You won’t be able to unlock Hogwarts Legacy doors and chests for quite some time. It isn’t until you come across the main story quest called ‘The Caretaker’s Lunar Lament’ and learn Alohomora. Here, you’ll properly meet Hogwarts’ caretaker, Gladwin Moon. He’s usually a bit of a tough geezer, but he recently has become paranoid that someone’s out to torment him. Recently he came face-to-face with a Boggart, which apparated into his greatest fear: a Demiguise. Now all of a sudden, there are statues everywhere, and he wants to reveal the identity of his assailant.
During this quest, Gladwin teaches you Alohomora, one of the Hogwarts Legacy spells, which unlocks both doors and chests, which in this open-world game can contain valuable gear and collectables. To get this precious spell, you first need to progress through the Hogwarts Legacy story for a fair number of hours until you get this main story quest in your log. Gladwin will teach the first level to you as part of the quest, but returning Hogwarts Legacy Demiguise Statues to him will eventually increase the spell’s level to a maximum of three.
How to unlock doors and chests with Alohomora
Whether it’s your first door you open or one of the higher-level chests found later in the game, you first need to approach the lock and cast Alohomora. This will take you to a quick mini-game. If you are playing on a controller, each analogue stick controls one of two rings – left for green and right for red. If you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard, the Q and E keys control the green spark in the outer ring, and the A and D keys move the red spark in the inner ring.
In this lockpicking minigame, you aim to get the gears near the rings to turn. Once you’ve found one of the two good locations, keep the ring still as you work on the second. As both sets of gears turn, keep the rings in position until you hear a click. This will unlock the door. Luckily, it’s impossible to make a wrong move and fail this minigame.
How to level up Alohomora
After you’ve learned the spell and completed ‘The Caretaker’s Lunar Lament’, Gladwin tells you to bring him as many Demiguise Moons as possible. Of course, this means you must hunt down the statues in the dead of night on Hogwarts school grounds, inside buildings in Hogsmeade, and even around the surrounding countryside.
Here is how many Demiguise Statues you need to collect to improve the Alohomora spell for each rank:
- Alohomora I – complete ‘The Caretaker’s Lunar Lament’.
- Alohomora II – give Gladwin Moon nine Demiguise Moons.
- Alohomora III – give Gladwin Moon even more Demiguise Moons.
And it’s as simple as that to unlock locked doors and chests in Hogwarts Legacy. These Demiguise Statues take some detective work to locate, making them one of the more annoying collectibles to gather in the RPG game. We recommend examining every area with the assistance of the Hogwarts Legacy map and marking off place names with the Floo Flame locations to narrow your search. If you find a treasure map and don’t know where to go, give our Hogwarts Legacy Ghost of Our Love quest guide a read. Finally, check out the Hogwarts Legacy Daedalian keys locations if you’re trying to track down every last collectible.
There’s plenty to do in Hogwarts Legacy. Still, once you’ve exhausted everything this game offers you, you can find some of the best Hogwarts Legacy mods to customise the game to your liking or check out our best PC games list for potentially your next big adventure that’s waiting for your attention.
The creator of the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling, has made a number of transphobic remarks on social media in recent years. Warner Bros. has the licence to make games based on Harry Potter. While the details of that deal aren’t publicly known, and WB Games says “J.K. Rowling is not directly involved in the creation of the game”, it is likely that, as the creator and owner of the Harry Potter IP, she will earn royalties from its sales. If you’d like to learn more about transgender equality or lend your support, here are two important charities we encourage you to check out: the National Center for Transgender Equality in the US, and Mermaids in the UK.