Hogwarts Legacy Avada Kedavra Guide – Unforgivably Fun

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Callum Marshall

Cal is the Managing Editor at RPG Informer, so all that you see before you is under his watchful eye. Despite this workload, he does his best to carve out some time to write up some eyecatching pieces and showcase his love for RPG's. His standout titles within the genre are Fallout New Vegas, Disco Elysium, Bloodborne, Kingdom Hearts, and his main squeeze right now is Elden Ring. Outside of gaming, Callum is a podcaster, a skateboarder, and an all-around sound guy.

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Good triumphs over evil. Light overcomes the darkness. Love conquers all. It’s all a little played out, isn’t it? These happy-ever-after narratives have been a staple of Hollywood blockbusters, and, indeed, the video game industry for decades. It’s the same old tale. A hero is born, they are faced with adversity, the odds are stacked against them, and against those odds, they come out smelling of roses, and get the girl into the bargain. I may sound like a sour and grumpy man, but I really like it when the villain does the unthinkable and flips the script. For you see, a good villain isn’t inherently evil, just misunderstood, and I like that nuance.

The Harry Potter franchise is a prime example of the happy-ever-after narrative. Seven books, eight movies, and countless video game tie-ins where the world’s most powerful dark wizard can’t seem to kill a rookie teenage wizard. It’s just not realistic, is it? I found myself drawn to the darkness of Slytherin; I was enamored with the more sinister side of the wizarding world, like Death Eaters and Azkaban Prison, and as a result, I found myself rooting for the bad guys. Well, up until recently, there was no way to give in to these dark temptations and become a dark wizard. However, with the release of Hogwarts Legacy, players have been able to learn some unforgivable curses, including the infamous killing curse, Avada Kedavra.

However, you may be innocently tending your Chinese Chomping Cabbage, or playing games of Summoner’s Court and wondering, how the heck can I learn how to follow in the footsteps of Salazar Slytherin? Well, I aim to be your dark passenger and guide you on your way to becoming a Death Eater in training. So without further delay, here is RPG Informer’s Hogwarts Legacy Avada Kedavra Guide!

Bide Your Time

Before you go about becoming Salazar Slytherin’s successor, you will need to work through a lot of the game’s core content and become a much more adept wizard than you are when we begin our adventure. After all, you are a fifth year that has never so much as visited Hogwarts. What I’m getting at here is that there are quite a few prerequisites that you will need to meet before you are able to take on the quest, which grants you the option to learn Avada Kedavra. So here is a quick list of all the things you will need to do before this path opens up for you: 

• Complete all of Sebastian’s Side Quests, all the way up to, In The Shadow of Hope
• Players will need to complete the Main Quest Lodgok’s Loyalty 
• Players will need to be at least Level 28 

Gathering the Other Unforgivable Curses

Before we jump into In the Shadow of the Relic, we should give some background on how the player gains access to these dark spells, and how Sebastian Sallow is directly linked to these dark forces. The player will need to befriend Sebastian and Ominis Gault by completing a series of quests which will have you sneak around the library at night, get to know his family who lives in Feldcroft, and complete the Triptych. However, once you have gone through all of these quests that somewhat tie in with the main plot, a much more juicy plot will emerge, as Sebastian will turn to the dark side in search of a cure for his sick sister. 

This comes in the form of a trilogy of quests named, In the Shadow of The Study, In The Shadow of Time, and In The Shadow of the Relic. The latter is where you learn how to cast Avada Kedavra. However, the player will also be able to learn two other unforgivable spells named Crucio and Imperio. Here is a quick rundown of the quests where these can be obtained: 

In The Shadow of The Study

In the first of the three quests, Sebastian has convinced Ominis to reluctantly go along with his plan to explore the deeper recesses of the castle in search of a cure for his sister. You solve a quick fire pillar puzzle and find yourself in a dark and dingy hidden area of Hogwarts. In this area, the player is able to find notes left behind by Ominis’s lost relative, and with each new discovery, he urges you and Sebastian to reconsider. 

