harry potter: witches unite!

With thanks to Krebaldar who's done the legwork summarising, here's a short list of the bugs known at present from the forced update of ill repute and how to cope with them (if there's a workaround possible, that is):

* Spell Energy gifts cause the game to crash. (This is known to occur for Extravagant and Regular Spell Energy gifts, and assumed to occur for the Sponsored Spell Energy gifts as well.) Opening a gift causes the game to freeze - on my iphone, it causes an outright app crash, booting me out of the game entirely - and the player can take no other actions. Workarounds - You can avoid opening them, or you can restart the app after opening one. I've tried the latter and can confirm you will receive the spell energy expected.

* Absurdly high number of foes in Wizarding challenges. This one is interesting, because it seems to be triggered by using a Brilliant Event runestone FROM THE CURRENT EVENT. (I can't confirm the distinction as to which BE runestone, because you can't tell what the other players are using unless you're coordinating, but some folks think they've tracked it down to that as the source of the problem.) Players are reporting upwards of 30-70 foes in Dark V when using BE runestones. Each of the Brilliant runestones used adds more foes to the total cumulatively, which means five players, each using BE runestones, will have more foes than the same team where only one is using a Brilliant runestone. Workaround - Since it seems caused only by using Brilliant runestones from this event, avoid using these runestones whenever possible. For the task that requires using them, consider doing so as a solo player in lower chambers where a few additional low level foes won't consume too many additional resources or screw anyone else over. When doing Dark V avoid teaming with people using Brilliant runestones at all costs. (For one thing they clearly aren't as well informed as you 😉 (and who wants to play with rubbish teammates?), and for another it makes the level unnecessarily difficult. If you seem someone using any BE runestone (remember, you can't distinguish), just leave the chamber and join another team. (This may mean leaving the Fortress and taking the Knight Bus elsewhere if you have a Barruffio's going. That's okay.))

* The Portkey screen apparently prompts a new player tutorial. Workaround - Keep at least one unlocked but unopened (aka 'unused') portkey (boot, tea kettle, deflated ball) in your inventory. This will prevent the tutorial from starting.

* General lagginess... No workaround, I'm afraid. 😕 They'll need to fix that on their end. Patience, I am told, is a virtue, my friends.

Good day, my lovelies!

Many of you will have noticed that we didn't have a Brilliant Event this week as anticipated. They apparently put it off so they could finish the next update to the game first, not bad per se, but naturally there were... ISSUES! Firstly, this is a forced update. If you start the game, you'll be forced to update (and cheers, guys, thanks for that, I was trying to wrap up my daily and open my gifts...). This in and of itself wouldn't be so evil, if it didn't mean the update rendered the game effectively unplayable for most. (Reports have varied as to what folks ran into, but for me it would load an encounter without ever giving me the spell to perform to deal with it. It was effectively stalled.)

SOLUTION: Downloading the assets fixed the playability issue for me. Not everyone is that lucky. (On the map, click Suitcase (lower middle) -> click Gears (upper left) -> scroll down until you reach the red dot for your assets and either "Download All Assets" or "Download Essential Assets" as you wish. "All Assets" saves on roaming data and makes the game faster but requires more physical memory on your phone. "Essential Assets" is basically the opposite.)

THE MASSIVE PROBLEM: They haven't cleaned up the data at all. So if you do this, it wants over 10 GIG of space on your device, which is bonkers. (Basically it's more than doubled.)

But, y'know, on the positive side, I can see the pictures from the gifts again. Woohoo. /s (Okay, I sort of missed those. Still.)

Other than that...

Game Update 2.17.0

General/Bug Fixes
* Fixed Adventure Sync issue that occurred when enabling and disabling the feature.
* Fixed iOS purchasing issue that prevented some players from purchasing or claiming complimentary items in Diagon Alley.
* Fixed SOS Newsletter. (Note: this would actually be a help, except for me it still doesn't look fixed. There's a spotlight event coming up, but the in app info is thin, the link non-functional for me. So... maybe not so fixed? Who knows. (When the revolution comes, their quality department will join the lawyers and PR people against Douglas Adams' metaphorical wall.) I'll try to get info on the mini-event and post it here later.)
* Fixed issue with images not appearing on Gifting screen.
* Adjusted the SOS Training Tree so that the Southern Cooking node does not block progression to other nodes.
* Fixed issue with game freezing when a player enters the app via push notification.
* Fixed issue with players automatically being kicked out of an Adversary encounter when they do not cast offensive or defensive spells for two consecutive rounds.

PSA: Speaking of Adversary encounters... You can pause them at any time by clicking on the foe's avatar in the upper right. Useful when something else demands your attention during those minutes.

So... What do you do? Well, you can delete the app and do a clean reinstall and come out without the over-inflated memory issue. (They save all your info, so it works.) Doing this means you'll have to click your way through the red dots of hell, though. Or you can try letting it clutter up your phone for a little while (presupposing you have the memory available for it) and hope a future update sorts it soonish. Hmm.

And Merlin's fuzzy Knutsack, UNLESS YOU HAVE UNLIMITED DATA: DO NOT update your assets or do a reinstall unless you're on wifi.

