Merlin Trials in Hogwarts Legacy: full guide

Merlin Trials in Hogwarts Legacy: how they work and what they reward

Merlin Trials are short, optional puzzles that Avalanche Software seeded across the open world of Hogwarts Legacy. Each one takes a minute or two to solve, but the run as a whole is one of the most efficient side activities in the game, because every batch of completed Trials converts directly into extra Gear Inventory Slots rather than cosmetic flair. The system exists to push players into corners of the map they would otherwise walk past, and to reward map completion with a tangible, persistent inventory upgrade instead of a one-off gear drop.

For developers and technical players, the Trials are also a useful case study in open-world content design. They show how a small set of repeatable verbs can be recombined with environmental context to produce dozens of distinct encounters, and how quest progression can gate world content without locking it behind a single mission. The notes below explain how the system is wired in Hogwarts Legacy, what the actual gameplay loop looks like, where the design holds up, and where the edges start to show.

How Merlin Trials are unlocked and gated

You cannot start solving Merlin Trials from the very first hour of the game. The activity is gated behind a short main-story beat and then kept on a slow resource drip, which is the simplest way Avalanche has tuned engagement without a daily login system.

The flow has three layers: a story gate, a discovery state, and a per-trial resource cost.

Story gate: The Trials of Merlin main mission in Lower Hogsfield finishes, and Merlin Trials become discoverable across the world.
Discovery state: Once a Trial is visible on the map, you can inspect it, but starting the actual interaction requires one Mallowsweet Leaf.
Reward batches: Solving a set number of Trials converts into permanent Gear Inventory Slots, which the game shows in a small progress meter in the menu.

That structure is the design pattern worth noticing. Discovery is free, activation has a cost, and completion is rewarded in batches rather than per Trial. A player who walks the map can see what is available, but the resource gate forces a pace: you either stock up on Mallowsweet, buy it from vendors, or stop solving Trials for a while. The reward curve then smooths the experience, because you are not chasing a slot per puzzle but working toward a slot every several puzzles.

Mallowsweet Leaves: the resource that controls the loop

Mallowsweet Leaves are the soft currency of the Merlin Trials system. They sit alongside seeds for the Room of Requirement, beast food, and potion ingredients as one of those mid-game resources that quietly shapes what a player does each session. You do not spend Mallowsweet on combat, story, or shops in the normal sense. The only thing it buys is the right to start a Trial.

There are two main ways to obtain Mallowsweet, and which one you rely on has a real effect on how the system feels in practice.

Vendor purchases: Several Highland merchants stock Mallowsweet, including The Magic Neep in Hogsmeade, Leopold Babcocke near Hogsmeade Station, and Arn in Hogwarts Valley. Vendor stock is limited and refills on a roughly 2.5 day in-game cycle, so they cannot carry the entire system on their own.
Resource growth: The longer-term route is unlocking the ability to grow Mallowsweet, which turns the Trials into a self-sustaining loop and removes the vendor dependency.

The vendor cap is the more interesting design choice. It is small enough that a focused player can drain a stock in a single visit, but the refill timer prevents stockpiling for an entire region. That means the system is tuned for a steady drip rather than binge play, and it forces an interaction with the growth mechanic if a player wants to keep the pace high. From a production standpoint, this is a clean example of a designer nudging players from a transactional mechanic to a systemic one without removing the transactional route.

What you actually get for completing Merlin Trials

The headline reward is Gear Inventory Slots. They are not flashy and they do not appear as a pop-up, but they are the reward that most strongly affects the rest of the game, because every chest, enemy, and quest reward in Hogwarts Legacy pushes toward your gear bag.

Gear slots matter more than most side-activity rewards because of how Hogwarts Legacy handles loot. Weapons and clothing come in common through legendary tiers, and many of them are worth keeping for transmog, stats, or set bonuses. A limited bag forces the player into the menu to dismantle or sell often, which breaks exploration flow. Extra slots remove that friction.

The general progression shape looks like this.

