Assassin's Creed Origins

• The game drops you in media res for an opening act/tutorial that lasts about 5 hours. If things don't make a ton of sense yet, give it a little more time.

• You can set your mount to autopilot and scout ahead with your eagle while still making progress on the road. Most useful for spotting hunting opportunities en route to a distant target.

• Horses are just slightly faster than camels but not much. Chariots/carts are fast and fun but they don't play nice with pedestrians/fellow travellers, and will start conflicts with soldiers.

• You can upgrade weapons to be useful at your current level. Accordingly, never sell/disassemble yellow (legendary) weapons/shields.

• Unfortunately, upgrading weapons is expensive and money is tighter in this game than others in the series. Pick two melee weapon categories you like and two bows categories you like to keep reasonably upgraded (or else to keep the level-appropriate weapons you'll be finding). Choosing a melee weapon with reach is handy for fighting/hunting on horseback and fighting mounted foes.

• On that tip, the skills to equip a second bow and a second melee weapon are extremely good quality-of-life improvements.

• Until you've upgraded most of your upgradeables, do not sell but only disassemble blue/purple weapons/shields. Wood, bronze and iron are difficult to effectively hunt for until mid-game, so disassembly will be your best source for those.

• The game waits a while to give you certain loading screen tips. One important one they sleep on is to push the left stick in (or equivalent on pc) on the main gear screen to get a legend of all the different weapon attributes (like 'stealth damage', etc).

• Generally, most of the inner ring 1 ability point skills are worth taking. Also, combat in this game is more in-depth so overpower skills are useful to prioritize to make it more fun.

• XP bonus skills are very small awards and this game is full of sidequests with substantial XP rewards which will be your main way to level. Don't bother with XP bonuses unless it's on the way to another skill you want.

• The improved predator bow upgrade is fun as fuck and let you curve around obstacles in many situations to do one hit ranged kills; worth getting early but it only has an effective range of 70m max.

• Tool skills aren't as useful as they used to be as they generally only work on enemies lower level than you and berserk is no longer ranged. Fire bombs are handy for keeping foes at bay while sailing, sleep darts are as useful as ever, and smoke bombs (with damage/knockdown upgrade) remain helpful, to give you options.