Hogwarts Legacy: Ways To Make The Game Harder

Highlights

Playing on the hardest difficulty setting in Hogwarts Legacy increases the challenge by making enemies deal more damage and puzzles more difficult.
Turning off the mini-map forces players to learn the layout of Hogwarts themselves, making quests more challenging and immersive.
Playing as a morally good witch or wizard adds difficulty by restricting looting, avoiding using dark magic, and finding ethical forms of income.

For fans of the Harry Potter series, the open-world experience of Hogwarts Legacy is a dream come true. However, while the game attracts a variety of players, including individuals who usually don't game, more hardcore gamers might want to experience a greater challenge.

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Thankfully, by choosing certain settings and options or even by applying self-imposed rules, players can make Hogwarts Legacy harder for themselves. Players can also mix and match the following suggestions to their liking, and how far they want to go in pursuit of a challenge is up to them.

1 Play On The Hardest Difficulty

Hard Mode Makes Combat & Puzzles Tougher

While it may seem obvious, it is worth pointing out that Hogwarts Legacy has four difficulty settings, and players looking to challenge themselves will want to pick the hardest difficulty. The four default settings are Story, Easy, Normal, and Hard. On Hard mode, enemies will deal and absorb more damage, and players will also have to time their Protego spell better.

Players who have already started their journey at Hogwarts need not fret, as the difficulty can be changed at any point during the course of the game. This doesn't even matter for achievements as, unlike many other games, Hogwarts Legacy doesn't have an achievement for fully completing the game on the hardest difficulty. Hard mode also makes puzzles in the game more difficult.

2 Turn Off The Minimap

Players Will Have To Learn The Layout Of Hogwarts Themselves

One of the simplest ways to make Hogwarts Legacy slightly harder and simultaneously improve immersion is to turn off the mini-map. Without a directional guide, players, just like new Hogwarts students, will have to learn the complex layout of the castle and the surrounding countryside.

This option adds difficulty to even the simplest of quests, where players are tasked with fetching a specific item or even just attending class. Instead of mindlessly following a waypoint, players will have to pay more attention to their surroundings, which, given the beauty of Hogwarts, they will appreciate even more.

3 Play As A Morally Good Witch Or Wizard

Avoiding Crime & Powerful Dark Spells Makes The Game Harder

By role-playing in Hogwarts Legacy as a morally good witch or wizard, players will actually make the game harder for themselves for a number of reasons. First of all, by not looting corpses or ransacking village homes, players won't have as much money to buy better equipment or gear and will have to find more ethical forms of income, such as helping people with quests.

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Secondly, it would be unbecoming of a witch or wizard with outstanding moral fiber to use dark magic such as the Unforgivable Curses. As these spells and a few others, such as Confringo are extremely strong in the game, sticking to non-lethal spells and talents will make combat harder.

4 Use Mods To Increase The Difficulty

A Wide Range Of Possibilities For PC Players

Harder Mode(s) - by WinterElfeas
Hogwarts Ultimate - Gameplay Overhaul Harder Difficulty - by BannerAD

Players on PC can download specific mods for Hogwarts Legacy that make the game harder in numerous ways. For example, these mods may increase the damage dealt by enemies and make them harder to kill. They might also increase the costs of certain items in order to make it harder for players to progress.

Some of these mods may even increase the spawn rate of enemies, meaning players will always be challenged further when venturing into the Forbidden Forest and beyond. If veteran players want to push themselves further, then many of these mods come with the ability to tweak most of the settings to a desired difficulty.

5 Don't Upgrade Gear

With Basic Gear, Players Will Deal Less Damage & Take More

Using the Enchanted Loom in Hogwarts Legacy

After finishing The Elf, the Nab-Sack, and the Loom quest, players will be able to upgrade their gear to provide more defensive or offensive capabilities. However, when players do this and eventually max out their gear, they can become rather overpowered.

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In order to make the game harder, players can impose a rule on themselves that they are not allowed to upgrade their gear. As the concept of upgrading the combative power of clothes isn't really established elsewhere in the Harry Potter series, this decision is also arguably more immersive.

6 A No Death Run

Don't Reload Saves & Start From Scratch Upon Death

One of the hardest fan challenges that players can try for Hogwarts Legacy and many other games is to attempt a no-death run. The premise is fairly self-explanatory, but players should also not reload any saves even if they make a mistake, and if they do die, they must start from scratch all over again.

This challenge is certainly not for the faint-hearted, and only the best players will want to try this on the hardest difficulty.