Tier of completion	Approximate Trial count	Reward type	Player impact
First slots unlocked	Small set near the start of the system	Gear Inventory Slots	Removes early-game sell trips, lets the player keep more quest rewards
Mid progression	Several dozen Trials	Additional Gear Inventory Slots	Supports transmog-focused play, reduces dismantle pressure
Late completion	High count across multiple regions	Final Gear Inventory Slots	Lets a completionist keep near-sets without burning resources
Total possible	95 Trials across The Highlands	Maximum slots from this system alone	Full room for gear from the rest of the game, fewer menu stops

Because the reward is inventory space rather than a piece of gear, the value of a Trial scales with how much a given player cares about loot. A player who ignores most clothing drops will not feel the slots strongly. A player who keeps a transmog wardrobe will feel every additional slot as a quality-of-life gain. That variance is intentional, and it is why the system is well received without being central to the campaign.

The puzzle types and how they reuse the same verbs

There are roughly a dozen Merlin Trial puzzle archetypes, and almost all of them lean on the same handful of game systems: basic cast, Revelio, Confringo, Lumos, Depulso, and the broom mechanics. From a content design angle, that is the point. Avalanche can ship ninety-five Trials without inventing ninety-five unique interactions, because the verbs already exist in the core spell kit.

Most of the puzzle families fall into a few clusters.

Puzzle family	Primary verb	Common setting	Failure mode to watch for
Stone ball swirls	Basic cast or Confringo	Stone courtyards, ruins, lakeside clearings	Missing the lit pedestal that starts the sequence
Statue block stacks	Depulso and Accio on heavy stone	Rocky outcrops and cliff edges	Stacking a block too high or off the platform
Fire bowl chains	Confringo or Incendio on braziers	Forest clearings, ritual rings	Lighting bowls out of order
Butterfly sequences	Follow a path on foot or broom	Hedgerow mazes, fields, cliffs	Flying too low and losing the trail
Lumos pillars	Lumos near stone obelisks	Caves, cliff bases, twilight ruins	Not facing the pillar, so the prompt does not trigger
Demiguise statues	Basic cast on hidden moon statues	Shacks, tower bases, villages	Looking too high: many sit at head height on a wall
Platform flight	Broom flight through moving rings	Open sky, valleys, coastlines	Missing the timing window on a ring
Night-only motifs	Same verbs at the right time of day	Any biome, restricted to night	Arriving during the day and waiting in place

The shared-verb design has two clear benefits. First, the on-boarding cost is low, because the player is never asked to learn a new spell just for Trials. Second, the difficulty can be raised by environment rather than by new mechanics: a butterfly trail along a cliff is harder than one in a field even though the verb is identical. That keeps the design budget focused on placement and sight lines, which is where most open-world puzzle design lives or dies.

How Merlin Trials fit into the wider open-world system

Merlin Trials are one of several Exploration Challenge families in Hogwarts Legacy, sitting alongside Astral puzzles, field guide pages, landing platforms, and the Demiguise statue set. The Trials occupy a specific role in that mix: they are short, repeatable, location-dense, and converge on a single long-term reward.

You can see the design intent if you compare them to a few of the other exploration systems.

Exploration system	Average time per activity	Skill or verb required	Reward structure	Relationship to Merlin Trials
Merlin Trials	One to three minutes	Core spell kit, broom, basic traversal	Inventory slots in batches	The most loot-impactful exploration loop
Field guide pages	Under a minute per page	Revelio, exploration, stealth in some cases	Collectible completion and small bonuses	Complementary, often found near Trial sites
Landing platforms	One to two minutes	Broom flight	Cosmetic broom appearance and small amounts of currency	Shares the broom verb with several Trial types
Demiguise statues	One to two minutes per statue	Basic cast on hidden figures	Used to upgrade a single vendor’s stock	Closest cousin: same verb family, single-currency style reward
Ancient magic hotspots	Three to five minutes	Combat-focused, uses several spells	Ancient Magic points for the talent tree	Different verb set, slower cadence, different reward

What this comparison shows is that Merlin Trials are tuned as a high-frequency, low-stakes loop. They are designed to be cleared during normal traversal, not to set up dedicated play sessions. That choice keeps the system from competing with combat encounters and story content, and it explains why the reward is a long-term capacity unlock rather than a per-puzzle drop.

