Hogwarts Ultimate - Gameplay Overhaul Harder Difficulty  

Hogwarts Ultimate Experience aims to "un-casual" the game and add significance to the player's choices, as well as immersion and longevity to their time in the castle. It rebalances various aspects of the game's talent progression, wizard economy, potion making, conjuring, beast taming, combat, and more. The mod alters the xp curve, challenges, and changes the prices of items to add weight to the player's spending and looting choices. Enemy spawns are increased and deal more damage but have less health. The Room of Requirement is revamped with increased costs and streamlined potion and plant growth times. The mod was tested for both minimalist and completionist playstyles, and the result is a more diverse immersive experience where the player's choices and time investment feel more worthwhile.

This is the successor to my old gameplay mod(s), a compilation of 100+ hours testing and developing. Hogwarts Ultimate is, in my opinion, what the game should've been- at least within the constraints of what we're currently able to do with SQL modding. This mod should be considered a replacement for all of my old gameplay mods.


INSTRUCTIONS:
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You should only use this on a new game. You shouldn't turn this mod off at anytime during a playthrough. It's most recommended to play on hard difficulty, but you can pick whichever one you want. Use caution and awareness if/when merging this mod with another SQL as they are bound to conflict.

Install the .pak to SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks\mods or equivalent 

Note on compatibility: if you run other mods which edit PhoenixShipData.sqlite you will need to merge them together using Hogwarts Mod Merger follow the instructions there.

Known issues: 

• Before your first potions class, have the required ingredients for an edurus potion in your inventory. Otherwise you will be unable to finish the lesson and have to reload. I wish I could just add the new ingredients to the classroom, but since it's not currently doable, this is the best solution. You can pick some mallowsweet during herbology class, wolf fur and ashwinder eggs are easily found around lower hogsfield when you meet Natsai, or just go to Hogsmeade before class and buy them. Remember, Snape Sharp has 1 ashwinder egg and 1 fur in his office, so you could subtract those from the total you'll need.

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Hogwarts Ultimate Quick Overview:
The overarching goal of this mod is to rebalance the game while staying true to its original vision. The vanilla game is too easy and its systems become unfulfilling very quickly, as with little effort you can become rich and infinitely stocked with items.

This mod was tested using two playstyle philosophies. The minimalist who does the bare minimum just to progress the story, and the completionist who scrounges every corner for loot and does every quest as soon as it becomes available. The contrast between these styles is now much greater than vanilla, as it should be. The minimalist will find themselves unable to afford most things, probably hunting for disillusionment chests just to afford the necessities while picking up quests on the side just to be able to make level requirements for the next progression quest. The do-everything character will usually be comfortable, always above level requirements with gear/talents to match, and have plenty of money when that next broom upgrade becomes available.

A lot of care and attention to detail went into these edits, and I have a lot of experience from doing these kinds of mods over the years. None of the new values should break the originally intended game function, the total amount of xp earned from all actions and required for max level is exactly the same as vanilla. The damage and function of each spell is exactly the same as vanilla. Be wary if you merge this mod with another SQL as I can't guarantee other modders make the same considerations. With the sheer number of edits in this mod- it will almost certainly conflict (overwrite/overwritten by) other SQL mods. Pay close attention when merging and make sure you understand the implications if/when you're merging mods.

Detailed Overview:

Challenges

• Less merlin trials are required to complete lower levels. Overall number of Merlin trial challenges remains the same. Inventory woes are annoying but completely deleting the function of merlin trials isn't a good solution to me. You should now feel more inclined to finish the first couple sets of merlin trials so you can hold more stuff!
• Kill enemy challenges are doubled while the xp of each is halved. Thus, you will still gain the same amount of xp overall and the progression rate stays inline with vanilla, despite the presence of increased enemy spawns.
• More balloons are required to complete lower level challenges. Overall number of balloon challenges remains the same. Getting a free broom for doing basic school work is powder puff. Brooms are supposed to be a big luxury item, so if you want them that bad- go pop more balloons or buy them from Sprintwitches. 

