November 2019 Community Day Guide

The next Wizards Unite Community Day is coming up soon! Ready your wands, and read on for details about the event as well as tips on how to prepare and make the most of it.

For those who don’t know, Community Day is a 3-hour event, typically occurring once a month on a Saturday or Sunday. November Community Day is scheduled for Sunday, November 17th. As with last month, Community Day will take place 11am to 2pm in your local timezone. 

This month's focus is Fortresses. Here's the full list of global bonuses:

• Additional Exploration Family XP (corresponding with your Runestone) and Challenge XP from Wizarding Challenges
• Bonus Challenge XP when completing Challenges with in-game friends
• Guaranteed Exploration Foundables from all Tower, Forest, and Dark Chambers
• Ingredients used to brew Healing Potions (Wormwood, Bubotuber Pus, Dittany, and Dragon Liver) will appear more frequently on the map
• Healing potions brew quicker, have increased Master Notes effectiveness, and offer more Stamina when consumed
• A free store pack featuring Spell Energy and Runestones

For those with access to a Sponsored Fortress, there are a few other additional bonuses available only while completing Wizarding Challenges at Sponsored Fortresses:

• Increased Exploration Family XP (corresponding with your Runestone)
• Increased Challenge XP
• Bonus Spell Energy

These bonuses are very similiar to those we had for August Community Day, though the exact values for the bonuses this month have not yet been released.

UPDATE: As of November 13th, 2019 the following details have been announced:

• Community Day specific Task List will be in your Special Assignments tab
• Increase of Healing Potion Ingredients on the Map
• Spell Energy on the Map
• Reduced brew time for Health Potion by 50%
• Increase effectiveness of Healing Potion Master Notes by 50%
• Increase effectiveness of Healing Potion in Wizarding Challenges by increasing Stamina 50%
• Overall, a Healing Potion with the reduced Brew Time and Master notes should take 30 mins
• Increased Challenge XP (50% or more) from playing Wizarding Challenges with teammates
• The more teammates you have, the more your Challenge XP will increase
• Increased Challenge XP and Runestone Family XP when playing a Wizarding Challenge, even as a solo player
• Receive Spell Energy as a reward when you gain a Victory in a Wizarding Challenge. If you win at a Sponsored Fortress, you will receive a greater amount of Spell Energy than at a normal Fortress.
• Guaranteed Exploration Registry Foundable in Chamber 6 and above
• Sponsored Fortresses will give out an even higher increase of Challenge XP and Runestone Family XP
• Free Diagon Alley bundle with 50 Spell Energy and 5 Level 1 Ministry of Magic Runestones

• Complete one Chamber 2 (Ruins 2) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 2 Magical Games and Sports Runestone
• Complete one Chamber 3 (Ruins 3) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 2 Hogwarts School Runestone
• Complete one Chamber 4 (Ruins 4) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 2 Ministry of Magic Runestone

Rewards:

• 25 Spell Energy
• 5 Scrolls

• Complete one Chamber 6 (Tower 1) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 3 Care of Magical Creatures Runestone
• Complete one Chamber 8 (Tower 3) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 3 Magizoology Runestone

Rewards:

• 30 Spell Energy
• 15 Scrolls

• Complete one Chamber 10 (Tower 5) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 4 Oddities Runestone
• Complete one Chamber 12 (Forest 2) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 4 Dark Arts Runestone

Rewards:

• 40 Spell Energy
• 2 Spell Books

• Complete one Chamber 14 (Forest 4) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 5 Mysterious Arefacts Runestone
• Complete one Chamber 15 (Forest 5) in a Fortress
  • Reward: Level 5 Legends of Hogwarts Runestone

Rewards:

• 50 Spell Energy
• 3 Spell Books
• 100 Gold

This month's Community Day is all about encouraging players to team up to take on tough Fortress Challenges together. While this guide only briefly covers some tips for Community Day, we have a full week of Fortress-related guides coming out every day this week to help you hone your skills and improve your strategy—especially if you've never done a Fortress battle with other players before!

Use Legends of Hogwarts Runestones

Not sure which Runestones to use? For players eager to prestige their Registry pages, Community Day is an excellent time to prepare for the upcoming Legends of Hogwarts event. That event will feature rarer Foundables from the Potions Classroom page.

To prestige that page, players will need to complete Half-Blood Prince's Copy of Advanced Potion Making, which is only available in Fortresses while using Legends of Hogwarts Runestones. By completing it now, players will be able to prestige sooner in the upcoming event and start working on their next frame with the bonus spawns! 

Finding a community

It’s not called Community Day for nothing! This is a great chance to try to find local players in your area or take a day trip somewhere else to meet new players and connect with the Wizards Unite community.

The easiest way to look for a community near you is to simply search “wizards unite [your location]” into Google, Facebook, or other social media sites. You can also try looking on the official Wizards Unite community map and forums for players in your area. Check out this article for more information on how to use that tool.

Where to Play

For this Community Day, finding a good location is absolutely essential. Almost all of the bonuses require access to a Fortress, and players will likely want to find one that will be comfortable and safe to stay at for 3 hours. 

Ideally, players will want to find a popular Fortress (watch for the green glow, meaning that other players are battling there) with somewhere to sit in range of both the Fortress and hopefully some Inns. It can also be helpful to pick a Fortress with a good cluster of Inns nearby for quick energy replenishing.

Popular places for Community Days include parks, downtown areas, sponsored malls, museums, and more. If you’re not sure where to go, just try going to one of those places and look for any glowing Fortresses to find other players.

Be sure to check your local weather forecast as well. If the weather is unpleasant—too hot, too rainy, too humid—you might want to look for somewhere indoors to keep you and your phone safe from the elements.