Where the 95 Trials actually live

The Trials are distributed across the major regions of The Highlands, with denser clusters around landmarks that already pull players in for other reasons: Hogsmeade approaches, Hogwarts Valley, the southern coastline, and the rocky interior near the lakes. The total count of 95 is the figure Avalanche shipped, and the unlock steps in the main quest line are designed so that a careful player can finish the set within the post-story window without an exhaustive sweep.

For a player planning a route, three things are worth keeping in mind.

Several Trials require returning to a spot at night, which means some clusters have to be split across two sessions.
A handful of Trials depend on spell abilities that unlock later in the main story, so a strict early-game run will miss a few until those abilities arrive.
Broom-based Trials are easier to chain if you group them by altitude and terrain, because switching from ground puzzles to flight puzzles mid-route is where the time loss happens.

The For additional context, IGN Merlin Trials solutions hub lists each Trial by region, which is the most reliable way to plan a region-by-region sweep without bouncing back and forth across the map.

The design lessons the system carries

For a reader who works in game development, Merlin Trials are useful less for the specific puzzles and more for the patterns they demonstrate. A few of those patterns are worth naming.

First, the system is a good example of a verb-first open-world puzzle family. Rather than ship bespoke mechanics, it recycles the core spell kit with different environmental scaffolding. That is a budget-friendly way to fill a large map with interaction density without overloading the player with new mechanics.

Second, the gating structure is layered rather than monolithic. The story gate sets the floor, Mallowsweet sets the pace, and the batched reward smooths the payoff. A single designer could change any one of those three layers without breaking the others, which is the test of a flexible system.

Third, the reward targets a real friction point instead of a vanity metric. Inventory space is something the player feels during the rest of the session, every session, and that is a strong reason to do the activity without forcing the player through a story explanation each time.

Fourth, the system is forgiving. If a player fails a Trial, the most common outcome is that the puzzle resets, no resource is consumed, and the player can try again. That keeps the failure cost close to zero, which matters for an open-world activity that the player will often attempt while distracted.

Common pitfalls when solving Merlin Trials

Even with a forgiving reset, a few failure patterns show up across almost every Trial family. Spotting them early saves time.

Wrong time of day: Night-only motifs look identical during the day. Meditating on the spot or fast traveling to a different time of day fixes it without losing the resource.
Wrong altitude: Butterfly trails and platform-flight Trials assume the player is at the right height. Climbing a rock or descending a cliff is often the missing step.
Missing the trigger object: A number of Trials use a small lit marker as the start. If the player runs past it, the rest of the puzzle never activates.
Resource outage: Arriving with zero Mallowsweet is the most common hard stop. Carrying a small buffer of leaves prevents a wasted trip to a vendor.
Spell mismatch: A few puzzles are tuned for a specific spell, usually Confringo, Depulso, or Lumos. A player still on the starting cast will often see a soft failure that looks like a bug but is actually a verb mismatch.

Each of these patterns is small, but they are the kind of small frictions that compound across ninety-five puzzles, which is why the more efficient players learn to check time of day and Mallowsweet stock before each cluster.

How Merlin Trials compare to similar systems in other open worlds

The pattern of short puzzle clusters that convert into a long-term capacity reward is not unique to Hogwarts Legacy. A few other open-world games ship comparable systems, and the contrast is useful for understanding what the Trials actually are.

