Everything you wanted to know about Wizards Challenges (But were afraid to ask!)
HPWUmac
Posts: 7 admin
You selected your wizarding Profession, read over your spell books and rolled up your sleeves to vanquish Foes in Wizarding Challenges. Now, with the Knight Bus making rounds to help players participate remotely, jumping into Wizarding Challenges with others is easier than ever. Whether you’re a veteran spellcaster or just getting your feet wet, this is the perfect time to brush up on some team-based strategies for making the most of your Wizarding Challenges.
Getting Back to Basics
Wizarding Challenges are a unique type of gameplay where you can team up with wizards from around the world to engage in combat with a variety of Foes. To enter a Wizarding Challenge, tap on a Fortress and use a Runestone to join. If you find yourself without any Fortresses nearby, the Knight Bus is always available for players level 7 and above to instantly whisk you away to a Fortress at Hogwarts Castle, allowing you to play from the comfort of home.
For those victorious in combat, you’ll be rewarded with a variety of items depending on the difficulty of the challenge. Rewards can include unique Foundables only found in Wizarding Challenges, Scrolls, Spell Books, Wizard XP and Challenge XP, which helps you get stronger in Wizarding Challenges.
The Pros of Professionalism
Before jumping into the fray, you’ll want to make sure you choose a wizarding Profession—Auror, Magizoologist or Professor. Each Profession specializes in different areas: Aurors are adept at dishing out serious damage with powerful offensive spells, Magizoologists are masters of defense and supporting their allies and Professors are experts in balance and versatility, with spells for any situation.
Each Profession has its own specific skills that you can learn over time by using the Scrolls, Spell Books and Restricted Section Books that you’ve been collecting. Spend some time learning some of your Profession’s skills before entering into combat and you’ll be well on your way to toppling even the most formidable Foes!
Stronger United, Weaker Divided
Now that you’re feeling proficient in your Profession, it’s time to get strategic! While it’s possible to participate in Wizarding Challenges individually, teaming up with others, either with wizards nearby or remotely using the Knight Bus, earns you even more Challenge XP and opens up additional strategies. Taking on Wizarding Challenges with a variety of wizards from different Professions is especially important if you’re looking to take on higher-level Foes.
Once you’re in a Fortress chamber, consider your own Profession, the Profession of your teammates and the types of Foes you’re facing before engaging in combat. Each Profession is strong against some types of Foes and weak against others:
- Aurors deal bonus damage against Dark Forces (e.g., Dark Wizards, Death Eaters) and take increased damage from Beasts (e.g., Erklings, Acromantulas)
- Magizoologists deal bonus damage against Beasts (e.g., Erklings, Acromantulas) and take increased damage from Curiosities (e.g., Pixies, Werewolves)
- Professors deal bonus damage against Curiosities (e.g., Pixies, Werewolves) and take increased damage from Dark Forces (e.g., Dark Wizards, Death Eaters)
Depending on your Profession, you’ll notice a green upwards arrow next to the Foes that you are strong against and a red downwards arrow next to the Foes that you’re weak against. When deciding on which Foe to enter into combat with, it helps to take these matchups into consideration as the extra damage can quickly add up!
Focusing on Teamwork
Now that you know which Foes you’re best suited to take on in combat it’s time to think about how to help your allies from the sidelines. After all, just because you’re not in combat doesn’t mean it’s time to sit around—your teammates still need you!
Upgrading your individual Profession skills will unlock Strategic Spells. These spells are unique to each Profession and separate from the standard spells used in combat. Strategic Spells are key to making the most of your time in a Fortress chamber when you’re not actively engaged in combat. Aurors specialize in weakening enemies with debilitating hexes. Magizoologists focus on bolstering allies by healing and reviving them with supportive charms. Professors use their encyclopedic knowledge of spells to adapt and switch between casting hexes on enemies and charms on allies. Keep an eye out for these spells along the bottom of your screen when in Fortress chambers.
To use Strategic Spells you’ll need Focus. In each Wizarding Challenge everyone starts with some initial Focus and your whole team can receive more by defeating certain Foes. You can receive additional Focus by consuming Invigoration Draughts or by receiving Focus from teammates via certain Strategic Spells.
Keep in mind some spells target Foes, some target an ally, some can be used on yourself, and some target your entire group. To make the best use of your Strategic Spells, think about the spell costs, timing and targets. Would it be more beneficial to help an ally overcome a particularly tenacious Foe or help a different ally quickly finish off an easier one? Is it better to heal an ally while they’re in the midst of combat or wait and revive them when the time is right? A solid understanding of not only your strengths and weaknesses, but also those of your teammates, combined with honing your sense of Strategic Spell use will truly result in elite-level teamwork!
