Flipendo! As the icon of the very first Harry Potter games, many of the people who grew up with the Harry Potter PC and console games had the question of whether the formerly-game-exclusive spell would be included in Hogwarts Legacy.
And, as it turns out, Portkey Games did not let us down; we do have Flipendo in Hogwarts Legacy. Therefore, here is how to gain access to the Knockback Jinx!
Spoiler Status: Flipendo is unlocked in Hogwarts Legacy from an assignment that is given after a story quest. However, “spoilers” will only be restricted to that quest’s name (a name that doesn’t have a meaning until said mission is completed), how many story missions precede it, and the assignment’s contents.
How To Get Flipendo In Hogwarts Legacy
Players can learn Flipendo after the main story quest The Map Chamber. If you haven’t reached it yet and want to know how far away you are from it, that’s the 16th main story quest.
After completing The Map Chamber, you will receive owl mail from several people giving you quests and assignments. Among them is one from Professor Garlick, the Herbology teacher. She gives you her second assignment, after which she will teach you Flipendo.
Her assignment has two orders:
- Grow and harvest Fluxweed
- Acquire all three combat plants and use them simultaneously
That mission has a little more requirements than it looks like (and money can be tight here, as you’ll need a total of 2,750 Galleons if you don’t already own some of the pieces), but here’s the breakdown of it.
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Grow and harvest Fluxweed
To get Fluxweed seeds, you’ll want to go to the Magic Neep in Hogsmeade, where you can buy them for 350 Galleons.
However, you’re also gonna need to visit Tomes and Scrolls to buy a “potting table with a large pot spellcraft” for 1,000 Galleons, as the small pot that you have access to by default can’t grow Fluxweed.
Once both purchases are done, you can either buy the plants for the second part of the assignment since you’ll do that in the area, or get on with this part since you’ll have to wait for a while anyway.
Either way you choose, what you’ll need to do next for the Fluxweed will be to go to the Room of Requirement, conjure the potting table with a large pot that you’ve just learned to conjure, and plant the Fluxweed seeds in it.
Once that’s done, you’ve gotta wait 15 real-time minutes (heads up, time doesn’t tick while you’re in the menus), after which the Fluxweed is ready for the harvest and so is the first half of the assignment towards unlocking Flipendo in Hogwarts Legacy.
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Acquire the three combat plants
The “three combat plants” are Chinese Chomping Cabbages, Mandrakes, and Venomous Tentacula. Any of them that you don’t have, you can buy at Dogweed and Deathcap in Hogsmeade for the respective prices of 300, 500, and 600 Galleons.
They can also be grown in the Room of Requirement. Just remember that the Mandrakes and Tentacula also require large planting pots, that it’ll still make you have to chip in to buy the seeds, and that you’ll have to wait 15 minutes for your plants to grow if you pick that option.
Once that’s done, use all three plants at the same time (and make sure to not misclick and send out one of your plants without having the others, forcing you to buy it again – but what would I know, I’m definitely not speaking from experience), and that’s done! You don’t actually need to be in combat, it’ll still count either way.
Learn Flipendo!
With the assignment done, you can now go see Professor Garlick in the Greenhouses (in the Library Annex section of the Floo Flames network). She’ll teach you Flipendo, and voilà! You know can cast Flipendo in Hogwarts Legacy!
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The History Of Flipendo in Harry Potter Games
If you didn’t grow up alongside The Boy Who Lived, odds are that you’ve never seen Flipendo before – unless it stood out enough in the fever dream that the Cursed Child felt like. So, here’s where this spell and the hype around it both come from!
Flipendo was the first spell Harry learned in the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone games. It was used as the default spell in these games, being his only combat spell against most enemies in the non-RPG games, and being the main jinx to interact with other elements.
It retained a similar function in the Chamber of Secrets games, although Rictusempra rejoined it as another main combat spell.
In the Prisoner of Azkaban, though, the Knockback jinx was replaced with the Banishing Charm, with Depulso supposedly being a stronger version of Flipendo. And that was the last time Flipendo was heard of in the Harry Potter games.
Flipendo started off as being viewed pretty negatively by many – we get to explore Hogwarts and Harry’s story for ourselves, and the first thing we get, instead of the number of possibilities to pick from within the book, is a spell that we’ve never heard of.
As it turns out, however, the idea of Flipendo didn’t come from the developers, but was instead a jinx officially given to them among a list of spells that a first-year Hogwarts student could know. Students learn more powerful spells as they get more years of Hogwarts experience under their belt, and that’s how Depulso ended up definitely replacing Flipendo in the games.
Until now!
While Flipendo received that initial backlash, it progressively faded as the years passed, for it to instead wind up being the nostalgic icon of those games that were so many people’s childhood. It even became common among players of the series to be retroactively disappointed that further installments of the Harry Potter games no longer had the Knockback jinx in them.
In light of this history, Flipendo reappearing in Hogwarts Legacy has felt like a nod to the good old times that Hogwarts Legacy was also meant to call back to. Especially considering the number of smaller references to the main series games that they’ve snuck in as well.
More insight on the Harry Potter 1 PC game with an interview of Christo Vuchetich, one of its designers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-A2XlJsC84
What Does Flipendo Do In Hogwarts Legacy?
The Portkey developers have played their hand well to respect the spell’s status and it being meant to be weak, while keeping it useful. Unlike Depulso, which can be devastating when projecting enemies against terrain, explosives, or other enemies, Flipendo doesn’t deal damage. As such, it can still be portrayed as a weaker version of Depulso.
Flipendo… flips… the target, stunning them for a moderate time. But the major plus side of this jinx is that it has the lowest cooldown among all the spells, making it both a go-to component for lethal CC chains, and the easiest option when having to deal with several purple shields.
Additionally, Flipendo is a required spell for certain puzzles, namely for a number of Merlin’s Trials, that need the player to have the ability to flip objects in a way Depulso can’t. It started as a puzzle tool, and a puzzle tool it’s become again.
The fun novelty that was added in Hogwarts Legacy, though, is that the talent to empower Flipendo has been placed in the Dark Arts tree alongside the Unforgivable Curses. That’s what they teach first-years at Hogwarts these days…
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Wrapping Up The Hogwarts Legacy Flipendo Guide
That’s it for Flipendo: A History (full book soon to be somehow found on Hermione’s night stand) and for how to get the Knockback jinx in Hogwarts Legacy!
Were you familiar with that spell before this game? And if so, did you expect it to be in Hogwarts Legacy? Let us know in the comments below!
Feel free to check out one of our other in-game guides, such as how to resolve the Gladwin Moon Bug in Hogwarts Legacy.