Wish I had better news, but it is what it is. Smooches anyway, G. ❤️

Part 1 of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries Brilliant Event starts Tuesday, 15 September at 11am PST and runs through 22 September. Once again, things have been adjusted to allow for playing from home. (shorter portkeys etc.)

OrangeWizard has put together infographics to help us better complete the tasks...

( Read more... )

If you do nothing else, don’t forget to pick up your free TFTD ingredients and 25 Spell Energy.

Stay safe out there, have fun and good luck. ❤️

Part 1 of the First Year at Hogwarts Brilliant Event starts Tuesday, 11 Aug at 11am PST and runs through 18 August. Once again, things have been adjusted to allow for playing from home. (shorter portkeys etc.)

OrangeWizard has put together infographics to help us better complete the tasks...

( Read more... )

If you do nothing else, don’t forget to pick up your free TFTD ingredients and 25 Spell Energy.

Stay safe out there, have fun and good luck. ❤️

You may have already seen the in game announcement. They've fixed the issues with the Knight Bus and Fortresses, and players should be good to use them now. If you are still locked out of the game, even after restarts, you'll need to contact Niantic support via their website.

To make up for the problems this caused, they've extended the event by twelve hours. It will now end on 27 July at 11 pm PT (What time is that where you are?). It's possible you may not be able to see that extension reflected in the event timer as yet.

As to other problems...

People seem to be having difficulty getting the required number of foundables together to complete the task, no matter how many TFTD they use. (I've used at least four TFTD and still only have 4 Lupins to show for it, and I definitely don't have fifteen of them to throw at this event.) That's okay. The rewards aren't too great, your registries won't have any gaps if you don't finish, and the point wasn't to make you deplete your potions, but to have you figure some things out about your SOS Training trees.

I'll try to put together a separate post to talk about them a little. It may not be able to help you finish, but it should help you progress through those Registries.

From hpwulola over on the harrypotterwizardsunite.com website:

"Hi everyone. We wanted to provide a status update on the next steps we are working on to resolve the bugs caused when the 2.13.0 Game Update was released last week.

We have come up with a solution that will safely add back Fragments players lost due to the issues with last week’s release. While we don’t have an exact timeframe for when this fix will be implemented (hopefully within the next week or so), we are comprehensively QA testing this fix to ensure it doesn’t result in any additional issues. We know that you are eager to see this fix, so we appreciate your patience this week as we work to get this out the door. When we confirm the results of this fix are successful, we will update you with more details and a timeline of when you can expect to see these changes in your account.

We want to reassure you all that our planned fix will restore your lost Fragments without performing any rollback. Rest assured that gameplay progress players have made since these bugs have occurred will be unchanged. We hope to see you all on the Knight Bus this weekend during Community Day!

As a token of our appreciation for your patience, we will also be adding a complimentary store pack to Diagon Alley for all players sometime next week. We want to thank you for your support as our team works hard to resolve these bugs.

- The Harry Potter: Wizards Unite team"

Emphasis mine. I fear we won't be seeing those lovely, lovely potions I was counting on for today's Fortress event until next week... 😢 Fingers crossed this solves the problem and doesn't create new ones.

A new update is available. BE SURE TO UPDATE BEFORE YOU PRESTIGE ANY PAGES. This is important, or you will lose some fragment credits.

Registry:
* Introducing Repeat Image Collection! Players can now continue to collect Fragments of Foundables and repeatedly place their Images, even if their Registry Pages are not ready for Prestige. Every time an Image is placed, you’ll earn bonus Family XP rewards. 😃
* Updated Foundable Fragment counts to standardized amounts based on threat level. Lower-threat Traces have increased Fragment counts and higher-threat Traces have decreased Fragment counts. 😃
* Increasing the amount of Severe and Emergency Traces on the Map.( Read more... )

And there's another game update out. Expect the following changes to Harry Potter: Wizards Unite:

( Read more... )

Remember to download your new assets.

NEW BUG! People are reporting connection errors or being returned to map when they attempt to use event portkeys. Fazes says they think it might have to do with not having upgraded yet. DOWNLOADING ASSETS AND UPDATING THE APP SOLVES IT.

Someone reported having all eight Portkey slots filled, and yet a bunch of Portmanteaus popped up on the map. Clicking on one on the map caused it to replace one from the queue/vault.

Community Manager Fazes has replied that this should be fixed when they release the new app version. In the meantime she recommends that we not pick up any new Portmanteaus until we see the 'new +2 slots in [the] game'.

So try to avoid them for the next couple of days - there's a chance they might overwrite something unlocked or keyed. And it looks like we'll be able to carry more Portkeys / work on more simultaneously in the future. Also there have been reports that people are unable to use the unlocked Brilliant Portkeys, so be careful about quaffing a Baruffio's just for that purpose. The fix should be out soon, so keep your eyes peeled and hang in there.

Also, PSA, remember to pick up any rewards from completing the event before the event ends.

ETA: Bug fixed with the 2.9.0 update.

Make sure to download your assets prior to Community Day. The first reports from NZ are in about Portmanteaus not appearing. Downloading the assets seems to fix this.