Harry Potter: Wizards Unite: Tips and tricks for August 2019

We're speed leveling to max out Wizards Unite and have learned a trick or two along the way to completing a registry and beating Fortresses. Here's what you need to know.

It's clear that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a game with many facets, most of which are designed to get you out and about and playing the game as much as possible. While the game is easy to hop into, there are aspects of it that can be done a certain way to help you maximize your game time and the XP you earn.

Here at iMore, we've been playing since the game released and we've been working on tips and tricks to help you as you start your Wizards Unite Journey. This list is not exhaustive; we will keep adding to it as we find out new things to help you beat the Calamity!

Play during events!

This is our biggest tip to anyone playing Harry Potter: Wizards Unite because not only is it a fantastic way to gain XP, Runestones, new Foundables, and those elusive Restricted Books, it's also a ton of fun to discover everything new.

Here's the events we know about so far for August 2019:

Brilliant Event: Potter's Calamity from July 30, 2019 - August 6, 2019 (2PM ET) Community Day: August 10, 2019

Masterful casts give you more XP!

Casting spells in Wizards Unite is your bread and butter. Learning to cast spells well will help you defeat Confoundables quicker, gain more XP from your battle, and use less energy on each battle.

The key to overpowering Confoundables and returning Foundables before they get away is to cast Masterful spells (Fair > Good > Great > Masterful is the order from worst to best). Masterful casts also net you 100 XP on top of everything else (Good and Great also get you experience bonuses, but Fair does not). A Masterful cast doesn't guarantee you will overpower the Confoundables; however, it definitely increases your odds.

Casting Masterful spells can be a little tricky, but the key is trying to be as fast as possible, while also tracing the spell glyph accurately.

Tips to casting Masterful spells in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Sign in every day

Obviously, you should play the game as much as possible if you want to level up quickly and explore the entire world of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite; however, some days you may not be as lucky and have the time to get out and walk around.

The good news is the game gives you a daily bonus every day you load up the game, so at the very least, even if you can't play the game, you should load the game every day to earn XP, gold, ingredients, potions, and more goodies!

Complete daily tasks

The daily assignments may seem like a chore to do but they will help you level up and get those all-important potions and ingredients faster. There are four types of assignments in Wizards Unite — daily assignments, special assignments, achievements, and SOS assignments — and they can be found in the lower right corner of the world map screen.

By concentrating on completing these assignments you can add a lot of XP to your daily pool. They can also give you 10-15 gold a day which can be used to purchase items in Diagon Alley, as well as some extra potions to help you succeed. The daily assignments reset, you guessed it, daily, but the rest of them are ongoing and offer greater rewards when you complete them.

Fastest ways to level up in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Get the traces with beams of light

Keep your eyes peeled for a beam of light shooting up from the Traces you see in the world, these are high-risk Foundables, and as such are worthy of your time. High risk always means high reward and to finish out your registry you will need to find as many rare Foundables as possible.

The color of the beam of light coming from the Trace is also important, as it represents the difficulty. If it's yellow, that Foundable will be moderately hard to retrieve. Alternatively, if the beam of light is red that means it the Foundable will be extremely difficult to release. Remember to use Exstimulo Potions to help you conquer difficult Confoundables.

Play at night to find Oddities

Oddities are some of the rarest and most difficult Foundables to find and you can only find them at night, so make sure you playing in the evening (between the hours of 8 PM - 8 AM your local time) to ensure you're finding Oddities.

Oddities work a little differently than normal Foundables, you actually have to battle them just like a Wizarding Challenge, so make sure you have Healing potions, Exstimulo potions and a good amount of Spell Energy before you take them on!

How to find Oddities in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Keep stocked up on Spell Energy

You need Spell Energy to do almost everything in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and unless you buy more, your capacity maxes out at 75. Do your best to visit Inns and Greenhouses as much as possible well you're walking around to ensure you never run out of Spell Energy.

This is especially important for Wizarding Challenges at Fortresses because they use a lot of Spell Energy to complete. Fortresses are tough, with multiple battles inside, and if you aren't able to complete them you'll have to forfeit, thereby losing your runestone, or having to pay 100 gold to grab 50 energy. Gold is scarce and you really don't want to waste it on energy.

Fastest and cheapest ways to get Spell Energy Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Different color Inns can offer better Spell Energy

Not all innkeepers in Wizards Unite are as generous as others. Sure, they all agreed to feed you for free, but some only offer jellybeans and soy sauce. It's important that if you do find an Inn that offers turkey dinners you use it as much as possible.

When you first enter an Inn the dishes open briefly, allowing you to see what they have to offer. Any time you see an Inn with three or more turkey dinners, spend a little time there finding Traces and stockpiling your energy. Each turkey dinner gives you 10 spell energy, so instead of running around looking for Inns that may or may not offer something good, stay put and reap the harvest.

