I have been playing for a couple of days and I like it enough to keep going at least for a week or two. I never got into PoGo primarily because I didn’t know or care about the franchise. I played quite a lot of Ingress back in the day and in fact started a thread on it. So far my impression is that this game is more polished than the other two in terms of the quality of animation and the depth of the gameplay. There is a decent number of inns/greenhouses in my area so that isn’t a problem. These games tend to get quite grindy but the fact that you are playing it outdoors reduces the tedium somewhat. I am a mild Harry Potter fan and while I don’t really remember all the details I enjoy the general setting.
I’ve been playing for a few days. I think I like it better than Pokemon Go, but I ditched Go pretty fast and I might do the same for HP.
My office desk is within range of an inn and and a greenhouse so I can re-coup spell energy pretty easily. Someone is always using the greenhouse so I haven’t been able to grow anything yet though and that timer ends in the middle of the night so no go there. I did try growing something once, but wasn’t able to harvest the result. I don’t know what the timer is on collecting what you grow but it seems too small to me. If you have to walk around to do shit, the timer should be at least a day. If the greenhouse by my office ever clears I might have better luck.
I also noticed that inns are giving more spell energy this week. Used to be some foods gave 1, now it looks like the minimum give is 3.
There is a fortress just out of range of my house. I can access it from my driveway though, and once I access it I can go back inside and do multiple fortress runs. I ran through all my initial runes that way.
I’m a Magizoologist, because why not?
Wait, this is more spell energy than usual? That’s really messed up. As is the fact that the only place where you can see how much energy you have is in the store.
“I guess we could have given players enough energy for one mission per visit, but on the other hand we really, really want them to pay for it.”
OK. I just found this out. If you are brewing a potion you can click on the handle and then make some gestures (inside of the cauldron) to speed up brewing by 15%.
Some of the decoded gestures are listed here for instance.
You can also see it in the upper left if you go into an inn or greenhouse or if you go to your vault.
I’ve still yet to manage to beat a Fortress. I’ve been able to visit inns and greenhouses, and I’m learning better strategies about keeping my spell energy up.
I also unlocked one Portkey, and that was interesting.
I don’t know about beating a fortress but i routinely beat level three of the fortress closest to me. I’ve never seen another person at the fortress so I’ve failed level 4 a couple of times. I went and tried the fortress at the courthouse/county building and still had no one else trying the fortress at the same time but I was able to take level 3 again. I’d like to try with other people some time.
Fortresses drop red spell books, which were originally used for levelling skills. Then it got changed so that you needed green ‘restricted section’ spell books. They drop during events. There was a beta event a week or two before the world-wide release. Hopefully, they run often enough that people don’t get totally stuck levelling skills. I don’t know if the red spellbooks are still useful for anything, or will become useful again at some point. It seems a bit wrong to me, to depend on events to provide spellbooks.
Fortresses get easier as you get levels in your profession (starting at level 10? I think). Aurors are straight up the best fighters. Magizoologists can do healing, and buff themselves and teammates. Professors can do a bit of everything. If you are mostly a solo player, it’s probably best not to be a magizoologist, but I felt like professor was fine solo.
Fortresses are a good place to use up potions. Sometimes I use 4-5 potions to complete a higher level.
I’m on vacation now, and the main strip of the little tourist town is lousy with inns and greenhouses and fortresses. I was finally able to do a few fortresses. I’m level 10 now.
Looks like a special event is coming up soon.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. And I’m terrified I’m going to break my phone by playing with it so much outside on the hard ground (usually it just lives in a pocket).
I don’t hate it but I don’t quite get it yet. Like when does it start becoming fun or am I just doing it wrong? I know I’m low level but I’m not going to cruise the city looking for stuff that I’m not sure I can do yet based on my level. I wish I could do a little more just sitting on my butt. I go for long walks almost daily, but it feels like I can’t really play the rest of the day.
Oops.
Oh well. I’ve not had too much trouble with levels 1-4 in fortresses on my own yet. We will see. It might be because I’ve been playing fortresses at my dining room table where I can put the phone on the table and trace with better speed and accuracy that way. Walking around makes the game harder. Also the fortress has been creature heavy so far, so I guess that is helping?
