Hogwarts Legacy: How to open locks (padlocks on doors)? Hogwarts Legacy guide
This page of the guide to Hogwarts Legacy explains how to open locks and get into secret rooms. You'll learn what spell allows you to disarm padlocks, when you can unlock them, and how to pass the lock-opening mini-game.
Last update: 15 February 2023
In Hogwarts Legacy, some doors have padlocks on them that block any interactions with them. On this page of the guide, we show how to unlock the Alohomora spell used to open locks, the assumptions of the lockpicking mini-game, and how to deal with higher-level locks.
- Locked door encountered - what to do?
- Unlocking the spell used to open locks
- Lockpicking mini-game
- Higher Tier Locks (II & III)
Locked door encountered - what to do?
While exploring the world in Hogwarts Legacy, you can often come across locked doors and chests with information about the lock level (1-3).
Such doors often hide collectibles or loot behind them. Accessing them is not available at the beginning of the game. To open such locks, you need to unlock a special spell which we've described in the next subsection.
Note - there are also doors and gates in the game that doesn't supply information regarding the lock's level. These locations can only be visited or unlocked in the course of the individual quests. There isn't any way to open them beside starting the given quest.
In the example in the picture above, the lower levels of the Hogwarts library will become available only in the Secrets of the Restricted Section main quest.
Unlocking the spell used to open locks
You have to wait until you unlock The Caretaker's Lunar Lament main quest. You should come across it after 7-10 hours of playtime and it begins right after completing the First Trial.
The mission requires the hero to be at level 14, which means even if you unlock it, you may still need to spend some time leveling and amassing XP to meet the requirements.
The quest in question sees you sneaking into a restricted part of the castle, and before you embark, you'll unlock the Alohomora spell which is needed to pick locks, the action which will be a mandatory part of this task.
Lockpicking mini-game
Start by approaching the padlock.
Alohomora will be chosen automatically for you - no need to equip it. Interacting with the padlock starts the lockpicking minigame.
The assumption of the mini-game is to operate 2 rings, and on consoles, you use left and right analog sticks for this respectively.
- We recommend starting with the outer ring. Alter it and find the area marked in green for the gears to turn. This means that you've found the sweet spot. Leave the analog stick tilted in that position.
- Now proceed to rotate the inner ring. Again, find the area where the red color appears and gears start turning.
- Leave both sticks tilted right for about 2 seconds, and the lock will be opened.
Higher Tier Locks (II & III)
Some locks in the world will still remain inaccessible, even with the Alohomora spell unlocked. Initially, you can only open level 1 locks. Level 2 and 3 locks will remain inacccessible.
Gladwin Moon will give you The Man Behind the Moons side quest. The quest involves collecting a certain category of secrets - Demiguise Moons . A unique feature of this type of collectible is that they only appear at night, so you're going to need to change the time of the day in order to go hunting for them.
Once you collect the required number of moons (as stated in the quest), you must return to Gladwin Moon and as your reward, the janitor will teach you a new level of the lockpicking spell.
Locations of the Moons are in the Secrets and collectibles chapter of our guide. In Hogwarts alone, there are 10 of them to find, but they can also be found in other places (check each location's collectible list).