Hogwarts Legacy now lets you turn off all the spiders

Harry Potter fans who have so far avoided the spider-infested Forbidden Forest in Hogwarts Legacy will finally get some relief: WB Games and developer Avalanche Software have rolled out a new “arachnophobia mode” option for Hogwarts Legacy, which removes the game’s eight-legged creepy crawlies and replaces them with something far less threatening.

That’s better news for Hogwarts Legacy players — who are also afraid of spiders — who’ve waited this long to play the game on last-gen consoles. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Hogwarts Legacy are out Friday on those platforms, and they’ll get the new arachnophobia mode from day one.

According to WB Games’ extensive patch notes, here’s what Hogwarts Legacy’s arachnophobia mode changes.

• Changes all enemy spider appearances
• Reduces and removes spider skitters and screeches
• Removes small spider ground effect spawners
• Makes static spider corpses in the world invisible
• Collision is still active to prevent players from getting stuck when toggling this setting
• Note that spider images in the Field Guide remain unchanged

Here’s a tease of what spiders (and Acromantula) look like with arachnophobia mode turned on — basically a glowing-eyed balloon with rollerskates:

And here’s what it looks like in game:

You may be asking yourself, “…roller… skates?” Clearly this is a reference to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when Ron Weasley casts the Riddikulus charm on the Boggart — a very large spider, in the eyes of Ron — in Professor Lupin’s defense against the dark arts class. Ron’s charm gives the Boggart roller skates, diminishing its power to terrify.

Hogwarts Legacy’s latest patch rolled out on Thursday and includes more than 500 bug fixes and overall improvements to gameplay and performance, WB says. The game is available now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. A Nintendo Switch version of Hogwarts Legacy is due in July.

Arachnophobe-friendly games are all the rage right now. Just last week, Respawn Entertainment launched Star Wars Jedi: Survivor with an anti-spider setting.