harry potter: witches unite!

This is long, but it really isn't as bad as it seems. Do NOT panic. It's broken down into a series of manageable bites. You'll probably want to prioritise the things in red. Also, to prepare for any upcoming event, you can also prioritise skills that will affect the Family involved. There's a link to spreadsheet at the bottom of this post that will make it easier for you to search for those skills in your lesson trees.

The new SOS Training Page is similar to our Profession Lessons. Unlike the Profession Lessons, some of the available skills unlock only once you've reached a certain Level in the game. At that point one node (and the associated skill) is free, and the others at that level can be 'purchased' as usual. We do so by spending Field Guides (FG), Ministry Manuals (MM), Restricted Section Books (RSB), and DADA Books (DADA) to gain new skills and become more powerful. This guide is focused on how to maximise getting more of things to spend, because any other skills you'd like to achieve on the Training page depend on those currencies. The more you have, the more you can get. There may be better ways for you to level up by focusing on XP exclusively, say, but this should help you more across the board, and XP is sure to follow from that. Also, if you are chronically resource challenged, you may wish to focus on Inns or Greenhouses first, but if you can hold off a little, continuing as you have until now, this will get you more FG and MM, and they'll help you reach all of your goals sooner. Spend what you can to pursue a specific goal comfortably and then move on to the next one. ( Read more... )

Sorry I'm only getting to this now, it's been... hectic. Many thanks to bliznitch on reddit for doing a lot of the initial leg work that I've expanded on here. It was super helpful. Also a solid thanks to zeliaimnoz for putting together a spreadsheet the 'Collaborative Copy of SOS Training' that allowed me to better summarise the skills and their costs. Everyone should really check that out, it makes things so much easier to visualise.

Just a reminder, some people are trying to finish the Bonus Assignment. It requires them to send 10 gifts, which means they need to have enough people to send things to. If you have an unopened gift sitting around from someone, if at all possible (and seriously: no worries if not), try to open it before the end of the event to give them a last chance to send something if they need to. (I'm good, prioritise each other.)

Right, now for the upcoming Community Day. ( Read more... )

And that's all I have. Anyone else have any tips or suggestions?

I've got the scoop! Community Day this month is on Sunday, 17 November from 11am-2pm local time.

The full details of the event follow, give it a pass if you find it too spoilery...

( Read more... )

Now let's talk about those tasks and the rewards...

( Read more... )

If you do nothing else, remember to pick up your free gift, and consider queuing some Healing Potions during the event.


ETA 16 November: They've just clarified we will receive extra Challenge XP when playing with teammates in Wizarding Challenges, but Wizarding XP for Fortress battles will be boosted by the same amount, whether you battle in a group or alone.

So you've probably been aggravated by Dancing with Dummies not working as it should. Now it seems there's another bug in your skill tree, but this time it works *for* you. 😃

When battling in a Fortress, if you apply two 50% Weaken Hexes to an opponent, you will currently take NO damage in the battle. Give it a shot before they fix it. 😉

Video of no damage being done...

BUG FIXED AS OF 15 October 2019. Sorry guys. 😕

As with the last Brilliant Event, OrangeWizard2019 has put together infographics of the Potter's Calamity (I & II) Brilliant Event tasks and bonus rewards that might change your approach to the events. Plus there's (very general) info on where to find the things from the Registry page. Planning ahead will simplify things, but that means knowing what's coming. If you consider that spoilery, please give this post a pass. ( Read more... )

Start the game daily. You don't have to play, just start it. There's basically a bonus just for breathing. 😊

By and large, speed matters more than accuracy in casting your spells. But you can get some practice in with the gestures here. (Go on, it's worth giving it a try once or twice just to get a feeling for how far off the cast can be. Completely changed how I cast.) Your spell is rated on a score of time and accuracy, time makes the bigger difference. The 'better' your cast is, the more XP you'll get. (Fair gets you nothing, Good adds 20 points, Great adds 50, and Masterful gains you 100 additional experience points. Double that if you took a Barrufio's.)

There's a glitch, some people have had issues with the daily assignments not tallying correctly. The current work around is to open the daily assignment before you do anything else in the game on a given day. (That's after midnight.) Sure, it's annoying, but it's easy.

