Hogwarts Legacy’s Dark Arts battle arena is fine with murder

A new Hogwarts Legacy gameplay showcase showed off the Room of Requirement, beast care, combat with Unforgiveable Curses, traversal, and more.

Hogwarts Legacy showed off around half an hour of new gameplay in its latest showcase, giving us a look at all sorts of details — check out the showcase below!

Hogwarts Legacy shares half an hour of new gameplay footage

First off, we see just how far we’ll be able to explore the game’s open world on our broom. While the Hogwarts Legacy team suggested brooms won’t be as advanced back in the 1800s when the game is set — it looks like there will be meters that you’ll need to keep an eye on for how high or fast you can go — but you can upgrade your broom at a shop in Hogsmeade. You can fly around the world outside the castle and explore the wilderness and a few hamlets for more gameplay opportunities, such as vendors or puzzles; it sounds like there will even be poachers and dark wizards to watch out for. If you’re not fancying flying a broom, you can also jump on a winged creature like a hippogriff. We had a look at how the world of Hogwarts Legacy will change with the seasons, with the devs hinting that we’ll see decorations for the holidays, and differences in how many people we’ll encounter during the day and night cycle.

Next up was the Dark Arts battle arena; this arena seems to come with the Deluxe edition, but you can also get it as part of the Dark Arts pack. It sounds as though the base game will also have two battle arenas available for everyone. In the Dark Arts arena, we see our character face off against waves of enemies, using the Unforgiveable Curses to defeat them, just going straight in with Avada Kedavra to kill an opponent. We see different enemies and spells in action as well as other aspects — for instance, there will be a Chinese Chomping Cabbage that you can let loose at enemies (you’ll first have to buy the seeds and grow them) and the Focus potion which you’ll make from lacewing flies, fluxweed stems, and dugbog tongues.

Then we see more of the Room of Requirement, and there’s so much going on here. You can customise your space with decorations and objects such as statues, ornaments, tables, seating, rugs, and more, which are called conjurations. You unlock conjurations with moonstones, and can customise them further by changing the colour and size. New customisation recipes can be bought in Hogsmeade or found throughout your gameplay. You can even change the architecture of the room, for instance from a glass “scientific” ceiling to a plant-covered “botanical” ceiling.

In the Room of Requirement, you can grow plants, upgrade gear on a loom, find out more about new gear at the identification station, care for beasts, and more. Inside the Room of Requirement is a small building, a vivarium, that’s much bigger on the inside; this is where you care for your magical creatures. Rescuing magical creatures and caring for them here will give you useful materials. In the showcase, there were a few animals in this vivarium, including a mooncalf — one of those wide-eyed little creatures we saw when the game was first revealed. You can pet these beasts, feed them, brush them, name them, and breed them. Some processes, such as feeding, can be automated later on with things like a giant feeding trough. There’s also a toy box, with each beast having a favourite toy. This vivarium can also be customised with decorations and trees, and you can unlock more vivariums with different biomes.

What did you make of the Hogwarts Legacy showcase? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!