Items

• Prices of every item is changed to add weight to player's spending and looting choices. Brooms, recipes, seeds i.e. big one-off purchases are much more expensive while potions, ingredients, combat plants i.e. consumables are more reasonable. The economy should constantly be enticing you to buy things which motivates you to explore, loot, and craft more.
• Ingredients required for all potion brewing has been overhauled to better fit their abundance in the world. Mallowsweet is now required for 2 potions that previously required no herbal ingredients. This should make tending your garden more important and mallowsweet more useful overall.
• Income from selling gear, beasts, and disillusionment chests have been rebalanced to be more inline with other sources of income. Buying price of high-end gear is reduced to justify their purchase. Beasts are decreased to 40 gold per and disillusionment chests 200 per. They are still great sources of income, but not nearly as game breaking as before.
• Enemy drops are slightly altered for balance and immersion. There are too many healing potion drops in this game, so they are drastically reduced to give more value to buying/crafting. Instead, human enemies and dungeon chests can now drop any of the six existing potions and the chance of any potion drop is reduced by 50-66% Gear drops from human enemies is decreased slightly with the addition of a tiny chance to find legendary gear on them.

Shops

• Items present in shops have been significantly overhauled. Generally, Hogsmeade is the go-to place if you need to buy something quickly, Travelling merchants should have a more interesting stock with potential to keep you filled on items when in the field.
• Spintwitches brooms have been redistributed across various hamlet vendors and replaced with the balloon challenge brooms. If you want to save as much money as possible, then just buy the house broom as your first broom. Want to splurge? Then buy the bright spark broom right away! This makes hamlet vendors more interesting and worth seeking, while adding increased spending opportunities and permanent stock to Spintwitches.

Room of Requirement

• The moonstone cost of items is vastly increased, around 10x more expensive. This "currency system" if you could even call it that, was a complete joke and made the whole thing feel hollow and meaningless. Now you should actually have to pick and choose what you want to build wisely, and if you're dead-set on making a fully furnished place, you should have to farm moonstone and/or buy it from merchants who now carry 100 pieces. Naturally generating moonstone drops are increased by ~2x
• Potion and plant grow times are altered to streamline gameplay. Averaged all potions' time to 45 seconds and plant grow time to 5 minutes. This is the best mix of balance and convenience I could find. Potions/herbology should be a nice little minigame that takes some preparation and time to get what you want, also it should feel worthy saving up for tables with higher plant/potion capacity. 

Leveling

• The entire level curve has been shifted so that lower levels take longer and higher levels are faster compared to vanilla. Overall amount of xp required to level 40 is unchanged. The xp curve, i.e. each level takes more xp than the last, is maintained so it still feels right. This simple change solves a ton of problems, namely being incredibly over-leveled early while late-game progression feels like a drag. It's amazing how much difficulty and significance this change adds to the early game. Be sure to choose your talents wisely. 

Combat

• All enemy spawns in the overworld are doubled. Kill challenges are doubled but the xp gained is halved. This way, vanilla progression and xp gain is preserved despite the presence of more enemies. This also helps to balance combat with humanoids as a money maker on par with spam capturing puffskeins >.>

• Hard difficulty mode is the focus of this mod, but each difficulty's scaling has been altered to where enemies deal ~2x damage but have 20% less health. This ideally limits damage sponges while making each potential enemy hit much more deadly. In a game where you can endlessly dodge or negate damage, each successful hit should be a severe threat.
• Basic cast has its damage shifted from the fourth cast across all casts, so it now deals consistent damage. Overall damage is unchanged compared to vanilla. Basic cast feels too much like a wet noodle unless you cast it 4 times in a row. This ensures that your dps is consistent even when you have to dodge or cast a spell in between basic casts.
• Incendio has a small buff to range. This is only meant to reduce the frequency of "near hit" instances where the enemy was just out of range. The spell still plays the same as do all other spells in the game, unless you count the universal buff that enemies have less health.

Here's hoping you enjoy your next stay at Hogwarts!