A Complete Guide for a DARK ARTS Unforgivable CURSES BUILD, Hard Mode Viable

[cRPG Bro]

This Build also has a Video Guide here for those that prefer: https://youtu.be/vqPQ6gI-KfU

Unforgivables Curses are as one might expect, extremely strong. They can provide pretty much everything you need in but one spell set: Damage, Damage Over Time, Crowd Control, automatic Shield Bypassing & even Instant Death chains! By the end game you'll be making even Voldemort blush what with your nonchalant use of the most wicked spells in the setting, so let's dive into it, shall we:

1.Unlocking the Unforgivable Curses
The Curses all come from Sebastian Sallows' "In the Shadow of..." Side Quests. They are ALL unlocked at different parts of the Main Quest, and so long as you're doing Sebastian's quest when he notifies you, you can't really miss them.
Ideally you'll want to rush it for them if you want them as fast as possible.
Frankly, because of how MUCH important content is blocked behind the MQ in this game anyways, it's not really an issue, at least as far as getting the first 1-2 Curses. Plus there will still be plenty of side content left afterwards.

1.1 Crucio comes from "In the Shadow of the Study", which is unlocked before Charles Rookwood's Trial.
1.2 Imperio comes from "In the Shadow of Time", accessible after "In the Shadow of the Mine", which is a Main Quest where Sebastian is also involved.
1.3 Avada Kedrava is the last one, and comes from "In the Shadow of the Relic", right before the MQ "San Bakar's Trial". You only have to initiate the Trial events in the Map Room, you don't necessarily need to complete it or even enter it for the Death Curse to become available.

2.Unforgivable Curse Mechanics
For starters, it's important to note that ALL the Curses automatically bypass & break enemy Spell Shields, especially useful for Hard mode!

2.1 Crucio Mechanics: Crucio works as both Crowd Control and Damage Over Time. First, it will stun/paralyze any enemy you cast it on, as they won't be able to take any action while it is under duration. Second, it will also deal nice damage over time, but note that this damage tick CANNOT kill or reduce the enemy lower than 1 HP.
Note that some enemies like Trolls & the Armored Guardians are immune to the Stun effect, but will still take the DOT.
Meanwhile, Inferi are immune to both, and usually immune to all Curse effects even, but Fire spells easily handle them.
Crucio has somewhat long casting animation, but it seems it makes you immune to damage during it anyways, and forces enemies to stop whatever action they taking, so it's not an issue.

2.2 Imperio Mechanics: Imperio will charm one enemy and force them to fight for you. It shines when used against the most powerful foes of the pack, for example, when used on Trolls & Spider Matriarchs, they'll easily handle the other enemies just by themselves!
Imperio's effect can linger after battle ends, and there's another great use for it: once battle is over, you can just move towards the remaining charmed enemy and then immediately activate the pretty much "instant kill" Petrificus Totalus spell to dispatch them with ease. Against Trolls, you can even chain activate it to completely demolish them as shown in the video. What this means is Imperio can also work vs Solo enemies, like a solo Troll, just charm then spam the Petrification spell.

2.3 Avada Kedrava Mechanics: The most infamous spell is can INSTANTLY kill almost anything in the game! When combined with the Mastery Talent, you can even instant kill whole chains of cursed enemies at once. Even high HP enemies like Trolls will be destroyed in one go, with no resistance. The major downside is the extremely long cooldown, but considering how much it does, it's often not much of an issue.