Game	Comparable system	Verb complexity	Reward type	Cadence
Hogwarts Legacy	Merlin Trials	Core spell kit plus broom	Inventory slots	One to three minutes per Trial
Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom	Shrine quests	Runeby abilities plus magnesis, stasis, cryonis	Spirit orbs, heart containers, stamina	Ten to twenty minutes per shrine
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla	Mysteries and standing stones	Traversal and observation puzzles	XP and small resources	Two to five minutes per node
Ghost of Tsushima	Inari shrines, bamboo strikes	Light traversal and timing puzzles	Charms and cosmetics	One to two minutes per node
Shadow of the Colossus	Whisper stones and lizards	Sword and bow puzzles	Health and stamina fragments	One to two minutes per node

What the comparison shows is that Hogwarts Legacy is closer to the Ghost of Tsushima or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla model than to the shrine model. The puzzles are short, the reward is incremental rather than transformative, and the system exists to fill empty corners of the map with low-friction interaction. A player who enjoys the cadence of shrines will not get the same long-form puzzle depth here, but they will get a system that fits more naturally into a traversal pass.

What the system means for completionist runs

For a player who aims to clear all 95 Trials, three planning choices have the largest effect on total time spent.

Region grouping: Solving Trials region by region, in a single broom sweep, is faster than bouncing between regions. The map geometry is the biggest time sink if you ignore this.
Resource buffer: Carrying a steady buffer of Mallowsweet prevents idle trips to vendors. Once the ability to grow the plant is unlocked, the buffer becomes self-sustaining.
Time-of-day batching: Night-only Trials are best left for a single nighttime pass per region, because revisiting the same area in daytime and then again at night is the most common source of double travel.

These are the same patterns that show up in any large-map completionist route, and Merlin Trials are tuned to reward them. A player who treats the system as a region-based sweep will finish in far less real time than a player who treats it as a daily checklist.

How the system looks from a content pipeline perspective

For developers, the more interesting question is what the production setup behind the system looks like. The combination of shared verbs, a small set of puzzle archetypes, and a fixed total count of 95 is consistent with a template-based content pipeline rather than fully bespoke authoring for each node.

A few elements that point to that style of production.

Puzzle templates as prefabs: Each puzzle family can be stored as a prefab or composition that takes position, rotation, and difficulty data, so designers can place a Trial by selecting a template and dropping it on the terrain.
Resource gate as a data entry: The Mallowsweet cost is a small data value attached to each Trial. Tuning the global economy of Mallowsweet only requires editing one number per Trial family, not per Trial.
Region-based unlock tables: The 95 Trials can be stored as a flat list with region tags, which the quest system queries when the player crosses into a new area.
Batched reward progression: The Gear Inventory Slot reward is computed from a counter on a persistent quest object, so the reward logic is independent of the individual Trial scripts.

None of this is unusual for a large open-world game, but it is the reason the system feels consistent across the entire map. When the verbs and templates are shared, the player perceives a single coherent design rather than ninety-five different author voices.

Where the edges of the system show

No open-world system is free of friction, and Merlin Trials have a few. Most of them are visible only after a player has done twenty or thirty of them, which is the point at which the repetition starts to land.

Puzzle family fatigue: After the first dozen Trials, the player has seen almost every verb the system will use. The remaining Trials are recombinations rather than new mechanics, and the late-game motivation drops for players who value novelty.
Resource gating can feel artificial: A player with a full Mallowsweet buffer who hits a Trial they cannot solve because of a time-of-day lock will sometimes leave, restart, and return. The cost of that detour is small but visible.
Reward saturation: The slot rewards stop mattering once the player has enough inventory space to hold the gear they care about. The last batch of slots has noticeably less emotional weight than the first batch.
Map density is uneven: Some regions have dense clusters of Trials, others have only a few, which means a clean sweep of one region may take an hour while another wraps up in twenty minutes.

These are not problems so much as the natural shape of a system that is tuned to fill a large map with low-friction content. The repetition is the cost, and the inventory space is the benefit. Most players accept that trade because the alternative is a smaller map with less to do between story beats.

How to think about Merlin Trials before starting the system

A useful framing for a new player is to treat the Trials as a traversal partner rather than a side activity. The design encourages this because the puzzles are short, the rewards are persistent, and the verb set is the same one the player is already using for combat and exploration. A few concrete checkpoints help.

