in my unprofesional opinion the dark magic is a terribly frustrating yo-yo… i ll admit i m only borderline beginner to intermediate… i can do all the listed beginner tricks and i m starting the intermediate tricks… what better way to start than with the propper intermediate yo-yo right? wrong! i couldnt catch the trapieze with the old school raider so get a butterfly right? atleast something worked out right! But the problem lies here… the D.M. does not return to your hand… at all! sure ya bind it… then you get a big knot/tangle… you throw it… it springs back and smacks you in the nose… untangle it and start to rewind it and drop it half way and your back to the drawing board… after you repeat this 7 times you throw it down and try to bind it and it violently snapps back to your hand and it falls downto the ground… back to square one again… 5 more times… i my opinion this could all be avoided if it would only go up and down… i have tried double wrapping… it kinda works but cuts down on spin/trick time… tripple wrapping works great for up and down but no trick time… on the bright side single looped the thing spins forever and that is great if you mess up on a trick cause you have a second chance… and being a butterfly i can nail the trapieze everytime… i guess i m begging for advice to make the darn thing return to my hand to make life easier and less winding time and more play time… any and all advice would be great!!! Yes i know spelling is bad i m in a hurry…
Get a more responsive yoyo that you don’t have to bind with.
Work on your binds. And practice. Two main ingredients to starting out. just takes time and alot of practice. as the saying goes here “practice, practice , practice. And when your done with that, practice some more.”
You;ll get it just keep trying at it. i got all the way to expert on my DM so its plenty good.
DM is advance yoyo. Use your raider to play with. Also, you can use Raider for a Trapeze. Practice. I can even do Boing Boing with an Ultra Russell.
No need to learn binding just yet. Just lube that bearing with some thick oily stuff like 3in1 oil or maybe even veggie oil.
In regard to the yo-yo not returning - the first thing you want to do is adjust the gap and make it tighter - the tighter it is the more responsive you can make it:
The Dark Magic is a string trick yo-yo built to be play unresponsive when the bearing is clean - they ship with a clean bearing so if you are still working on a good strong throw it can be difficult to return to the hand.
A couple of drops of YoYoJam thick lube on the bearing will slow down the bearing making it easier to return to your hand:
http://yoyoexpert.com/product/yoyojam/thick-lube
The other thing you can use is a very very small dab of vaseline if you happen to have some already - just don’t use a lot as this stuff really gunks up the bearing - if you do apply it just do it as seen in the maintenance video linked above.
The other thing you can do is add an extra twist around the bearing - so when you go to put the string on just add an extra twist and loop that string around the bearing - doubling this up can help the yo-yo grab the string easier.
The better thing to do if you are ready is to work with unresponsive play and the bind return:
Let us know if you are still having problems with it! We are here to help. 
well all day today i did what i like to call practice… some would call it " DUCK, WATCH OUT!" and the classic “OUCH!” but i feel fairly confident about the bind return. although i know i still look like, and i mean no offense to anyone, a retard. it does return to my hand now with only a knot every now and then… i didnt realize that you ahve to watch what trick you do cause the yo-yo is spinning in a different direction. therefore you try to bind it one way and it spins off the string. bind it the other it grabs and walks right up it. i also found out that you have to watch out how much loop you give it cause that will certainly cause a knot… atleast i feel what i found is relavent info and left out of diretcions… now i just gotta pop some earl on the bearing and go back to trick practice… i m gonna get that stop and go down pat before the weekend is over… uh im thinking of using the oil that lubricates my beard trimmer… i used it on my raider and it seems to work real nice but i guess i need a little more input on the idea before i do it to my D.M. because a dark magic compared to a raider is like a porsche to a cavilier… so what do ya think?
Yeah, for you, the beard trimmer oil should just be like regular 3-in-1 oil. If it seems a little thin, it’ll make your yoyo more unresponsive. I’d order some YoYoJam lube and use the trimmer stuff until the lube comes in the mail.
Since you want it to be responsive, I would think that your oil would work fine. It’s more that you have to worry about what kind of oil you use when you get to unresponsive play.
I remember learning to bind. I found it annoying. Yoyo’s are supposed to come back to your hand with a tug right? Well, eventually you’ll get over it. It takes some getting used to though, but eventually binding will become as second nature as giving a tug is now. It really will.
And knots… they’ll get you. The amount of string you drop in makes a big difference as you’ve now learned. And even when you have it down pat, just to keep you on your toes one day it will knot up and nearly take your face off. So proceed with caution. 98% of my binds are just fine, but then there are those other 2%…
when i got my dark magic i didnt even know what binding was so when i tugged i got mad but then i found the video and i now have mastered binding ;D
I’ve told a lot of people this, because 4 months ago I was exactly where you are… in the beginning, yoyoing can be extremely frustrating. People don’t realize the amount of skill and hand eye coordination that goes into throwing some of the tricks out there (even some of the easiest ones), and it does take a lot of pratice. The payout is huge, though, once you start throwing some gnarly tricks, it is the greatest feeling in the world. And just because you’re moving on to the intermediate section doesn’t mean that you have to start working on your bind right away, thick lube that bearing or adjust the gap and keep at it. And in four months you’ll be like me, going over the list for the second time, picking up the tricks that you didn’t have the skill for the first time through the list. Just because a trick is giving you a hard time, don’t give up. Go to the next trick on the list, and start working on it. Go back to the trick before, and if you still can’t get it, then keep moving on. I went through the whole trick list and learned 2 out of 3 of the tricks the first time through, and then after I got a couple down on the master list (hour glass, super man, and what) I started back at the ones that I had left off earlier and they came to me way easier the second time around.