3. Talents & Talent Progression
3.1 Dark Arts: You'll want almost everything. Cursed enemies will take higher damage from ALL sources, so the ability to curse them through Expelliarmus & Stupefy, two very useful abilities, is golden for when you are still lacking in the actual Unforgivable Curses. Arresto Momentum can also work for this purpose, and I'd rather it over Flipendo.
Blood Curse will make it so that damaging a cursed target also damages other nearby cursed enemies. The damage chain isn't particularly high, but it can be useful considering how easy it is to spread curses.
Crucio Mastery is essential so that you curse another enemy after casting Crucio, although it's just the normal curse debuff, not 2x the Crucio effect.
Imperio Mastery will spread curse even further, whenever the charmed enemy attacks its allies.
Enduring Curse is great for ensuring the enemy will only escape Crucio after they die, and can contribute a lot to the duration of Imperio as well, which doesn't last as long.
Avada Kedrava Mastery is the golden talent that makes you chain instant death vs all cursed targets! There's a reason we've been investing heavily into curse spreading.
Lastly, Curse Sapper can help by recovering a bit of HP once you kill a cursed foe. It's mostly for the interesting synergy it has with the combat mechanic that makes you only really die after reaching 1 HP, so you just get more uses out of it even by going a little bit above 1 HP.

3.2 Other Talent Trees
Stealth really is the way to go early, as you rush through the Main Quest to unlock your Curses fast. To put it simply, with just the 2 initial points spent there (and later the other 2 talents) it's very easy to instantly kill entire packs of foes, or at the very least highly reduce their numbers down to more manageable amounts, after all, due to the much higher damage taken on Hard, the less enemies you have to fight at once, the better!

Core: Wiggenweld Potency I is quite handy for Hard due to once again, higher damage taken, especially because by default, the potions restore a paltry amount of HP, but much higher with this Talent.
Basic Cast Mastery is quite handy as well, by reducing Cooldowns for all spells whenever you use your basic Blast ability. Because you have great boosts to damage anyways vs Curse Targets, even just your Blast can become a force to be reckoned with!
Spell Knowledge is something you want too, at least one upgrade. Hogwarts Legacy is a game with MANY Utility Spells, so by having at least a Second Spell Set, you won't have to constantly swap your combat/utility spells. Later you can get yet another set, so you can then have one main for combat, a second backup also for combat for when your main spells are under cooldown, and lastly a set just for Utility.

Spells Tree: Some of the upgrades here can have some use early game, especially either Levioso or Accio Mastery for mass CC. Ideally, for mid/late game you'll want Confringo Mastery to handle packs of Inferi, and also Bombarda Mastery as a backup spell for mass AoE after you curse the pack (for greater damage) but cannot go for a curse like Avada Kedrava due to the high cooldown.

4. Gear & Traits
For Traits, ideally you just want to focus on Unforgivable III. It will increase ALL your damage vs Cursed Targets, from Blast, Spells and so on. Because it is a generic increase, it really feels better than all the other Traits, for this build at least.
For example, something like Cruel for higher Crucio Damage is rather limited, when Unforgivable WILL also work because whenever you cast Crucio, the enemy is also cursed, thus suffering higher damage regardless from Unforgivable III, including from the very own Crucio DoT.
There isn't much of a point in going for the lesser versions, because as soon as you unlock the ability to slot Traits, you'll have Beast Taming too, which means you can just capture some Kneazles for the items needed to always have Trait 3 Upgrades right at once.
To easily get Unforgivable III, simply save before you open one of the chests that contain Trait Rewards (usually Bandit Camp chests etc, they show as an icon on the map), then reload again and again until you get it, as it's all RNG, pulled from a pool of whatever Traits you DON'T have yet.
It's savescumming for sure, but you'll be completely and utterly at the mercy of RNG otherwise.
For Gear, I recommend just getting Legendary variants as they are the only ones that can slot Tier 3 Traits. Remember you can easily buy Legendary Gear from Gladrag's Shop at Hogsmeade.

5. Spell Combos & Sets
5.1 Early Game: for the early game, I really would just keep to Stealth to easily rush the Main Quests for our Curses as soon as possible. But you can also go for Expelliarmus, Accio and Levioso for CC otherwise.
5.2 Mid Game: After you get Crucio, it's pretty much Crucio, Expelliarmus once again for more Curse/CC, Arresto Momentum for the same purposes, Confringo for damage/Inferi and also either Imperio or if you don't have it yet, Accio, as this way you can easily handle enemy Shields of all colors/types.
5.6 Late Game: By this point you already have all your curses, so it's really just a matter of Crucio one foe, let it chain to another, Imperio one enemy, then you can go for Avada Kedrava to mass chain kill, or depending on how big the pack is, Expelliarmus first to curse yet another.
I'd also keep Bombarda/Confringo as backups for when your Curses are on cooldown!

