It is clear that the final product of Hogwarts Legacy has changed a bit from what fans may remember seeing from it previously. Hogwarts Legacy almost offered Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons for its in-game currency, for example, as shown in early footage from Pippin’s Potions in Hogsmeade. This has obviously been changed to players only collecting and spending Galleons, and it is interesting to consider what else might not have made the final cut in the last year. The change to only having Galleons does not have any huge effect on the game anyway, and in fact, simplifies its currency system.
The only issue that comes from Hogwarts Legacy’s economical Galleon system is ever having enough for what players wish to spend them on, at least early into the game. Players will have the best luck scrounging coins together the more that they explore through the open-world Highlands, but unfortunately a lot of crucial mechanics are locked to story progression and mandate that players get further into it before they embark on a wandering pilgrimage. In the meantime, gear slots can be a primary factor in why players are unable to make as many Galleons as they would like to.
Hogwarts Legacy Has an Early-Game Gear Capacity Issue
Hogwarts Legacy’s gear menu is easy enough to parse once players understand that there are individual clothing components—handwear, facewear, headwear, neckwear, cloaks and robes, and outfits—that all share a single pool of capacity storage. There are initially 20 gear slots available, which may seem like a fair amount until players are halfway through any significant story quest that takes them through a dungeon.
It may be a simple balancing issue, but gear slots fill quickly in these elaborate areas because chests are often ubiquitous. In this case, players could have even sold all their unequipped items before embarking on a quest and still reach their gear capacity before the end of their next quest, which is often considered one of the worst aspects of Hogwarts Legacy.
This would not be a problem if there were not more chests lying ahead, and if players want to continue looting in these areas that they may or may not return to, they are then forced to destroy selected gear pieces to make room for more. The amount of Galleons wasted this way is excessive while players cannot dip out from a main quest to sell items and then resume their progress thereafter.
Hogwarts Legacy’s Gear Slots Are Limited on Purpose
The idea then is that players should be selling items as often as possible in order to avoid this problem at every turn, but there is only one reliable way to ensure that Galleons will not be wasted on destroyed items. Players can increase their gear capacity incrementally as they complete predetermined numbers of Hogwarts Legacy's Merlin Trials in the open world, but progressing through those challenges takes a terribly long time.
Players only need to solve two trials to receive the first gear capacity upgrade of four slots, but that number of prerequisite trials increases as players progress through that challenge string in the exploration tab of Hogwarts Legacy’s field guide. It should be noted that gear slots still fill quickly, and players will not see an immediate alleviation of excess gear items until they have upwards of 30 gear slots available. It can be tedious to have to find a merchant every time players finish a quest, but that also puts less of a strain on their gear storage in the meantime.
Hogwarts Legacy is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. PS4 and Xbox One ports are scheduled to release on April 4, and the Nintendo Switch version arrives on July 25, 2023.
