[DoctorEldritch]

@GoLLuM13 Yeah, exactly that. As a sign of personal protest, I'll stick to mods.

But your colourful gameplay description reminded me of a story by Petr Bormor, he has a series of stories where he jokes about RPG cliches, I think I shared some of them before. One that I remembered goes like this:

The huge glowing exclamation mark...

The huge, glowing exclamation mark was visible from afar and was a perfect landmark for the heroes as they wandered through the night. When they finally reached the destination of their journey, they fell exhaustedly on the grass, and the Half-Elf held out a marked envelope to the addressee.

- Here you go...

- Thank you very much," the addressee replied dryly and formally. - Here is your reward, you don't need to count it.

The Half-Elf accepted the weighty pouch with the reward, and the exclamation mark above the addressee's head immediately disappeared.

The heroes gave the departing man a thoughtful glance.

- Postal quests are the worst," the Halfling said irritably, massaging his hairy legs. - You go back and forth for a pittance, you die of fatigue and boredom, and you don't even get a heroic achievement!

- I absolutely agree with you! - The Princess said, "It's tiresome and irrational. I wonder why they haven't invented some other reliable way of transmitting information. There are magic portals, crystal spheres, telepathy, you name it! Why are they so rarely used?

- Because, as you said, they are not reliable enough," the Half-Elf explained. - No industrialist would risk trusting a mage, knowing that a competitor also has a mage capable of intercepting a message. Of course, the means of defence are constantly improving, but so are the means of interception. Information leaks are the bane of modern commerce.

- And the time delay isn't a bane? It took us two days to get to this city to deliver the letter.

The Barbarian sighed dreamily:

- It would be nice to have a thing like, so that no outsiders could read other people's letters! And it would be great to be able to deliver them at once, without having to run anywhere, just like that! How much money we could make...

The Dwarf opened his mouth and widened his eyes.

- Hey! I think I know how to do that! No, I know exactly how! Information that can only be seen by the person it's addressed to... it's so simple! Give me a piece of paper.

- Here, look, - said the dwarf after a minute, showing his comrades his scribbles. - In the left column are the letters of the alphabet, and in the right column are their symbols. For example, S - three dots, O - three dashes, and so on.

- So what? - snorted the Princess. - Another stupid cipher. Do you think it would be that hard to crack?

- No, it's more interesting than that," smirked the Dwarf. - For starters, you all have to learn this table by heart. And then this is what we'll need to do...

* * *
- The quest," the postal clerk said in a tired voice a few days later. - For you and your group. Hand over one gold piece to my colleague in the city of Gatz.

- Right away! - The Dwarf unfolded another letter, put his finger on the coin and, looking at the text, began to move it quickly across the table - first to himself, then back to the clerk. - We accept this quest... no, we refuse... we accept... we refuse... we accept... we refuse... we accept...

In the town of Gatz at the same time, Halfling, with pencil in hand, was closely following the flashing and fading exclamation mark above the head of another postal clerk. A long signal, a short one, a short one, a long one again, two short ones... He quickly wrote down the text on the official letterhead and handed it to the mail boy.

- Give it to the Duchess of Gatz.

The boy ran off, Halfling put his finger over his coin and looked up at the clerk.

- Give my colleague in the capital one gold," the clerk mumbled.

The Halfling nodded satisfactorily and sent the Dwarf back a notification of receipt with a series of dots-dashes. This method of communication had yet to be cracked. Business was booming.

[DoctorEldritch]

@GoLLuM13 As for the snakes, there aren't really, just a bit in Sebastian's quest when you get to it, but a large part of the cellars, being the "Slytherin biome", has a snake motif in decor.

[GoLLuM13]

@DoctorEldritch that explains why I don't remember seeing snakes, I'm with Ravenclaw 😜

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch The inventory management is a bit annoying indeed. I am basically making a trip to Hogsmeade before every quest. At least the vendors seem not to mind too much if I pop up randomly in the middle of night.

I will have to check the position in the main quest, I forgot. I don't actually mind the Alohomora minigame, but then again I did play Skyrim a fair bit and it also has lockpicking as a part of the game.

[DoctorEldritch]

Originally Posted by GoLLuM13

@DoctorEldritch that explains why I don't remember seeing snakes, I'm with Ravenclaw 😜

So am I, but you still need to visit the cellars for pages and a few quests.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka The Annoying thing is that PS has an exclusive quest that allows you to have your own shop in Hogsmeade to sell things more conveniently and profitably. Making that quest PS exclusive seemed like a stupid decision to me, but hey, maybe some people got a PS because of that, what do I know... I, too, had to make those trips to Hogsmeade...so...many...times...

I actually finished the game yesterday.

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch Oh. I wasn't even aware there was a PS exclusive. There were already special edition consoles to celebrate the launch of the game, did it really need more advertising?

What are your impressions after finishing the game?

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka Well, it could be better, it could be worse. It is not a bad game, I guess I just suffered from heightened expectations. But I better not go into more detail until you finish it so as to avoid spoilers.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka That being said, after I finished it, I moved on to Assassin's Creed Origins, finally. And ran into that issue where there is no audio for dialogues, apparently it is a widespread one. So now I am looking into forums and trying different solutions to fix that.

That is to say, Hogwarts Legacy gets some points from me for not having that issue, at least. It's been most annoying with ACO...

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch to be fair I often play games without sound. But when I do want to play with the sound... that would be fairly annoying. Hopefully you are successful with your hunt for the solution.