Percival Rackham Trial Bug Fix
A fix for the game-breaking Percival Rackham Trial Bug (HL-12745) which prevents players from viewing the pensieve cut-scene and progressing the game. Winner of “Mod of the Month”!
Public Service Announcement
On 02 June 2023, WB Games released a patch for Hogwarts Legacy which claimed to resolve the Percival Rackham Trial Bug. From the tests I was able to perform the patch appeared to work, but a lot of players are reporting that it doesn’t work for them. If you are one of those players, this mod is for you.
Awards
I am delighted to report that this humble mod won Mod Of The Month for May 2023! Thank you to everyone who voted. You’re the best.
Introduction
This is a fix for official bug number HL-12745 (and duplicate bug reports like HL-13144, HL-13070, HL-12826, HL-12776, HL-12442 and HL-654) also known as the game-breaking “Percival Rackham Trial Bug” or “First Trial Bug” or “Pensieve Cut-Scene Bug”.
I am not affiliated with WB Games.
Installation & Use
The process below should work for everyone. (As of 14 July 2023, this mod has over 3000 downloads and a 100% success rate!) This is the procedure that I recommend. Follow it exactly, step by step, and you’ll be fine.
Here’s the recommended procedure:
1a) Remove everything from the Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks\~mods\ folder. Just put it all in another folder for now, but NOT the Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks\ folder, NOR any sub-folder of that. A folder on your desktop might be best.
1b) If the ~mods folder doesn’t exist, create it.
1c) OPTIONAL: At this point, if you like, you can try running the game to see if the problem is fixed. For some people the official fix would actually work, but one of their mods is preventing it from doing so. If you’re one of those people then removing your mods is all you need to do. So give it a try if you like. If it doesn’t work, or if you didn’t have any mods installed, or if you want to just fix it for sure, proceed to step 2.
2) Manually download this mod and extract the PAK file from the ZIP file.
3) Move the PAK file to: Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks\~mods\
4) Start the Hogwarts Legacy game and load your last “Percival Rackham Trial” save file.
5) Bring up your gear screen and check your health. If it ends with a “9” the mod has loaded okay. If it ends in any other number, the mod hasn’t loaded. Go back and check steps 1-3 above.
6) Once the mod is correctly installed, the cut-scene will either start immediately or as soon as you activate the pensieve.
7a) If it works please hit the ENDORSE button on this mod page, and feel free to leave a comment in the POSTS section.
7b) If not please try again using version1 of this mod (with a save file made before you activated the pensieve). If that doesn’t work either, please submit a BUG REPORT telling me what happened, and I’ll try to fix it.
When you’re done
Once you’ve got past the pensieve cut-scene you won’t need this mod any more (unless you decide to go back to an earlier point in the game for some reason). So just delete the PAK file from Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks\~mods\ and put all your existing mod files back again.
Conflicts and Game Versions
This mod alters and replaces the game’s PhoenixShipData.sqlite SQL database file. If you have any other SQL mods installed they might prevent this one from working correctly. That’s why it’s safest to just remove all your mods while you run this one. But if you’re positive that you don’t have any SQL mods you could leave your existing mods in place and just see if this one works. (If your gear screen in-game shows a health number ending in “9” you should be good to go.) Alternatively, if you do have SQL mods, you could attempt to make this one load after those, by changing the name to “zzzzzPercivalRackhamTrialBugFix_P.pak”. (Again, if your gear screen in-game shows a health number ending in “9” you should be good to go.) I haven’t included these options in the instructions above because I wanted to keep things simple, but if you know what you’re doing you could give them a try.
This mod assumes you’re running a game that’s been updated with patches up to and including the 04 May 2023 patch. If you’re not, give it a try anyway. It will almost certainly still work. But definitely delete it afterwards.