Each Inn takes five minutes to cook new food, so remember to set an alarm so you can harvest them as efficiently as possible.

Lastly, keep an eye out for the smoke on Inns and Flags on Greenhouses. If you see either of those things, it means you have already visited them and they aren't ready to be used again. As soon as the smoke clears and the flags lower you are clear to go.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite: What are Inns and how do they work?

How to beat Wizarding Challenges

Fortresses are host to Wizarding Challenges and they are a whole different ball game. They require a lot more thought and finesse than you might think. That's why we have a whole guide dedicated to defeating Wizarding Challenges!

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite - Wizarding Challenge Tips & Tricks

Make sure you manage your ingredient inventory

You only have a certain amount of room for all your potion ingredients — 200 is maximum capacity — and if you're full you won't be able to pick any up from the map or receive any as rewards. This means you could be missing out on some rarer ingredients.

Make sure you are not filling your vault up with common ingredients until you reach the maximum You can delete ingredients easily enough and you can always buy more space for 425 Gold, though Gold costs real money so proceed with caution.

Which ingredients are worth saving in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Use your gold key on 2KM Portmanteaus

A portmanteau is Wizards Unite version of an egg in Pokémon Go. You walk around with them until they are ready to open and inside they have a stand-alone battle with Foundables that are only available in Portkeys. These Portmanteaus come in 2KM, 5KM, 10KM, and sometimes special 7KM versions, and each one requires a key to open.

You get one gold key to use on your Portmanteaus and that gold key lasts forever, unlike silver keys, which are single use. Try to use your gold key on 2KM Portmanteau's to maximize its use. Save your Silver keys (which you earn by leveling up) to open 5KM or 10KM Portmanteaus. Obviously, the more Portmanteaus you can open with it in the shortest time, the better.

Stockpile your Portkeys and use a Baruffio's Brain Elixir to maximize XP

The Baruffio's Brain Elixir in Wizards Unite is incredibly helpful as it gives you double Wizarding XP from Traces, Wizarding Challenges, and Portkeys. Any time you open a Portkey you should try to do it in conjunction with a Baruffio's Brain Elixir.

Lory, the EIC of this fine site, has another idea to make the Brain Elixir even more potent: "Set multiple Portmanteaus to unlock at the same time, so the brain elixir gives extra XP for all." To do this Lory recommends staggering the timing of when you put the key in the Portmanteau.

Here's an example: You have a 10KM Portmanteau, a 5KM one, and a 2KM one. You want to put a key in the 10KM one then walk it for 5KM. Once you reach the 5KM mark you should put the key in the 5KM portmanteau. Now the two will be ready at the same time. When both of them reach the 8 km mark put your gold key in the 2KM Portmanteau and you will have three ready to go in just 2 km.

Once they are all ready to go you can drink your Baruffio's Brain Elixir and unlock them, gaining the double XP for all three of them at the same time. Really, all it takes is a little forward planning and you can really maximize your Portmanteaus.

Alternatively, you can also just stockpile Portkeys until you have the maximum amount — eight — and then drink a Baruffio's Brain Elixir to get a load of XP at once!

Brew potions using Master Notes

On the subject of potions, brewing potions in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite takes time, but you can reduce this time by using Master Notes.

Master Notes are gestures, specific to each different potion you can make, that cut the brewing time by 15%. You draw the shapes of a given sequence into the cauldron after tapping the wooden spoon. The shapes will appear above the cauldron as you make each pattern. Enter the wrong gesture, and your entire sequence is deleted, but you can try as many times as you need to in order to get it right.

Another nice thing about Master Notes is that they reduce the total time to brew by 15%, not the remaining time. This means if you input the Master Notes sequence when there is 15% or less time remaining on a potion, it will complete instantly.

How to brew every potion with Master Notes in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite!

Brew and buy is cheaper than buying

If you are looking to fight some fortresses but find yourself low on health potions you can always buy them from Diagon Alley for 25 gold, or, if you have the ingredients available there is a cheaper way.

Speeding up health potion production once you start brewing only costs 12 gold per potion — essentially half price compared to Diagon Alley — so you can grab four potions really quickly with minimal fuss. Of course, you will need the ingredients to brew the potions, but in my experience, there is always enough around to brew a health potion or two.

Spend your gold wisely

Gold is the in-game currency in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, which you can get by playing the game or by spending real money to buy it. Whichever option you choose, makes sure you are spending your gold wisely, because once you do, it's gone.

Fastest ways to get in-game gold in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

What tricks have you found?

Have you found helpful tricks as you've been playing? What else might we have missed? Let us know in the comments, and if we can verify it, we will add it to the list!

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