Table of Contents
“We can’t choose our fate, but we can choose others. Be careful in knowing that.”
—Albus Dumbledore
Greetings fellow witches and wizards! Niantic has been hard at work implementing ways for players to be able to play all their titles from the comfort of their own home. The Novel Coronavirus, named COVID-19, has delivered a massive blow from one side of the Earth to the other, and every place in-between. Our beloved editor-in-chief has been hard at work and has recently released an article on how to play Wizards Unite safely during the COVID-19 crisis, and how to protect yourself from catching this disease yourself. Her article about staying healthy can be found HERE.
Changes From Niantic For Wizards Unite
Firstly, since our main focus is on Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and our ever-growing family (that’s you guys!), we’ll be looking at what Niantic has changed so far in Wizards Unite. Then we’ll look at what they have done for other games in their library.
- Spell Energy
The most notable change is that you can now find Spell Energy on the Map. Spell energy is indicated as a blue lightning bolt on the ground. - Gifts
– Players can now open 20 gifts per day, up from the previous 10.
– Gifts will have extra Spell Energy in them. - Potions
– Ingredients will appear more frequently on the Map, especially those used to brew Tonic for Trace Detection.
– Tonic for Trace Detection Master Notes now speed up the brewing time by a whopping 50%!
– Tonic for Trace Detection now reveals 30 traces per Tonic. - Traces
– Traces spawn in bigger numbers and across more areas of the Map. There’s a good chance you’ll find Traces in areas that normally won’t have any. Combine the Trace increase with an even more potent Tonic for Trace Detection, and the ending result will be an extremely sufficient way to farm Traces. A Baruffio’s Brain Elixir has never tasted so yummy before. Hint hint. - Portmanteau
The ever so lovely Fazes has confirmed to us that Warner Bros is working on cutting the distance required to walk Portkeys, by 50%. This feature is not yet live in game, but hopefully will be soon! If you’re not yet in our Discord Server, then we encourage you to join by clicking on that hyperlink I just provided, and navigate to #Hall-of-Prophecies. Hall of Prophecies is a channel in our Discord server that is dedicated to Fazes. Fazes posts all the news, updates, bugs, bug fixes, and anything regarding Wizards Unite. This includes when the half-distance Portkeys go live in game.
Speculative Changes For Improving Wizards Unite At-Home Gameplay
First and foremost, this section is purely speculative. These are changes that would be even more beneficial for Wizards Unite players.
- Remote Fortress Battling
Niantic is hard at work on a roadmap which will introduce even more ways to play at home. This roadmap could include remote fortress battles. The size of the roadmap has not yet been disclosed, but maybe it will include the whole town. Niantic has already announced remote gym battling and raid battling for Pokémon GO, so it’s very possible we could see remote fortress battling in some way, shape, or form. - Decreasing Spell Casts
While nothing has been hinted at yet for any Niantic game in terms of making things easier, so to speak, it would be nice to see Traces require less Spell Energy to either return the Foundable, or have it depart. While Spell Energy is more common to get right now, there are still some locations around the world where it doesn’t appear enough, or not at all entirely. - Removing or Replacing Certain Daily Tasks
A lot of players are not able to make it to any Inns or Fortresses at all. Lock down is a very real thing, and players can face criminal punishment for walking around outside for non-essential matters depending on where you are in the world. For this reason, removing or changing Dining at Inns and Completing Wizarding Challenges from the daily tasks would certainly not be out of the question. - Weekly Shop Gift For 1 Gold
Right now, Niantic is giving Pokémon GO players either Pokéballs, Great balls, or Ultra balls in the shop once a week for 1 coin. It would certainly not be out of the question to see something very similar happen on a weekly basis in Wizards Unite. In this case, it would be likely that there will be a certain amount of Spell Energy in the shop for 1 Gold each week. Possibly even Tonic for Trace Detection. - Player Avatar Interaction Radius
Pokémon GO has introduced a double distance interaction radius for players which currently show more spawns on the map, and allow you to interact with gyms from double the distance. Soon they will allow the same for PokéStops. It would be great to see the same thing in Wizards Unite. This potential change would effectively increase the amount of Traces, Ingredients, and Spell Energy on the Map as well as allowing you to interact with Inns and Fortresses from double the distance away.
Do you have other suggestions for improving the Harry Potter: Wizards Unite game-play experience from home? We would love to hear about it in our Discord server. Feel free to tag @Quill in #general-chat. Don’t have Discord? No worries. We’d also love to read your ideas in the comment section down below.
General Game Changes Announced By Niantic
Niantic has released a blog post about current and upcoming changes regarding their game library. Some changes are already live, and some are not yet up. This is what Niantic had to say regarding all updates.
“While it’s impossible to predict when and how the situation with COVID-19 will evolve globally, we’re going to make the following changes to our games and live events.“
Those changes are as follows:
- Exercise: Niantic is going to be making improvements to Adventure Sync so that it works even better with indoor movement and activities such as cleaning, laundry, stationary exercises such as treadmills or ellipticals, and so on. Make sure to enable Adventure Sync if you haven’t already.
- Social: Niantic is enhancing their in-game virtual social features to enable players to stay in touch when they can’t meet in real life. Players will soon be able to team up with friends and take on Raid Battles together in Pokémon GO from the comfort of their own home.
- Explore: Niantic is also looking into how they can help players virtually visit and share memories about favorite real-world places, until players can once again visit them in person. This could essentially make gift gathering much more easier.
- Live Events: Niantic is re-imagining what it means to participate in a Niantic live event this summer, and putting their creative energy towards bringing the excitement directly to the comfort of home for every player. Niantic has already confirmed that they will be working on an entirely new way to enjoy Pokémon GO Fest from home. More details coming soon on that. Hopefully this means that they will be doing the same for the Harry Potter: Wizards Unite Fan Festival. Though that one would be up to Warner Bros, as they are the ones who put the events together.
- Roadmap: Niantic will be adding to their product roadmap so that they can enable more ways to play inside and around the home in the coming days and weeks, when the world needs it most. This will be for all games, including Wizards Unite!
Changes From Niantic For Ingress
- Ingress Portals are now tuned to encourage at-home play and Niantic has reduced the need to interact with multiple Portals.
- Niantic increased the number of Portal hacks before burnout, reduced cooldown period for Portals, and enabled the deployment of two L7 and L8 Resonators per Portal.
- In addition, Portal recharge has been added as a new means for daily credit towards the Sojourner Medal.
Changes From Niantic For Pokémon GO
- Niantic recently launched a new form of game-play in Pokémon GO called GO Battle League that you can play from anywhere in the world, including at home.
- Niantic reduced the walking requirements for GO Battle League from 3 km to zero and introduced deeply discounted Incense and PokéBalls so players can catch Pokémon without traveling far. These discounts cost 1 coin in the Shop.
- Gifts have more useful content and Niantic increased the storage so players can send and receive more gifts. Players can now open 30 gifts, previously up from 20. Players can also hold 20 gifts in their inventory now, up from 10.
Final Parting Words
While most of the world has stay-at-home orders in place, I strongly encourage you to talk to your local law enforcement. Ask them what the limitations are for taking walks and doing leisure activities outdoors by yourself. Outdoor walks, practiced with proper social distancing, will always continue to be a great way to contribute to physical and mental well being, and you’ll still be able to play AR games while you do that. That said, the changes Niantic has made and are still continuing to make, offer an alternative when that’s not possible.
From all of our staff at Wizards Unite Hub, we want to let you know that we care about all of our friends and their safety, so keep staying safe friends.
For more about news, changes, and added features on Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, be sure to follow us on social media, and feel free to join our Discord Server.