Unlock chambers

Players who haven’t done any Fortress battles before should consider going to a Fortress and trying out some of the early levels before Community Day. Each level you complete permanently unlocks another level at all Fortresses you visit, but you cannot access later chambers without first beating earlier ones.

Of course, it’s also fine to show up on Community Day having never done a Fortress at all! Don’t worry if you don’t know what you’re doing (though be sure to check out the Fortress Combat Guide for help if you want to prepare). Most players will be happy to help show you the ropes. 

Spell Energy

Since Fortress battles generally require staying in one place, players will have a harder time replenishing energy throughout the event. While the free store pack will help, players will want to be sure to max out their energy just before Community Day starts. That way they can maximise the number of Fortress battles they can do without needing to leave the Fortress to go collect more energy again.

If you have coins to spare, consider increasing your Spell Energy Capacity in advance too, so you can stock up even more Spell Energy and keep playing longer and harder Fortresses all Community Day long.

New Players: Collect Runestones

Runestones are like single-use tickets to Fortresses, so if you plan on playing during this Community Day, you’ll definitely want to have some on hand. If you want to avoid spending any gold, use the next few days to focus on ranking up your registry with Trace encounters and portkeys to get a few more free Runestones.

The on-going Stronger United Brilliant Event is an especially good chance to collect Runestones, as you only need 40 Family XP to rank up, rather than 100 like with other Families. Be sure to save some of these Runestones for Part Two of Stronger United though.

Of course, while saving up Runestones, don’t skip the daily Fortress battle rewards! A single pack of Runestones can get you 10 days of daily rewards, or 100 coins. As long as you’re only doing one or two battles a day, buying Runestones actually earns you gold.

Premium items

Gold burning a hole in your pocket? For this Community Day, our main recommendation is to use that gold on premium brewing (see below) and Runestones, if you need them. Players can probably expect to use about 30-40 runestones, depending on which chambers they battle and how much time is spent restocking energy. 

If there isn’t a good set of inns nearby though, it may be worth just buying Spell Energy to be able to keep on battling without much disruption. 

Players might also consider buying some storage increases in advance to help stock up on potions and spell energy.

Other things to bring

Depending on where you’re playing and what the weather is like, you might also want to bring water, snacks, sunscreen, or an umbrella. If you want to play the full three hours, a charged up battery pack (and charging cable for your phone) is also a must.

With Fortress battles the focus of this Community Day, players will want to bring an array of potions to help out. Exstimulo, Healing, Invigoration, and Wit-Sharpening potions will all come in handy, but how many should you stock up of each? That will depend a lot on your playstyle and who you’ll be playing with.

Exstimulo Potions

These potions are useful for everyone. Stock up on the strongest ones you have and consider keeping some ingredients on hand for basic exstimulos, since these will only cost 7 coins at most to complete when using the rental cauldron on Community Day. Budget about 25% vault capacity for these.

Healing Potions

While healing potions will likely be the single most useful potion this Community Day, players should only need to stock up a little bit of healing potions (15-20% of vault capacity), thanks to the increased healing ingredient spawns and reduced brewing speed during Community Day. Players who don’t want to spend any gold, however, may want to stock up a bit more.

If your team has a high-level Magizoologist, you might be able to get away with even fewer of these. As healing potions are far cheaper than invigoration draughts though, especially with the Community Day bonuses, it's worth keeping some on hand regardless of your team composition.

Wit-Sharpening Potions

These potions become more useful the further into chambers you go. If your group will be sticking to Ruins and early Tower chambers, feel free to skip these or only bring a couple in case of a rare Elite encounter.

However, if your group will be doing Forest or even Dark Chambers, and especially if you might be carrying others who aren’t as deep into their skill trees or you don't have a Magizoologist on your team, you’ll want to bring along plenty of these. Budget at least 10 if you can.

Invigoration Draughts

As with Wit-Sharpening, the usefulness of these will depend a lot on your playstyle, and the deeper into the chambers you go, the more you’ll want to have full access to all of your strategic spells. If you plan on pushing Dark Chambers, these will likely be some of your most important potions. 

Baruffio’s Brain Elixir

For those keen on levelling up, doing lots of fortress battles in groups is a good opportunity to grind Wizarding XP. Bring up to 6 Baruffio’s Brain Elixirs to be able to keep them running throughout the entire event. 

With all of the bonuses related to brewing, Community Day will be a great chance to brew lots of potions. For only 15 coins, players can rent the gold cauldron for the entirety of Community Day and take full advantage of the brewing speed boost. Be sure to check out our Premium Brewing Guides for more on basic ingredient and potion costs (Part One) and the gold cauldron (Part Two). 

So far, the exact values for this month's potion bonuses haven't been released. During August Community Day, which had very similar bonuses, Healing potions brewed 50% faster, and Master Notes reduced this time by another 50%. The gold Cauldron also had a 33% reduction in brew time for all potions, though this bonus does not seem to be returning this month.

In other words, the standard cauldron took 30 minutes (3 gold) to brew a Healing Potion, and the gold Cauldron took 20 minutes (2 minutes). We will update with further analysis when details have been confirmed.

To summarise, here’s a list of everything to bring on Community Day:

In-game:

• A full inventory of Potions for battling (Exstimulo, Healing, Invigoration, and Wit-Sharpening)
• Up to 6 Baruffio’s Brain Elixir
• As much Spell Energy as you can hold
• Around 30-40 Runestones (particularly Legends of Hogwarts!), or more for lower Chambers
• At least 15 gold to buy the cauldron rental, plus more gold to complete more potions during the 3 hours

Other:

• Water
• Snacks
• Sunscreen
• Umbrella
• Battery pack
• Phone charging cable

Be sure to double check that you have everything you need before heading out for this month’s Wizards Unite Community Day!