Well, so this was it. I hope I managed to properly explain to you the ever seductive wonders of the Dark Arts. Have fun with the great game that is Hogwarts Legacy, and careful not to get caught or Azkaban awaits!

[Harris]

Excellent writeup. I'm gonna leave some comments and share my experience.

Dark build is very powerful, but has a number of challenges:

- it's slow to get off ground, because early game damage boost from cursed is anemic, and Unforgivables don't begin to arrive until midgame. So Dark is basically like playing a mage in RPGs, you need to survive until Crucio and vivarium. Ideally without grabbing talents that will later become obsolete such as stealth, since the number of your talent points is limited.

- Avada Kedavra has two limitations out of which the most important is its long cooldown, so even though you're able to quickly wipe about 4 enemies off the screen with a curse chain, you will struggle in a prolonged fights where enemies come in waves: Arenas are the best example of that. So you need to avoid being a one-trick pony.

- Second limitation is Inferi which are immune to Avada which only strengthens the need for an alternative damage chain.

Curse mechanics is the strength of the Dark build, Unforgivable III is really the best trait you could have for such a build, and maybe even the best trait overall. That is because it amplifies damage dealt by EVERYTHING to cursed enemies. Furthermore, with Blood Curse if you target one enemy all other cursed enemies get the percentage damage, so that is getting boosted as well. So Dark mage is as powerful against individual strong enemies as they are against groups.

To understand how powerful curse status can be, at level 35 on Normal Accio -> Descendo combo deals 900 damage, while Flipendo -> Descendo deals some 2700, basically giving triple damage.

Here are my two combat spell panels:

Arresto Momentum - Expelliarmus - Flipendo - Crucio
Confringo - Bombarda - Descendo - Avada Kedavra

First panel is there to apply cursed status on stuff. It is useful to have spells of different kinds because you don't have to worry about penetrating shields and having 4 of them ensures you always have a way to apply curse when you need it. This 4 spells are not there to deal huge damage but merely to set up combos.

After you wiped the first wave with Avada Kedavra, you reapply the curse and hit them with your damage spells, as well as Flipendo -> Descendo combo. Confringo -> Bombarda combo handles Inferi as that's pretty much your only weakness as a dark mage.

There are also notable synergies of this playstyle with Ancient magic - since damage to all cursed enemies is so strong you can use 5 charges of ancient magic as a budget version of Avada Kedavra. Also, ancient magic throw has a synergy with Expelliarmus, which you'll be using a lot. There also many cool synergies your core spells are capable off, Expelliarmus is good against goblins and dark wizards, while Flipendo rocks against trolls and dugbogs.

My take on Unforgivables themselves:

Crucio - this is mostly good for quicky applying curse to a group, so it gets used in this capacity throughout the game. In terms of damage and control it quickly falls, but it's still pretty good considering how you can get it by midgame.

Imperio - this one seems good but comes with a bunch of gimmicks and ultimately Avada Kedavra is a straight upgrade to this, so I wouldn't bother with a talent for Imperio to be honest. Its use case is to control a troll or spider matriarch and watch as they kill its friends, which is useful at a certain point in the game but not beyond that.

Avada Kedavra - it's great, even though it arrives just before the endgame. Use it, love it.

[Zeypher]

Expelliarmus is great on a curse build. Crazy synergy, disables mages and goblins, curses and also procs up ancient magic throw which is free damage. The other I prefer instead of confringo is transformation into a flaming barrel as it takes out 2 targets for price of one and its an explosive barrel. The basic red damage spells just do not have enough synergy with the builds making them not too smooth when using them.

Spare points can be uses in the RoR tree for better potions if needed and plants as they free disposables we can grow and provide good solid distraction.