Sorting thousands of misplaced relics across a ruined workshop can quickly overwhelm even the most patient apprentice. In Wand and Order (Wand & Order: Tidy up the magic shop!), OnSkull Games provides several cleaning spells to help manage the chaos, but none transform the late-game experience quite like Auto-Place Magic.
Whether you are organizing hundreds of wands in Zone 2 or tackling over 2,200 potions in Zone 3, automating the shelving process saves massive amounts of time. Here is an exact breakdown of what the spell does, how to unlock it, and how to operate it without running into common mechanical quirks.
What Is Auto-Place Magic in Wand & Order?
On the game's official Steam store page, developer OnSkull Games defines Auto-Place Magic as a spell that instantly floats held items directly onto their correct display spots. In the in-game upgrade interface, this functionality is tied directly to the Guide ability line.
At early tiers, Guide simply illuminates the exact shelf where the topmost item in your hand belongs. However, its tooltips state that reaching maximum rank unlocks a secondary trigger: pressing the activation key a second time causes matching held items to fly from your hands onto the target shelf automatically.
How to Unlock the Auto-Place Ability
You do not unlock Auto-Place Magic from a hidden chest; instead, it is purchased using ability points earned through standard gameplay.
1. Earn Ability Points
Ability points accumulate as you restore the shop. You earn them by:
- Shelving correct items and completing individual rows.
- Completing entire cabinet sections.
- Performing cleaning tasks, such as sweeping dirt piles, wiping paintings, watering plants, and burning spiderwebs.
2. Invest Points into the Guide Skill
Press your ability menu key (default Tab) to view your spell trees. The Guide tree requires multiple levels of investment (up to seven ranks) before Auto-Place activates:
- Early Ranks: Shorten the ability cooldown and highlight target shelves.
- Rank 7 (Max Level): Unlocks the auto-place functionality.
Because earlier levels of Guide only point out shelves that you can often identify by matching symbols or colors manually, many players save their points during Zone 1 (The Archives) to max out Magnet first, then push Guide straight to max level during Zone 2 (The Wand Workshop).
Step-by-Step: How to Use Auto-Place Magic
Once Guide reaches maximum rank, placing items takes just a couple of inputs:
- Pick up your items: Gather a stack of matching wands, tarot boxes, or potion bottles into your hands.
- Face the target area: Aim your crosshair toward the display shelf or cabinet where the item belongs.
- Press the Guide key once: The game highlights the exact designated shelf slot in glowing light.
- Press the Guide key a second time: The spell casts, instantly launching the corresponding items out of your inventory and slotting them into their correct positions on that shelf.
Mechanical Limitations and Best Practices
While Auto-Place Magic feels game-breaking once unlocked, players in the Steam community and gameplay tests have highlighted specific rules you must follow to avoid wasted cooldowns:
Facing and Distance Requirements
Auto-Place is not a global teleport. Player reviews point out that you must be in the general vicinity and directly facing or pointing toward the designated shelf. Standing across the room or looking away will prevent the items from latching onto the shelf fixtures.
Avoid Canceling the Magnetic Vacuum
When pairing Auto-Place with Magnetic Vacuum (the pull spell), timing matters. If you cast the auto-shelve command while objects are still floating through the air toward your hands, the game can cancel the flight of incoming items. Always wait half a second for the Magnet pull animation to finish entering your hand before double-tapping your auto-place key.
Handling Mixed Containers in Zone 3
In Zone 3 (The Alchemy Lab), shelves feature varied container geometries—such as small round bottles, tall glass flasks, and angular tins. This helps anchor the pattern so the auto-placement does not mix different container shapes across display rows in ways that disrupt your visual tracking.
The End-Game Cleaning Loop: Magnet + Auto-Place
When both Magnet and Guide are maxed out, the manual sorting spell becomes largely unnecessary, particularly in the potion-heavy Alchemy Lab where items lack numeric 1–9 card sequences.
The standard high-efficiency loop consists of:
- Walk up to a designated cabinet.
- Hold one target item from the floor or display.
- Cast Magnet to draw all nearby duplicates into your inventory.
- Aim at the cabinet and double-tap Guide (
4) to auto-place the entire stack. - While both spells cycle their short cooldowns (roughly 10 to 20 seconds), sweep nearby dirt or prep the next item category.
Using this combination minimizes manual placement errors, ensuring smooth progress through the massive wand and potion inventories required to finish the shop before the Alchemist returns.