Finish the Trials of Merlin main mission before planning a sweep, because the system is not interactable before that point.
Stock a small Mallowsweet buffer and learn which vendors carry it, because the refill timer is the most common cause of an interrupted session.
Group Trials by region and by terrain, because broom-based and ground-based puzzles mix poorly in the same sweep.
Keep an eye on time of day when the marker looks slightly off, because night-only motifs are the most common reason a Trial looks unresponsive.

Those four checkpoints cover most of the practical issues without requiring the player to memorize the puzzle list. After the first two or three Trials, the pattern is stable enough that the rest of the system runs on the same habits.

Verifying your progress through the system

Because the reward is a long-term unlock, it is easy to lose track of where you are in the slot progression. A few validation habits keep that under control.

Open the Challenges or quest menu after each region sweep and check the current Trial counter against the slot reward counter. The two values will not match exactly, but the gap tells you how many Trials remain for the next slot.
After unlocking a new slot, count the visible slots in the gear menu. The visual change is small but real, and it confirms the reward actually applied.
Track Mallowsweet spending against Trial completions. A healthy run is roughly one leaf per Trial plus a small buffer for failed attempts.

For a developer, this last point is the most useful one. A resource-to-reward ratio that a player can track by feel is a sign that the economy is readable, which is one of the hardest things to tune in any open-world system.

Frequently asked questions

How many Merlin Trials are there in total?

There are 95 Merlin Trials scattered across the regions of The Highlands. Completing them converts into permanent Gear Inventory Slots, with the reward unlocking in batches rather than one slot per Trial.

What do I need to do before I can start a Merlin Trial?

You need to finish the Trials of Merlin main story mission in Lower Hogsfield. After that, the Trials become visible on the map, but starting each one still costs one Mallowsweet Leaf.

Where do I get Mallowsweet Leaves?

Several Highland vendors sell Mallowsweet, including The Magic Neep in Hogsmeade, Leopold Babcocke near Hogsmeade Station, and Arn in Hogwarts Valley. Vendor stock is limited and refills on a roughly 2.5 day in-game cycle, so the longer-term route is unlocking the ability to grow the plant yourself.

Do Merlin Trials give unique gear or just inventory slots?

The main reward is Gear Inventory Slots. You do not receive a unique piece of gear per Trial. The value of the reward is that it removes the need to dismantle or sell loot as often during the rest of the game.

Do I lose a Mallowsweet Leaf if I fail a Trial?

In most cases, the resource is spent when you activate the Trial. If you walk away or fail the puzzle, the leaf is still consumed. The cleanest way to avoid wasted leaves is to make sure you have the right spell unlocked, the right time of day, and the right position before you start the puzzle.

Are there Merlin Trials that only work at night?

Yes. A small number of Trials use night-only motifs, including Lumos-based puzzles. If a Trial looks unresponsive, the most common cause is that the in-game clock is on the day cycle. Waiting, meditating, or leaving and returning at night usually fixes it.

Can I complete Merlin Trials in any order?

You can solve them in any order you find them, but a few Trials require spells that unlock later in the main story. A small early-game subset will appear inactive until those abilities are available, even after the system is unlocked.

Do Merlin Trials count toward 100 percent completion?

They count toward Exploration Challenge completion, which is one of the main completion categories in Hogwarts Legacy. The progress shows up in both the region summary and the global completion percentage.

What is the fastest way to clear all 95 Merlin Trials?

Group them by region and by terrain, carry a small Mallowsweet buffer, batch the night-only Trials into a single nighttime pass per region, and unlock the ability to grow Mallowsweet as soon as it is available. The same pattern works for most open-world completionist runs in Hogwarts Legacy.

Are Merlin Trials available in the Switch version of Hogwarts Legacy?

Yes. The system is part of the base game and is present across all versions, including the Switch release. Puzzle solutions and rewards are the same across platforms.