Zynga, the publisher behind immensely popular titles like Farmville, Word With Friends 2, Zynga Poker, and many others, is back with a new puzzle game.
Their latest title is a licensing deal with Harry Potter, the world-known series of wizards and magic books and movies.
Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells is a match-3 puzzle mobile game, in which you complete puzzles by matching pieces to meet levels’ requirements.
The game is available in some countries on both Google Play and the App Store.
In this guide, we give you tips and tricks to help you beat tough levels in Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells.
Table of contents
- Always play towards the bottom
- Find the best opening
- Clear locked tiles first
- Combine special attacks
- Look ahead for combos
- Use spells effectively
- Join a group for rewards
Always play towards the bottom
What makes levels, especially the later ones, difficult to complete in Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells is the number of moves you have.
Because you have a limited number of moves, you need to make sure you work towards the goal efficiently with every move.
One of the ways to optimize your gameplay is to always look for matches toward the bottom.
As you clear tiles toward the bottom, the entire puzzle changes while spawning new ones at the top, creating new opportunities for you.
If you only match tiles toward the top, everything below the area you’ve just cleared remains the same, limiting the number of new opportunities you get.
In some cases, it is, however, best to go for matches towards the top, if you can see an amazing combo or you need a specific match for the level’s goal.
In general, though, playing towards the bottom will almost always yield a better result.
Find the best opening
Finding the best opening is a sure-fire way to increase your chances of beating a tough level.
Most levels have some kind of amazing combo set up for you to execute. You just have to find it.
If you manage to find and execute a powerful opening on a level, you’re going to have a much easier time beating it.
Levels that have special attacks on them from the very beginning almost always have a combo set up you can execute.
Besides matching and knocking out a lot of pieces, getting a big combo off right from the start of a level can remove a lot of locked tiles as well as create many more opportunities.
Clear locked tiles first
Most levels have some kind of locked tiles like tickets that you need to clear before pieces can appear on these tiles.
To increase your chances of beating these levels, you should aim to clear locked tiles first, as this will increase the number of tiles you can use.
Furthermore, most levels that have locked tiles require you to clear them all as part of their requirement.
To clear locked tiles, match pieces next to them.
You can also use spells like severing surge and bombastic bomb to break locked tiles as well.
Even though you should prioritize clearing locked tiles, if you find a great combo that you’ll lose by clearing a locked tile, then go for the combo first.
Combine special attacks
Special attacks are the pieces you generate by matching four pieces, five pieces, T-shapes, etc.
Using these special attacks on their own will help you a lot in levels, but if you can generate another special attack right beside one, you can clear many more pieces.
Swiping two special attacks into each other creates a new special attack consisting of the two you’ve put together.
The most powerful ones include severing surges put into the 5-clear special attack bag and any other special attack you can put into the 5-clear bag, really.
These are, however, not easy to generate on most levels.
Some of the ones that you can often generate are flying keys and bombs.
Combining two bombs creates a massive explosion, which clears a bunch of pieces around the explosion – an amazing special attack for levels where you have to collect a lot of regular pieces.
Combining a bomb and a flying key makes the flying key carry the bomb to its target where it is detotated – a strong special attack for levels where you have to clear locked tiles that are hard to match puzzles around.
Look ahead for combos
As you start progressing through puzzles in Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, you’ll face increasingly difficult puzzles.
At some point, you can’t simply look for combos you can do right now. You have to look ahead and set up big combos to generate spells.
Later on, you have to generate several spells, including color bombs, if you want to complete levels without using boosters.
Start by practicing looking just one move ahead, what will the puzzle look like after this move? Then move on to looking two moves ahead.
After a while, you will be able to set up incredible combos and generate powerful spells that’ll help you secure victory.
Here is a quick overview of the main spells in the game.
A 4-line match generates a Severing Surge, which upon use, clears the entire horizontal or vertical line from its position.
A square match generates a Winged Key, which clears 4 tiles around upon use, and flies to a random tile and clears it.
An L-shaped or T-shaped match with at least three tiles in each direction creates a Bombastic Bomb, which clears all 8 tiles around it upon use.
A 5-line match generates a Charmed Bag, known as color bomb in most puzzle games, which upon use, clears all tiles of the color you swap the bomb into.
Use spells effectively
To further increase the chances of completing puzzles in the game, you should use spells effectively.
By that, we mean that you should always try to use spells, so they have as much impact as possible.
For example, if you can see another spell can be created by swapping your spell with a tile, you should do it.
Another example is when you use a severing surge, you should always aim to hit tiles you need for your goal that are difficult to find a match for.
Also, make sure to use spells like bombastic bombs away from edges of the map to ensure they can use their full clearance radius.
Lastly, whenever possible, you should try to combine spells by swapping one into another, as this greatly improves the power of them.
If you manage to swap a charmed bag into a bombastic bomb, for example, the result is a flurry of bombs all over the puzzle, which will clear almost every single tile.
Join a group for rewards
Upon completing puzzle 32, you can join a group, which is a community of players.
A group in Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells is the equivalent of a guild or alliance in other mobile games.
By joining a group, you get access to exclusive group events and extra rewards, including lives and XP.
To start a puzzle, you need lives. Therefore, you should join a group as soon as you can, as it is a great way to get more lives passively.
Hopefully, these tips and tricks have made you a better player and helped you complete difficult puzzles in the game.
If you have any tips and tricks you believe should be included in this guide, share them with us in the comment section below.
I’m on Level 400 and for the life of me I cannot figure out what I’m doing to clear the maps. I have done it multiple times and even so I don’t know what is happening when they get cleared. If anyone can help I would appreciate it
Which promotes the club to higher levels?
Daily Club play or the Hedge Maze?
im on level 459 i love this game graphics everything is awesome i have not paid for lives or anything as frustrating as it sounds it just takes patience and you will beat the level
how many of you are paying for extras to play? i haven’t been but i am stuck in 400 level and getting frustrated. when you play a game day after day and come close to beating it but don’t. arrrgh!
How can I make the Butter beer games cover over?
I’ve been playing this game for several months and I am hooked. I’m a club leader who encourages members to play daily puzzles and send lives to other members. We’ve got quite a few members who have also played for several months. I agree with the tips and tricks in this article and encourage the 2 commenters below to give it another try. They’ve reduced the number of cards needed to collect helpful pets/creatures and that’s been very helpful.
How do you change the animal you’re using?…i have the Brown Rat…when I hit change there’s nothing else to change to. I am on game 113 which I also am having a VERY difficult time getting past. I sailed through them all until i got to that game! I suppose each animal has its own set of power that can help you? And the group i’m in is kinda slack on sending lives. Out of 30 people …i get sent 2 lives. I love playing the game but i’m very frustrated with game 113!
All in all it is a fun and fascinating game to play. Excellent graphics also.
Join The Dobby´s, we always get a full house of lives when we ask.
I agree with “Christie”. Sometimes, actually quite often that happens to me. I get frustrated and annoyed and I’ll stop playing. I’ll go to a different app game and play it or browse til I find a new game I like. This can be a fun game!
This game can be incredibly frustrating. You say to try and match more than 3 tiles, but many, many times that is the ONLY move available. I’ve wasted as many as 5 consecutive moves on 3-tile matches because the puzzle only offers those moves. Of course this makes it impossible win. It’s not fun when you make the game this frustrating. There are other games to play that offer more enjoyment.