Bored with the “Hogwarts Mystery” Grind? Join the Club!
Have you often found yourself getting bored with the daily grind in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery? Well, join the club! No, really – you can actually join a club now. We have all the info on the game’s new clubs feature for you below, plus the September event dates for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and another quick update on Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells as that game prepares for its wide release. Phones at the ready, wizarding world gamers!
Hogwarts Mystery does a good job of breaking up the monotony with side quests and special events (let's be clear, though: Full Marks Events and Magical Milestones are still annoying). But when it comes to everyday gameplay, it's the grindiest of all grinders. You tap the highlighted objects until you run out of energy. Dialogue pops up once you've tapped the required amount of taps. Most of the time, you don't even get fresh dialogue each time you satisfy the tap count - it just starts repeating itself midway through.
That aspect of the game is what players most often cite as the reason they're not invested in it, but Jam City has a new trick up its sleeve to try to make all that tapping worth your while: clubs.
The developer announced this week that its clubs feature is ready to roll. Players who've reached at least Chapter 8 of Year 1 have undoubtedly noticed the main side effect: highlighted objects giving off green, pink, and gold auras in addition to traditional blue.
We’re excited to present the latest addition to #HogwartsMystery: CLUBS!
You can now collect club XP by completing different classes and school activities for rewards! This is your moment to truly hone your skills to become the witch/wizard you’re meant to be! #HPHMClubs pic.twitter.com/1HDce9FNk2
— Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery (@HogwartsMystery) August 25, 2020
As is the case with Hogwarts Houses, traits are attached to the clubs: hell-raisers head over to Dragon, homebodies hop into Hippogriff, and emo kids assemble in Sphinx! We're kidding... sort of. The traits associated with Dragon, Hippogriff, and Sphinx seem to line up with Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw, respectively, but we're not sure where that leaves Slytherin... probably staging hostile takeovers of all three.
You'll be asked to pick the club that most appeals to you, but note that Professor Minerva McGonagall has indicated you're not limited to that choice.
After you've made your pick, you'll be introduced to your clubhouse (we went with Dragon because we want to be where the action is), and you'll notice that tapping on objects sharing your club's color now feeds special XP into your Hogwarts Clubs screen, where progress will earn you the traditional rewards of energy, gold, books, and gems.
Jam City also promised in its press release, which you can view by clicking the toggle at the bottom of this article, that more new features will eventually be associated with progress through your club.
This new feature adds depth and meaning to the bubble-tapping mechanism, which will now be outlined in different club colors, allowing your choices to have an impact on your club attributes. Additionally, there will be new environments, new destinations and new opportunities to interact with other in-game characters by joining a club.
You can check out a small gallery featuring the Dragon Clubhouse below. It may not look like much now, but it has a drawbridge, and we can totally envision hosting an epic party in there.
Meanwhile, if you're current with your story-line gameplay, that means you're a student in Year 6 and making your way through the early stages of the Head Boys and Girls side quest. Have you ever wondered how surprised James Potter must have been to receive an owl informing him of his selection as Head Boy? Well, wonder no longer! Despite all the trouble our characters have caused through five-plus years of magical education, we're somehow still in the running for that loftiest of titles.
We were promised an inspiring visit from an old friend to help us through our journey to Head Girl or Boy, and since everyone already guessed it was going to be Rowan Khanna, we have no problem telling you it's Rowan Khanna.
We're not going to lie - something may have flown into our eye when we saw little Rowan materialize beside us in the Courtyard. Something may have flown into our other eye when she began recalling the significance of our friendship.
Okay, great. Now we're sad.
And now we're freaking traumatized and depressed too. Thanks bunches, Jam City.
But we are actually more inspired than ever to do Rowan proud by earning that title and the privilege of guiding our fellow students along an upright path. Plus, we get our names on a trophy. Rad.
This news may come as a shock, so brace yourselves: Another Brilliant Event is underway in Wizards Unite! Okay, perhaps that wasn't much of a shock. But the end of August has arrived, and that means we're ensconced in Part 2 of the month's main event: First Year at Hogwarts.
The event will be running through 11:00 a.m. PT on Tuesday, September 1, and is focusing on Foundables from the Hogwarts School Family. In the wild, be on the lookout for Brilliant Professor Sprout and Brilliant Professor Flitwick. You'll pick up Brilliant Professor Trelawney as you complete event tasks. Find Brilliant Nearly Headless Nick by using Brilliant Runestones in Wizarding Challenges, and you can obtain Brilliant Professor Slughorn by either unlocking Brilliant Portkey Portmanteaus or completing the bonus assignment. As we continue attempting to solve the mystery of the Calamity, this is yet another Brilliant Event that dredges up pleasant rather than dreadful memories. Minister of Magic Hermione Granger remains befuddled on that point.
Worry not, however - we've already received a list of September's events from Wizards Unite, and the next Brilliant Event looks good and tragic!
The Calamity appears to be behind a surge of Foundables from the Department of Mysteries, casting enigmatic secrets from the Ministry of Magic out into the open. Your help is needed to keep Ministry secrets safe and discover the origins of the mercurial motivations behind the Calamity!
Next month's two-part Brilliant Event will focus on the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, with Foundables including the Tank of Brains, Prophecy Orbs, Harry Potter, and the Veil. Part 1 will run September 8--15, and Part 2 is set for September 22--29. Prior to the start of the Brilliant Event, September's Wizarding Weekend will kick off at 11:00 a.m. PT Friday, September 4, and continue through 11:00 a.m. PT Monday, September 7. We'll be rounding up Magizoology Family Foundables in that mini-event, including the Unicorn and Newt Scamander. September's Community Day will run from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. in your local time zone on Saturday, September 19, and will find us members of the Statute of Secrecy Task Force hunting down Foundables associated with the Ministry Atrium.
We'll be back next month to give you more details on those events, and in the meantime, remember that Wizards Unite is continuing to make it easy for gamers to complete their gaming goals from a single location in order to promote social distancing.
As MuggleNet recently let you know, preregistration is underway for Puzzles & Spells as the team at Zynga prepares for the game's wide release.
Owners of Android devices, meanwhile, have been plugging away at the match-three title for about a month now, and our personal opinion remains the same: It's very good at distracting you while it tries to steal your wallet.
The Harry Potter-ness of it all doesn't disappoint. You have the characters, the scenes, and all the in-game references you could want. In some puzzles, kegs of butterbeer sit waiting to be tapped in order to spill their contents all over the board. In others, baby dragons hatch from their eggs and blast away stones with their firepower.
As is the case with any "free-to-play" game, however, you're going to get stuck along the way, and it all comes down to whether or not you're frustrated enough to spend a few bucks to move forward or content to shut it off and try again tomorrow. It takes a bit of the edge off that you're able to join teams. Working together toward the common goal of topping the leaderboard adds a bit of interest, and there's no denying that earning the MVP spot for the week is a tiny bit satisfying. Just imagine you can see the satisfaction on the creepy avatar's emotionless face.
Being part of a team also allows you to ask for help from your teammates. When you inevitably run out of your five dinky lives, you can often keep the game going without having to wait for a recharge by requesting lives from your team. Depending on the activity level of the team you choose to join, you can usually get at least one or two lives within a half hour or so. Sending lives to others doesn't cost you anything either; in fact, you earn a little XP for your generosity.
Ultimately, each player is going to react differently to the game. For those of you who are already playing, let us know in the comments how you're liking it! Those still waiting can preregister on the game's official website. And in the meantime, you can check out a few more examples of the game's graphics in the gallery below.