Adventure Awaits
Keeping track of Professions, Strategic Spells, Focus and the different types of Foes can be quite a handful. Brush up on your Profession’s strengths and weaknesses, learn what your spells do and the best times to use them and don’t forget to use a Potion or two if you find yourself in a pinch. Take things one step at a time and start with lower difficulty Fortress chambers and Runestones and work your way up as you get the hang of things. After you take on your fair share of Foes along with your teammates you’ll be a master of Wizarding Challenges in no time!
Comments
I like the Knight Bus but it never works anymore. It worked fine when it was launched but since the last update it won't do anything.
@FlashingWand welcome to the forum.
This thread is about strategy in wizarding challenges, which can take place at any fortress, not just on the Knight Bus. Please keep it on the strategy topic. There are other posts about bugs, including the Knight Bus not working. Please use those for that discussion.
Thank you for pushing the in-game article. Hoping a lot of the more casual players read and learn a thing or two.
My recommended grade is 7 and the Dark Chamber I recommends grade 13, so in that case, am i capable to unlock the Dark Chamber II or further on Community Day and which runestone grade should be chosen? Please tell me 🙁 and sorry about my english if i post something incorrect.
@KJGloomz Honestly, I would doubt that you would unlock the chamber alone. You will need to be part of a balanced team that can help overcome your weaknesses.
Your best strategy right now, would be to play in the lower chambers a lot and gain xp. Get your gold pages on your books and then keep placing your book stickers on gold for 1200 challenge xp each time. This will get you more ans more red books which you can spend on lessons to make you stronger.
I am not going to tell you to stay out of Dark 5. That is not community spirited and it is not my place to tell you that...
BUT
Please do remember that if you go into a chamber when you are 6 profession grades below the recommended level, someone needs to do the extra work to help you.
Dark chambers are intentionally hard. I only did a few dark chambers until the Knight Bus came along and I could work with a team, and I was already Level 14 professor by the time the Knight Bus started. And in those dark chambers, I still need my auror to double hex things, and I need my magi to heal me. And we often need to work together to weaken foes so the others can clean up.
What I am saying is please think carefully where you battle. My general rule of thumb is that if I couldn't stay alive by myself, then I don't risk it with a random group on the Knight Bus. This is certainly the case when I play as an auror (my Level 5 profession). I would never consider taking my auror anywhere above Ruins!
Try and make yourself stronger first. Have fun on Community Day, but remember that the hard task set rrallly is there as a challenge. It is okay not to complete and not to be ready for it this time.
Hello! I’m in need of some best practices for Wizarding Challenges. I want to be a helpful and good teammate especially now that I’m able to access harder chambers. I’m a level 10 professor and I’ve read different posts on here about best uses of charms and how to use focus well. I’d love to hear anymore thoughts or advice.
thank you!
Oh, man, I just had a great team experience with people in Dark Chamber IV. I was the only magizoo and was reviving people left and right, then I was the last one playing and they all were throwing spells at my opponent. I really wish there was some way after the game was over that I could thank them.
@HelpImANoMaj There are a few really good guides out there for team play. You’ve got a few levels yet to go before you’re ready for Dark yet, so your focus for now should be your own development.
If you have some extra level 1 brilliant event tokens, I recommend burning though them to SOLO ruins chambers. In most cases, you can hex the oddities and then just cast protego while they slowly destroy themselves. This allows you to do a ton of challenges, burning little energy, and will help you farm red books for leveling.
The group play strategies out there really don’t matter until you get to forest & dark levels.
@VoiceMaster, I will often take a screen capture of my fellow wizards and post it in the "say hi" thread and thank them there or on the wizards united discord.
😁
Regarding ‘Helpimanomaj’s comment, I think the best thing is for each profession to start out fighting the foe they’re strongest against:
Aurors. Dark Wizards, Death Eaters...
MgicZ’s. Spiders, Erklings
Professors. Well I hear it’s about even with them.
If I’m in a challenge where I’m the only Auror and the MagicZ takes the dark wizard and leaves me with the spider...!!
that’s when we should be able to rate how courteous or not the other player/players are!!
As a prof, I start with the weakest pixies to help farm focus. Once I get proficiency cast and get some shields up, it's then on to the pups.
I know there are a ton of tips pages everywhere , but I am a visual person and just came across this in discord. I had noticed that there were visual differences in hexes and charms, but thank you to whomever put this together because it is BRILLIANT!!
@Bormacska I have noticed a few of those but didn't know all of them. Great infographic. Thanks for sharing.
Ooh nice, thanks @Bormacska! I always wondered which was which.
