Since the introduction of gifts in Harry Potter Wizards Unite we have seen many players discuss the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ gifts available in the game. To develop a Gift Ranking we asked members of our discord server to score each gift on a five-point scale from 1 = Terrible to 5 = Excellent. In total 121 players responded – thank you if you submitted data!

Highlights

Gift scores by type

Gift scores by type and resource availability

Gift rankings

Most players believe you should be able to delete unwanted gifts

There is strong support for increasing the daily opening limit from 10 to 20

Gift Scores by Type

When grouping the gifts by the type, Runestone Gifts type top the list with Ingredients Gifts and Spell Energy Gifts scored similarly.

Gift Type Average Score Runestone Gift Runestone Gifts from Forts 3.95 Ingredient Gifts Ingredient Gifts from Greenhouses 2.69 Spell Energy Gifts Spell Energy Gifts from Inns 2.64

Gift Scores by Type and Resource Availability

We ask players to describe their access to inns, greenhouses and forts – most respondents reported their location as either ‘Good (e.g. City Location)’ or ‘Okay (e.g. Suburban Area)’ – while the descriptions are clearly subjective the average scores for Runestone Gifts and Ingredient Gifts are remarkably similar.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those reporting poorer access to resources scored Spell Energy gifts higher on average than those with ‘Good’ access to resources. Taking the average energy from the standard Spell Energy gift as 2.5 units (a reasonable approximation based on the current data) an additional 25 units of could be expected from opening 10 Spell Energy gifts, a handy amount that will allow some players to return a few extra traces that they might not otherwise have been able to return.

So if you are a player rich in resources and deleting numerous Spell Energy gifts per day considering adding some less well resourced players to your friends list to help them out.

Gift Type ‘Okay’ Access Average Gift Score ‘Good’ Access Average Gift Score Runestone Gifts 3.96 3.91 Ingredient Gifts 2.77 2.75 Spell Energy 2.96 2.43



Gift Rankings

The Extravagant Runestone Gift tops the chart with a score of 4.95; boasting +500 Wizarding XP, a runestone and a red spell book there really was no contest for top spot given the red book wall faced by many players.

Second in the ranking with a very respectable score of 4.37 was the Potent Exstimulo Gift which rewards +500 Wizarding XP and 1 Potent Exstimulo Potion. Potent Exstimulo is such a great potion regardless of playstyle: for those trying to complete registry pages it’s a must to return severe and emergency traces while for those pushing high level fortress chambers it’s the only way to make a dent in some elite foes. One gift also save 8 hours of brewing freeing up your cauldron for other potions.

Only the top five gifts where ranked ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’ by more than half of the respondents: three of these were Runestone type gifts and three rewarded +500 Wizarding XP.

At the bottom of the rankings with a score of 1.28 was the standard Ingredient Gift, followed the standard Spell Energy Gift with a score of 1.57; 80.7% of responses ranked the standard Ingredients Gift as ‘Terrible’ while 59.2% thought the standard Spell Energy Gift was ‘Terrible’, although this dropped to 40% for players with ‘Okay’ access to resources.

The standard Ingredient Gift could possibly be improved by tweaks to the ingredient drop pool, while the basic Spell Energy gift could drop 3 units of spell energy as standard to align with the minimum available from an inn visit – this would guarantee players with limited access to inns 30 spell energy per day (plus the 10 available from the daily assignment), provided they have others actively gifting.

Rank Gift Rewards % ranking ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ Score 1 Extravagant Runestone Gift +500 Wizarding XP 1 Runestone 1 Red Spell Book 97.5 4.96 2 Potent Exstimulo Gift +500 Wizarding XP 1 Potent Exstimulo Potion 86 4.37 3 Essential Runestone Gift +35 Wizarding XP 1 Runestone 1 Healing Potion 82.6 4.00 4 Extravagant Spell Energy +500 Wizarding XP 12 or 13 Spell Energy 71.6 3.92 5 Sponsored Runestone Gift +35 Wizarding XP 1 Runestone 50.9 3.48 6 Runestone Gift +25 Wizarding XP 1 Runestone 46.3 3.37 7 Exstimulo Ingredient Gift +75 Wizarding XP 2 Exstimulo ingredients 20.0 2.71 8 Extravagant Ingredient Gift +500 Wizarding XP 2 Ingredients 20.9 2.67 9 Baruffio’s Ingredient Gift +75 Wizarding XP 2 Baruffio Ingredients 16.6 2.56 10 Dawdle Draught Ingredient Gift +75 Wizarding XP 2 Dawdle Ingredients 17.5 2.53 11 Sponsored Spell Energy +35 Wizarding XP 6 Spell Energy 13.4 2.42 12 Standard Spell Energy +25 Wizarding XP 2 or 3 Spell Energy 1.7 1.57 13 Ingredient Gift +25 Wizarding XP 1 Ingredient 0.8 1.28

Gifting Gridlock

Since launch many players have complained about receiving gifts that they do not want and claim that they will never open, potentially causing gridlock in the gifting process. Below are some possible solutions that we have seen discussed on our discord server:

Deleting Gifts

One feature we have seen widely requested is the ability to delete unwanted gifts sent by friends; from our survey 71.1% of respondents said they thought players should be able to delete gifts sent by friends , 15.7% did not want to see such a feature and 13.2% ‘don’t care’. Possibly a more refined solution would be to have gifts expire after a given time, say seven days; this solution makes any gifting block temporary although might prevent players stocking piling Extravagant Spell Energy gifts for fortress days and gifts that reward +500 Wizarding XP for sessions with a Baruffio’s Brain Elixir.

Type Restrictions on Opening Gifts

Restricting players on the number of gifts of each type they can open each day could ensure some of the less popular gifts get opened thus break the gifting deadlock. We asked players: ‘Do you think the daily limits on opening gifts should include type restrictions? For example: say the total daily limit was 12 gifts, max 4 gifts of each type’. This was not a popular idea: 59.2% responded no versus 19.4% who said said yes, the balance didn’t care either way.

Blind Gifting

An alternative solution would be to only reveal the exact gift on opening such that players were simply informed of what family the gift was from not the exact gift; although this could easily be circumvented by players that know each other in real life and by those well connected on social media. 79.3% of respondents thought the system should remain as is with the exact gift displayed before opening, 7.4% thought you should only see the the gift family type, 6.6% responded with ‘complete surprise’ and 6.6% ‘don’t care’. Clearly strong support for the status quo.

Resending Gifts

Some players suggested an option to resend unwanted gifts however it would be somewhat weird to receive a gift from a player from a location that they themselves possibly had never visited – many anecdotal reports suggest that viewing the locations where the gifts are from is one of the key elements of the gift feature that they like. Moreover, implementation of any such system would have to be watertight to ensure fair play such that players with more than one account did not simply bounce all the ‘best’ gifts back to themselves.

Gifting Limits

Finally we asked players about the limits on the number of gifts that can be opened each day. Only 14.2% of respondents thought the current cap of 10 per day was sufficient, the majority (63.3%) thought the daily cap could be increased to 20. Somewhat of a surprise, only 5.8% of players thought that no daily limit should exist at all.

We’ll be sharing the anonymous survey results with the HP:WU team – we know they value and respond to player feedback so join our Discord server to take part in our in our future player surveys and research projects. Plus follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with all the latest HP:WU news.