Combat Basics – Hogwarts Legacy

Welcome, young wizards and witches, to EIP’s Combat Basics for Hogwarts Legacy! In this guide, you’ll find all the information you need to best make use of the spells within your grimoires. We’ll take a look at all the essential elements of combat, including targeting, blocking, combos. We’ll also explain how to break through shields, and go over the mysterious Ancient Magic that your character can master.

Please note that this guide is a work in progress, as the game has not yet been released. We will continue updating the guide with more information as it becomes available!

Targeting, Basic Attacks, Blocking & Parrying

While there are plenty of exciting spells to learn, you’ll want to master the basics first: targeting, attacking and blocking.

• Manually Target – Press (push in on the right stick) to manually target an enemy
  • Move the stick to change targets

By default, you’ll attack the enemy that’s the closest to you and to the center of your screen. However, there will often be times that you want to target a specific foe. By default, pushing in on the right stick will allow you to manually target enemies; you can then use the right stick to swap between targets. The currently targeted enemy will have their name, level, and health displayed at the top of the screen.

• Basic Attack – Tap

Your basic attack is a combat “spell” that is always available — it has no cooldown, and no requirements to cast (other than there being an enemy to cast it at). By tapping the right trigger, you’ll fling a damaging attack at your target.

• Block/Parry – Press to cast Protego
  • Hold when blocking a spell to cast a Stupefy counter on the attacking enemy

The block and parry button are the same — by holding the block button while receiving an attack, you’ll parry, stunning the attacking enemy. You’ll know when it’s time to cast Protego, as an orange halo will appear around your head right before you’re attacked.

Note that some attacks cannot be blocked with Protego — you’ll have to dodge roll to avoid these attacks. These unblockable attacks are indicated by a red halo with spikes.

How to Cast Spells

• Spell Diamond – Hold
  • While holding , you can press face buttons to cast the spell assigned to that button.

Conveniently located on the same button as your Basic Attack, the Spell Diamond is how you’ll cast the spells you equip. When holding , you’ll see up to 4 spells, each assigned to one of the face buttons. Pressing one of those buttons while continuing to hold will cast the spell assigned to that button. Casting a spell will put it on cooldown — spells on cooldown will become black, and they’ll “fill up” with color to indicate how close to being off cooldown they are.

You can unlock up to four Spell Diamonds over the course of the game, allowing you to equip a total of 16 spells (4 in each). To access your spell diamonds, press a direction on the D-pad while holding . In the image below, you can see that there are two spell diamonds available.

How to Break Shields

Enemy shields will always be color coded, and each color indicates that a certain class of spell is required to break that shield:

• Gold – Control Spells
• Red – Damage Spells
• Violet – Force Spells

Spells are color coded in your Spell Diamond, so it’s easy to tell at a glance which spell(s) you have equipped can break an enemy’s shield. To break a shield, simply target a shielded enemy, then cast a spell with a matching color.

Ancient Magic

In addition to your basic attack and the spells you learn and equip, your character also gains access to special “Ancient Magic” spells throughout the course of the game. Only two of these spells have been revealed so far.

• Ancient Magic Throw – Press when the prompt shows up on an object to throw the object at your current target.
  • How to Unlock – Currently unknown.

This spell doesn’t seem to cost any resources — once you have it unlocked, you’ll see prompts appear above environmental objects — pressing the button will throw the object indicated at your current target.

• Ancient Magic Spell – Press + at the same time when the prompt appears above an enemy.
  • How to Unlock – Currently unknown.

Unlike the Ancient Magic Throw, this spell requires that you have a full bar in your Ancient Magic meter. Once you do, a prompt will appear above targeted enemies, indicating you can press both bumpers together to cast this spell. Its effect varies depending on the enemy targeted, but it appears to always eliminate the target (or turn it into a chicken).

Combos

Attacking enemies fills the combo meter. Every time you land a hit, the combo meter will increase by 1, and your Ancient Magic meter will fill — presumably, the higher the combo meter, the more each hit fills your Ancient Magic meter, but this has yet to be confirmed. Being damaged will reset the combo meter.

Using Tools

• Use Tool – Press to use the currently equipped tool.

Thanks to the Potions and Herbology classes, you’ll be able to bring consumables with you into combat. By holding , you can bring up the Tools Wheel. From here, use the right stick to select a tool, then release to equip it. The game will pause while the Tool Wheel is open, so you can take your time deciding what you need to equip.

You should now be ready to take on Hogwarts Legacy’s combat — well, once the game comes out, anyway. We hope this guide was helpful! Thoughts, questions, and suggestions are welcome in the comments below.