Report a Gremlin
The castle is old, enchanted and maintained by volunteers, which means things occasionally go wrong in ways nobody can explain. The official term for whatever is responsible is "gremlin." Nobody has ever seen one. Several have been reported.
Where to Find It
Open the Contact menu at the top of any page and choose Report a gremlin. If you are on a phone and Contact takes you to the petition page, the same invitation sits on that form: Something broken? Report a gremlin instead.
It works in the middle of a fight, an event or a very long argument with a shop. The way back says Back to what you were doing, because the castle would like you to keep your place.
What It Sends
You write what you expected and what happened instead, in 15 to 1,000 characters. The report carries along:
- the page you were on, as a page name only (no addresses, no names, nothing you typed into a form)
- your last five steps, in the same plain form
- the castle version you are standing in
- a short summary of your own character: level, Voldemort Encounters, hit points, forest fights left, gold, gems, where you are, any event in progress, your House, the game day, the creatures in your fight (as numbers, never names), your screen size and your browser
It never carries your password, your email address, or anything about other students. The list under What we attach on the report page is the exact list that gets sent, drawn from the same source, so there is nothing to take on trust. Most of the castle's paperwork cannot say that.
Same Gremlin, Many Sightings
A gremlin on one page in one version of the castle is one gremlin, however many students meet it. The first report becomes an ordinary petition for the staff, marked as a bug. Later reports of the same page in the same version are stapled to it, and the thank-you tells you how many others got there first. Staff see every one of them on the triage page, so a second sighting that adds the missing detail is not wasted.
A new release of the castle counts as a new world. A gremlin that comes back after an update is reported fresh.
The Rules of Engagement
- One report every ten minutes, and three a day. An account in its first day gets one.
- You cannot send the same report twice in a week. Staff have it. It is not going anywhere, which is rather the problem. A different problem on the same page is a different gremlin, and gets its own report.
- If two of your reports are judged to be spam within thirty days, reporting is paused on your account for a while.
- Only signed-in students can file. The gremlins are, in this respect, a members' club.
What Staff Decide
Each report gets one verdict from a staff member, never the one who wrote it:
- Confirmed: a real gremlin. It counts toward your badges, and you get an alert in the bell.
- Duplicate: staff already had it. You get an alert thanking you for the second sighting.
- Not a bug: the castle was working as intended, which surprised everyone. You get an alert.
- Spam: no alert. Nothing for the gremlins to learn from.
Only confirmed reports count for anything, so filing a great many accomplishes mostly paperwork.
The Gremlin Hunter Ranks
| Badge | Confirmed gremlins |
|---|---|
| 🔦 Gremlin Spotter | 1 |
| 🪤 Gremlin Catcher | 3 |
| 🏹 Gremlin Hunter | 10 |
| 🛡 Gremlin Nemesis | 25 |
The badges are free and cannot be bought, which is the point. The report page keeps your record: how many gremlins you have confirmed and what the next rank asks of you. The Gremlin Hunters board on Hogwarts Champions ranks students by confirmed reports, and ties go to whoever got there first.
When to Use a Petition Instead
A gremlin report is for things that are broken. For an appeal, a payment question, a report about another student or anything that needs a private answer, send a petition.
Gremlin badges are the whole reward for ordinary bugs. A way to cheat or a security hole is a different matter: see Bug Bounty and Security Reporting, and do not report those through the gremlin button.