Think about completing the daily assignments. Hey, it's 10 gold pieces daily, plus 250 XP and scrolls. That's not nuthin'.

Don't collect all of your daily assignments rewards immediately. Scrolls and gold won't count against you, so grab them, but your potions and ingredients vaults can become overly full. Defer the decision on how to best use the space in your vault for the end of the day (before midnight). By then you may have used some things up anyway.

Get the most out of the kilometres you're walking by putting keys in multiple portkeys at the same time. (Just because they unlock doesn't mean you have to use them right away.) Use the gold key on 2km portkeys, it's reusable, so that's the most efficient use. Use the silver keys on the rest. (Save up a whole bunch that have activated and open them once you've taken a Barrufio's Brain Elixir for double the experience points.) You might want to reserve a few silver keys for challenges, and it *might* be worthwhile to keep a 2km portkey just in case there's an extra reward offered during one of the events. (There's presently some discussion as to whether that will make a difference.)

Take a Barrufio's whenever you settle in to play for a while. Max up your spell energy, go to a spot with a lot of activity or a fortress, quaff the potion and go nuts.

Get the most out of your scrolls and books by cashing them in for lessons as soon as possible. *NOTE* There's currently an exception to this: hold off for a couple of days on cashing in your 'green books' if you're a Professor. In fact, unless the coming week brings some changes to the game (they're still tweaking things), 'Professor' might not have been a great career choice (says the Professor... lol). More on that tomorrow.

As long as you have space for a single item more in a vault (or spell energy), presently you can go over the limit when you pick up a bunch more. So if you only have room for one potion ingredient, you can still pick up five Newt Spleens, should you wish to...

Prioritise water in your seeds collection. You'll need lots more water than seeds to make use of these items. Plant them whenever you can / are likely to make the harvest. Doing so in more heavily frequented places increases the chances people will cast Herbivicus and increase the yield.

Maximise your ingredients and seed vault space by lining up cauldrons to brew and planting your seeds in the greenhouses whenever possible. It increases the effective amount of things you have. Similarly, if you're short on Potions space, you don't need to pick up a potion just because it finished brewing.

You can perform the Master Notes gestures at *any* point in the brewing process for a potion and save 15% of the total brewing time. That's nine minutes off every hour. Try to keep the cauldron going around the clock to maximise space in your ingredients vault. Save the ones with longer brewing times for the night so you don't lose time by not adding the Master Notes gestures. (Once you've done them correctly on three of the same potion, they'll be entered into the game notes. Until then, you can experiment with gestures, or refer to a master list. You can find one here.)


ETA:
Use potions to save Spell Energy. When you select a Confoundable, in the lower right there's generally a potions bottle. Selecting it shows you the potions in your possession that you can apply there. You can try them on for size and see the difference they'll make in the present encounter before you opt to 'use' them. Give it a try and see if it'll be worth your while. Exstimulo Potions will give you varying degrees of added power, reducing the threat, and Dawdle Draught will increase your chances of winning before the Confoundable is whisked away on you. (You need to take the Barrufio's *before* the encounter (if you want to), because it isn't offered at this stage.)

If your Spell Energy is low, you can run from a 'fight' by clicking the fleeing witch in the upper left hand corner. This may be particularly useful if you have the object in question in your collection already, or if the threat level is higher than expected or you're prepared to face.

But if you have the Energy to spare, don't just automatically leave battles with things you've already collected. It will still give you the experience points you need towards reaching the next level and sometimes you'll win fragments of other things you *do* need.

Once you complete a single page of a registry collection, you can 'Prestige' it and start collecting the items once again for more rewards. A star appears in a box in the upper right corner. Selecting it resets *that* page of the collection (and *only* that page) to zero, simultaneously increasing the number of things you'll need to collect to fill it again. Don't worry. There's no downside to doing this, your previous achievements are locked in, and it allows you to get more points and mileage out of the game because things 'count' again.

(Thanks to gelsey for suggesting the above. ❤️)


And that's what I could think of off the top of my head. Anyone else got any other tips I should add to the list?