Pressing on, you will solve a series of serpent puzzles where you must match symbols in the right order, allowing you to proceed deeper into this area. This leads the group to an enclosed area where they find Ominis’s family members’ last diary entry. She died in this room because the only way out was to use an unforgivable curse. The Cruciatus curse. Ominis vehemently refuses to cast the spell, but Sebastian offers to either teach the player to cast the spell, or cast it on you. 

After the spell is cast, one way or another, the way will open up again, and you will find yourself in Salazar Slytherin’s secret study. You will find a book belonging to the Hogwarts founder, and after giving it to Sebastian, the quest concludes. One unforgivable curse down. 

In The Shadow of Time 

The Second of these quests will see you travel to the Catacomb near Feldcroft. Upon arrival, you will find Sebastian outside, and he will inform you that he intends to search the Catacomb for The Relic mentioned in Slytherin’s book. 

Ignoring the clear mental red flags that Sebastian is exhibiting, follow him into the catacombs, where you will need to take out a small army of spiders on your way to a large room with an altar. Here you will need to find a student’s journal, which will hint at how to proceed. The solution is to use Accio on piles of bones scattered around the room and form an archway of bones at the doorway. This will open a path, and as you proceed, Sebastian will inform you that the book he inherited had more than just intel on The Relic inside. He informs you that he could teach you how to cast Imperio, the second unforgivable curse. 

Whether you choose to learn this curse is up to you, but after this discussion, you will be ambushed by Spiders. Defeat them and proceed a little further, where you will find The Relic. You can urge Sebastian to stop or to take it, but he will always take it regardless. 

After this, Ominis will confront you on your way out and ask you to stop Ominis. You can either side with him and chase down Sebastian, or use Imperio to have him forget what just happened. Either way, when you catch up to Sebastian, you will see smoke rising from Feldcroft, which is under attack. You will need to rush over and fight off the hordes of enemies. 

This battle will end with Sebastian casting Imperio on a Goblin who has his sister, and uses this mind control to have the Goblin kill themself. As you can imagine, this doesn’t sit right with Anne and Solomon, and they ask Sebastian to leave and never return, thus, ending the quest. 

In The Shadow of the Relic

Now we move on to the main event. During the quest, In The Shadow of the Relic, you will be given a chance to learn Avada Kedavra, but not before you get tangled up in a domestic dispute turned sour. Here’s how this quest plays out: 

Finding Sebastian

The quest begins with you entering the Feldcroft Catacomb once again, where you will find Ominis, who is perplexed by what Sebastian is up to. He blames you for encouraging him and urges you to help him get through the Catacomb to find him. Thankfully, because you have already cleared out this area not long before this quest, the chances are that the number of enemies will be limited. 

However, before long, you will be ambushed by Inferius, undead creatures that can only be harmed when set on fire. So you’ll want to lead with attacks like Confringo, Incendio, or use ancient magic to hurl flammable objects, before then resorting to your usual assortment of combos. 

After fighting your way through these enemies, Ominis realizes that things are worse than he thought, and he opts to return to Hogwarts to spin a story to ensure no one gets into a world of trouble. Meanwhile, you continue to press on. After fighting a few more Inferius, you will need to solve another bone puzzle. Simply use Accio to drag the bones in the area into the center of the room, and this will form a skeletal stairway. In the next room, you will find Sebastian. 

Fighting Solomon

When you find Sebastian, he will be at the peak of his madness, claiming that through the power of The Relic, he can control the Inferius and that he can finally cure Anne of her illness. However, it seems that Solomon has got word that Sebastian has lost the plot and comes into the room, and after an exchange of words, Solomon takes the Relic and destroys it, sending both Sebastian and the Inferius into a rage. This leads to one of Hogwarts Legacy’s few boss battles. 

The battle is pretty simple in truth. All you have to do is make sure you give him a wide birth when he casts his fire-based spells, as he has a few unique incendio effects, like a fire tornado that can be tough to dodge. However, aside from that, he doesn’t have any effective protection spells to stop you from chaining your usual combos. I would recommend a combination of Crucio, Bombarda Diffindo, Leviosa, and Depulso to defeat him. 

You may also run into trouble if you don’t keep an eye out for all those Inferius running around. These can largely be ignored, allowing you to focus all your attacks on Solomon as long as you use Protego to good effect. However, if you want a little safety net, Incendio’s AOE effect is a good thing to keep in your back pocket. 

