Quests: 3 · Act: Act I · Arrival
Unlocks: Your wand, Hogsmeade, the Restricted Section
1. Welcome to Hogsmeade
Your first trip out of the castle takes you to Hogsmeade with Professor Fig, where you visit Ollivanders and choose your wand. Every option is genuinely cosmetic, not just wood and length: the "core" choice (Dragon Heartstring, Phoenix Feather or Unicorn Hair) reads like it should matter, with its own bit of flavor text about the kind of magic it produces, but multiple guides confirm it changes nothing mechanical — damage, casting, none of it. Length runs 9.5" to 14.5" in quarter-inch steps and flexibility offers eleven named options, purely for looking the part.
Hogsmeade is the game's shop hub: brooms, potions, gear, and the vendors you will come back to throughout the campaign. It is worth a slow first lap.
2. Into the Restricted Section
Fig gets called away by the Headmaster, so it's Sebastian Sallow — available from level 3, once you've done Professor Hecat's first assignment — who sneaks you into the library's Restricted Section after hours and teaches you Disillusionment, the invisibility-style charm this whole quest turns on. This is the game's first proper stealth section: prefects patrol the corridors, and being spotted restarts the attempt rather than failing the quest outright.
You are looking for a specific text, and the route in is not the front door. Follow the objective markers and use Revelio to pick out the way through — it leads to a hidden ancient-magic antechamber called the Athenaeum, guarded by construct enemies known as Pensieve Paladins. Finishing the quest is worth 260 XP and the Disillusionment spell itself.
Stealth here is forgiving compared with later encounters — take the time to learn how detection works now, because the same rules apply to several later quests.
3. Tomes and Tribulations
This one is short by design: you simply report back to Professor Fig, up in his Astronomy Wing office, on what the Restricted Section held. What you recover sets up the rest of Act I and introduces the question the whole campaign turns on: what ancient magic is, and why you can see it when nobody else can.
Fig reveals two more Pensieve memories of Percival Rackham, a Keeper and former Hogwarts professor: one shows him and two other wizards saving a small hamlet from drought, the other a fresh fifth-year student not unlike your own protagonist. With this done the castle and the surrounding Highlands open up properly. This is a good moment to start clearing Merlin Trials, which raise your gear capacity and make everything that follows easier.