Vivarium & Beast Care – Hogwarts Legacy

The Wizarding World is full of magnificent and wonderous creatures, each with their own magic and lore so dense that someone could (and, in fact, did) write a book just about that. Characters like Rubeus Hagrid and Newt Scamander have cared for these creatures, leaving many looking on with envy, wishing that they, too, could own and care for beasts. And with Hogwarts Legacy, that is finally a possibility, as players will have access to a Vivarium within the Room of Requirement, where they can store rescued beasts, care for and interact with them in a variety of ways, and harvest resources from them for use in potions and other crafting.

But there is a lot to beast care, and not all of it is immediately intuitive, and so we are here to answer any questions you might have about the Vivarium and the beasts you can house within it.

How to Access the Vivarium

You will gain access to the Vivarium, the first of several, during the quest The Elf, The Nab-Sack, & The Loom. During that quest, the Vivarium will be created within the Room of Requirement, allowing you to return to it at any time. Later Vivariums will also become available as you complete more beast-related quests for Deek.

How to Add Beasts to the Vivarium

There are two ways to add beasts to the Vivarium in Hogwarts Legacy:

• Rescue them at Beast Dens
• Unlock them from quests

You can find Beast Dens on your map, indicated by the symbol. Otherwise, you’ll need to complete specific quests to unlock beasts. Most beasts in the world can be attained this way, by heading to one of these Beast Dens and using the Nab-Sack to capture them. Once they are in your Nab-Sack, you’ll be able to take them to the Vivarium and free them using the beast menu while there.

Other Beasts, such as the mighty Phoenix and specific, named variants of other animals, can be captured and brought to your Vivarium during quests.

If you want to know all the various beasts you can collect, you can see the entire list here.

How to Care for Your Beasts

Caring for your beasts in Hogwarts Legacy is more straightforward than it might at first seem. Every beast in your Vivarium has two status indicators, Affection and Hunger, displayed at the top of the screen below their name and sex. When a beast’s need isn’t satisfied, the background of this symbol will be dark, but when you interact with the pet in the correct way, the background will change to green, indicating that a beast is content.

/: The first indicator, a paw within a heart, represents a beast’s need for affection. You can satiate a beast’s need for affection by casting the brush tool on them.

/: The second indicator, a fork and knife, represents a beast’s hunger. This can be satiated by bringing out your food basket using the appropriate spell, and then using it to toss food at the beasts, who will happily devour it and satiate their hunger.

Structures

Because of all the content in Hogwarts Legacy, you cannot always be present to care for your beasts. So, how can you make sure your beasts needs are met while you aren’t there? By building structures! You can do so from the Conjuration menu while you are in the Vivarium.

While there are many structures and objects which are purely cosmetic (more on that later), some structures, called “Beast Items,” provide utility for your Vivarium to allow it to function in different ways.

• Beast Feeder: This structure, as the name implies, can feed your beasts while you’re gone.
  • Spellcraft can be bought at Tomes and Scrolls for 1200 galleons.
  • Required 8 Moonstones to conjure.
  • Only one can be built.
  • Food must be added to the feeder occassionally for it to function.
• Breeding Pen: This structure allows you to breed two beasts of the opposite sex together in order to produce offspring.
  • Spellcraft can be bought at Tomes and Scrolls for 1000 galleons.
  • Required 15 Moonstones to conjure.
  • Multiple can be built.
• Toybox: A box for various toys, which you can use to play with your beasts.
  • Spellcraft can be bought at Tomes and Scrolls for 500 galleons.
  • Requires 4 Moonstones to conjure.
  • Only one can be built.
  • Some toys are more suited to specific beasts, such as the Moonball, which is intriguing to Mooncalves.

How to Rename Your Beasts

Beasts in Hogwarts Legacy are like pets, and players will want to bond with them as such in order to enjoy caring for them even more. But it can be awfully impersonal to call a beast by its species name, and can get confusing if you have several beasts of the same kind. In order to prevent this, you are able to rename your beasts to whatever you’d like. So, here’s how to rename your beasts in Hogwarts Legacy:

1. Open the Beast Care menu from within the Vivarium. The button to do so will be displaying in the bottom right of the screen, above your spells.
2. Navigate to the beast you want to rename in the menu.
3. Select the beast, then a pop-up box will appear. You can enter the beast’s new name into the field below their picture and status symbols.

Getting Materials From Your Beasts

Beasts in Hogwarts Legacy are the source of dozens of valuable materials which can be used for a variety of crafting, from gear upgrades to potions. In order to get access to these materials, all one needs to do is take good care of their beasts by keeping their affection () and hunger () icons green. Once both are green, then the beast will drop their related material, which you can harvest later (after the timer that appears finishes). Each beast produces different materials, so you will need to pay attention to which beasts drop what in order to make the best use of this mechanic, though the names of the materials make it fairly clear.

Personalizing Your Vivarium

Like the Room of Requirement it is attached to (and in fact part of), the Vivariums are hugely customizable. By accessing the Conjuration menu from within any Vivarium, dozens of objects will be available for you to place, rotate, resize, and otherwise personalize. These operate in the same way, and use the same transfiguration spells, as in the Room of Requirement.

Now that you know everything you need to about the Vivarium, you are ready to rescue, care for, and raise the many beasts of Hogwarts Legacy! Let us know what your favorites are, and good luck at Hogwarts!