Trait to your equipment.

• Keep in mind that only one Trait can be added per Gear piece.
• You can freely swap Traits, provided you have the required materials.

Traits work similar to an enchantment, adding a unique defensive or offensive buff to your gear, often targeting specific enemies or spells — we will provide some examples of these later in the guide.

Based the rarity of your gear (Superb, Extraordinary, or Legendary), you will be able to add different tiers of Traits with the Enchanted Loom. You can add Tier I Traits to Superb gear, Tier II Traits to Extraordinary gear, and Tier III Traits to Legendary Gear.

How to Gather Materials for Upgrades & Traits

A big part of Upgrading your Gear will be gathering the right materials: both Upgrades and Traits use materials gathered from Magical Beasts.

There are two primary ways for getting the materials:

• From Magical Beasts you encounter in the wilderness.
• From Magical Beasts you rescue from Poaching attempts.
  • Magical Beasts that you manage to rescue will reside in your Vivarium! Taking care of them will play a vital role.

How to Gather Recipes for Traits

While most recipes in Hogwarts Legacy are available directly from Shop Vendors, Traits are an entirely different thing. Traits can’t be bought — some will be discovered by progressing through the Main Story, but your primary way of acquiring new Traits will be by raiding Bandit Camps! The Traits can be found in Collection Chests found in these camps.

Bandit Camp locations will not be randomized.
They can be found throughout the entirety of the map, coming in three separate variations:

• Small Bandit Camp
• Medium Bandit Camp
• Large Bandit Camp

Depending on which type of Bandit Camp you raid, you will be able to acquire the following types of Traits:

• Tier I – Small Bandit Collection Chest
• Tier II – Medium Bandit Collection Chest
• Tier III – Large Bandit Collection Chest

Gear Trait List

Here are a few examples of the Traits you will be able to discover:

• Protego Shielding: Decreased damage taken from Dark Wizards
• Amphibial Protection: Decreased damage take from Dugbogs
• Goblin-Silver Resistance: Decreased damage taken from Goblins
• Necromantic Protection: Decreased damage take from Inferi
• Anti-Venom: Decreased damage taken from Spiders
• Cushioning: Decreased damage taken from Trolls
• Destruction: Increased damage done with Confringo
• Disarming: Increased damage done with Expelliarmus
• Scorching: Increased damage done with Incendio

We hope this guide was helpful in introducing you to the Gear Upgrades! Have you discovered some tricks for finding Traits or Upgrading your Gear? Did you notice something we forgot to include in the guide? Please let us know in the comments below!