License to Kill

After this battle concludes, Sebastian will cast Avada Kedavra on Solomon, killing him stone dead. Anne, in a burst of rage against her brother, then destroys Salazar Slytherin’s book, and then rushes to Solomon’s body before apparating away, never to be seen again. This leads to a very somber walk out of the Catacomb, chasing after Sebastian. 

When you emerge from the Catacombs, Sebastian attempts to justify using the curse to kill Solomon, and you have two choices. You can either tell him that no one should ever use that curse, meaning you won’t learn Avada Kedavra in that instance. Or you can agree that everyone should know that curse, and he will offer to teach you how to cast Avada Kedavra. This will conclude the quest, and you will have all three unforgivable curses to call upon as and when you wish.  

Mastering The Killing Curse

Sebastian’s story is a pretty tragic one, but it’s one hell of a villain origin story, you have to admit. Plus, it worked out pretty well for you, because you have the most powerful curse of them all in your arsenal. But wait, what does the spell actually do, and how can you get the most out of using Avada Kedavra? Great question. I have all the answers you could ever need down below: 

What Does Avada Kedavra Do?

It does exactly what you think it does. When you cast this spell, the enemy that is hit with the curse instantly dies. This will not work on all enemies. Most bosses and elite enemies will only lose a sizable chunk of their health if this is cast at them. However, if cast at almost any standard enemy, they will die instantly. 

It is also worth noting that because this is such a powerful spell that it has a pretty sizable cooldown period of about 90 seconds. You can use a Focus Potion to try and lower this cooldown period, but in general, I would suggest planning to only have access to this spell once per battle at most. 

Can You Upgrade Avada Kedavra?

Yes, you can upgrade your talents to make the most potent spell in Hogwarts Legacy even more deadly. If you unlock the talent ‘Avada Kedavra Mastery,’ you will be able to use Avada Kedavra to kill your target, and all those in the immediate area who have a ‘Cursed’ status. 

This essentially allows the player to make use of an Instakill domino effect. You’ll want to use spells that give enemies a cursed status, and when you have a handful of enemies cursed, cast Avada Kedavra on one of them and watch those dominoes fall. Like poetry in motion. 

Are There Any Repercussions for Using Avada Kedavra? 

Honestly, not really. You would think that killing people with this taboo spell would make people like you less and see you labeled as an evil monster. However, even if you learn this spell and use it as freely as you would revelio, no one really bats an eye. If you use this spell in close proximity to other students, they will scream and flee, and some of them will hurl insults your way in the moment. However, aside from that, there is no downside to literally killing people. I wonder why that Voldemort guy got such a bad rap; it seems like it’s fine to off your fellow students with careless abandon.

Changing Your Mind 

Before we wrap up, it is also important to tell you that even if you did ‘the right thing’ and opted not to learn these unforgivable curses, it doesn’t mean that these are out of reach forever. As long as you didn’t turn in Sebastian Sallow after the events of In The Shadow of the Relic, you will be able to find him in the Undercroft, and if you chat with him, he will offer once again to teach you how to use Avada Kedavra. This also applies to Crucio and Imperio if you opted not to learn these, either. 

If you did decide to turn in Sebastian, then the bad news is that the chance to use this in open play is gone forever unless you take on another playthrough or load an older save file. However, players who bought the Deluxe Edition of this title and have access to the Dark Arts Arena will be able to equip the three unforgivable curses there if they choose to do so. Allowing you to channel your badness through at least one avenue. 

That Spell is To Die For!

As you can see from the guide above, this spell is a worthwhile addition to your repertoire. While it may be the most morally corrupt action you can do within the game, it sure does make taking out enemies a breeze. Plus, the questlines leading up to learning the killing curse are hands-down the best narrative offerings in the entire game, and I include the main questline in that ranking. Avada Kedavra is a spell that players don’t need to learn if they choose not to, but to be honest, there are no drawbacks to learning this spell for the player, so why wouldn’t you? Scared, Potter?

I hope that this guide helps you complete all the quests leading up to In The Shadow of the Relic, helps you take down Solomon, and helps you get the most out of this nefarious spell should you choose to learn how to cast it. As always, thanks for reading RPG Informer.

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