I have a question about the beginning of a challenge.
It seems like everyone is able to begin before me.... I can't even share focus... and other team members are already engaged.
What am I doing wrong or not doing??
(I'm lvl 37 I normally use Auror as my profession)
@SheaStonebrook I'm not positive but it happens to me too when I go in a group and I try to pick a foe. Still a lag in knight bus maybe?
I’m guessing lag. It doesn’t happen to me often but I’ve come into a fortress and somehow other (large, not one-hit) foes are almost dead already.
This happens most of the time now... I really feel as though I'm missing something. More than a lag.
I wonder if there's something else I should be doing entering the chamber.
Looking for help -> What does this mean??? I wasn't able to click and battle with any foe. That might be a bug but what is this greying? Does it mean anything? I did my job using focus and transfers. ^_^ I just saw all foes like this. Bug or not??? Thankful to the team for clearing foes up! :)
@Dragons1111 yes, that's a visual bug.
Hey, folks, I mastered the Magizoo profession and now I'm headed back to finish professor. As a prof, I'm level 12, but I have never battled with teammates as a prof. Any advice on what is at my disposal and what tactics I should use? I'm gonna start at some low levels, but I honestly have never used any of the prof spells or hexes in battle.
Thanks!
@VoiceMaster As a Professor (level 15), my strategy in a team is the following:
First I try to be in a balanced team; no more than two of the same profession.
When I'm the only professor my first goal is to put a protection charm on Aurors (3 focus per charm). Then, proficiency charm on the whole team (7 focus), then, protection charm on myself first and others if needed. After that, I use deterioration Hex on hard foes.
When there's another professor in the team, I wait a moment to see which one of us is getting focus from Aurors. The one that gets focus should cast proficiency charm because it requires more focus than a protection charm. The other, not getting focus, should put protection charm on the aurors (might be that you need to beat a foe first to get enough focus for the second auror, in that case choose an easy pixie). When all aurors have protection charm and proficiency charm is in place; put protection charm on other members, starting with yourself (as the other professor can give it to him/herself and magi's are higher in stamina). Then, deterioration hex on hard foes.
When I play solo in lower chamers, I ususally just use deterioration hex on all foes (or stronger ones if there's too many foes and they don't return enough focus to keep putting det. hex on all of them). In the lower chambers, I am strong enough not to need the protection charm or proficiency, so I use det. hex on as many foes as possible to save spell energy.
Healing charm is free to use, but to me basically useless. It only restores 4 stamina and only to a teammate, not yourself. And only every 5 seconds.
I hope this helps!
@KJGloomz until the knight bus came along, the only way I could fortress was solo.
So yes, it is possible to solo the dark chambers. I did but you’ll need to be stocked up on potions, especially healing potions because there are foes that can deplete your health 50+% with one strike.
You’ll need speed and potions!
Good luck!
@WitchHiker Oh, the revelation that was doing Dark Chambers without potions!
@Magpie31 (Swoop, swoop)
Were you alone or in a group?
@WitchHiker I was a solo player before the KB, so I had no idea that you could D5 with no potions. It was such a wonderful moment, as was discovering invincibility for the first time.
Swoop swoop!
@Zuzanna93 Thank you for that detail. So, the difference, I think, from Magizoo thinking is that I hold back, see who gets focus from an Auror, then cast proficiency of protection (which I call the shield charm). I haven't been using the protection charm like I should be, so this helps a great deal.
And yes, using det hex in lower chambers is a hoot. Just buff and watch the numbers go down.
I have another question. It seems to me that when waiting in the lobby, players seem to enter during the last 30 seconds or so. So much so that I feel it's not random. I could be sitting there alone for a good minute and a half, and then suddenly four people jump on. Or three jump on and one jumps off and then another jumps on and everybody sees we have no time left so we abandon the whole endeavor. And like I said, it happens often. Is there something in the code that is suddenly showing chambers where not enough players have been sitting there for a while?
Also, does anybody else notice that the clock sometimes resets? It did it to me yesterday after four players joined and another was waiting. It was weird.
@VoiceMaster I think it might just be the lag.
It takes about 10 seconds for a friend to show up on my screen after they enter the fortress.
Then it takes me about 25 seconds to wait for the lag to reach the runestone screen.
Then there is another 5 - 10 second lag before reaching the chamber.
So from the time you get into the chamber to the time I can get in (if I saw you pop up straight away), it is at least 40 seconds gone. Which means the soonest you are likely to get other players is 1m20 left on the clock, if they are searching for chambers already open.
Some days, however, there is no lag. I live for those days.
@Magpie31 DV and no potions?
Winder Woman lives!