Can any of you explain to me what the “dark detectors” do?
You can put up to 3 of them at an inn where they will last for 30 minutes. My understanding is that if you hang around, they will increase the number of foundables that appear near that inn.
I think they also increase the chance that they will be the higher level / rarer foundables.
If you see an inn that has one, two, or three spinning circles around them that indicates the presence of that respective number of dark detectors.
I’ve gotten up to level 12 and have assembled quite the collection so far, but I have to say I’m getting frustrated a bit. Spell Energy is way too scarce. Half the time I encounter a Foundable I already have in my Registry I leave because I can’t afford to use spell energy on it. It’s super frustrating and many of the Inns give out a piddly little 3 bolts, so it can take forever to recharge. I encounter WAY WAY more Foundables than I do spell energy and I almost never want to go into a Fortress for fear of blowing through my precious spell energy. Today’s Special Event was particularly rough on my supply.
I also seem to find myself being resisted far more often now that I’m getting stronger. Some Foundables with only low-medium threat levels will resist 8-10 or more great-masterful casts before finally fleeing. I can use potions but they don’t seem to go very far in ensuring a successful cast. Anyone have any strategies for more successful casts on Foundables?
I’m also sort of guessing on what to learn when I’m doing my professional training. I’d like to train on things that ensure a higher rate of success with Foundables but pretty much every skill seems more suited to challenges and questing which I don’t really do that much of.
Anyone managed to figure out how to optimize strategies for any of this stuff?
The spell energy thing is very flawed. I’m lucky that I live in a high inn density area, but what the game should do is take density into account. It makes no sense that all inns act the same. If there is no other inn for a mile, that inn should give way more spell energy than one that is within a block of three others.
Does anyone have a good guide? I’m just not figuring this out very well and I’m a couple days from quitting in annoyance. Like today I did one battle thing and ran out of energy which has not happened before and I didn’t quite know what to do. (Pay the coins? Wait?) I can’t collect stuff I find because my vault is full but I don’t know how to fix that. I can’t brew any potions because I’m missing ingredients for all the ones I’ve unlocked. And I don’t know how to use a potion or when to and I have a billion questions but the few sites I’ve found just got me even more confused. My daily challenge keeps suggesting I dine at an Inn and while I’ve found an Inn, I don’t know how to dine there. Stupid little things.
It might be intuitive for other people but I’m not finding it to be so after the first day.
And I don’t know how much a guide is going to help me since you can’t really play sitting on your butt on your couch. I can read the process of something but I can’t do it and I don’t want to be switching to a guide while I’m trying to play out and about. And I hate reading stuff on my phone.
You get spell energy from inns primarily, and sometimes greenhouses. To dine at an inn you walk near an inn on the map and tap on the inn on the map. You will be presented with 5 dishes. You select one randomly by swiping along the curved arrow below the dishes. Then you will get some number of spell energy.
Sometimes the game glitches and fails to present the five dishes and curved arrow.
This is not a sit on your couch game.
Spell energy is starting to drive me nuts especially during this even. I visited 4 inns today that share a parking lot I had 0 energy before the first Inn and I had 0 energy before I made it out of the parking lot. I only got 3 energy per inn. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it back to 75 energy.
I found out I wasn’t going to Inns, but Fortresses. So I guess I haven’t even seen an Inn yet. And I figured out how to use potions, which helped me beat most of the things I tried to unconfound/battle much more easily. I dumped a bunch of my multiples of ingredients so I could collect more stuff.
I don’t mind walking miles to collect stuff, but I want to sometimes just sit and do it. So at least now I know how to manage my ingredients so I can pre-prep for my walks.
But I’m still looking for a handy guide.
Since inns (and greenhouses) reset every 5 minutes, if one’s totally out, and willing to spend a little while “farming,” one should be able to replenish at a spot like that without spending too much time. Also, some of the inn foods give more energy (at least five, maybe more), though that seems to be the luck of the draw.