Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
- Renovate nearly every shop you come across. In addition to giving you money by the truckfull, you'll more likely have stores very near you when you need to go to one. This seems obvious (and it is), but I was very stingy with renovating stores when I played and wound up having to go halfway across the map to get to the nearest blacksmith or whatever a lot, so it's really convenient.
- Don't sell anything. The shops nearest to Ezio's home base have "Shop Quests", where if you give them 5 of this, 10 of that etc. they'll give you special items. The items you get don't typically sell for that much anyway so no harm no foul.
- Be sure to have the crossbow by the time you get the missions for the War Machines. Reason being is that guards get a bit stronger around that point and throwing knives will just halve their HP rather than one-shot them, and the crossbow fixes this problem nicely.
- Speaking of War Machines, do all of the missions for them, then talk to Leonardo when you're done ASAP. You won't regret it.
- When you get to sequence 8, be sure to talk to Leonardo (even if you have all of his upgrades) before you kick off the endgame for one of the funniest moments in the series.
- Focus your renovation efforts on shops. Not only will you have more of them available and larger discounts at each, but landmarks are far too pricey to renovate and don't give you a large enough return for the cost. The only landmarks you should renovate right away are aqueducts, as renovating enough of them opens up a side mission.
- Unlike AC2, buying paintings and equipment won't increase your income.
- Maps showing Feather and Flag locations become available for purchase in the post-game, so don't worry about missing some in the main game.
- Most items you find aren't required for Shop Quests and can be safely sold. However, you should wait until all the Shop Quests are available (there are about two quests per type of shop) before doing so. Or find an FAQ somewhere.
- Buy the Crossbow and the three items from Leonardo as soon as they're available, even if you have to grind out the money to do so.
- After the Sequence 8 mission in the Colosseum, make sure you're set with your equipment etc. as the next mission will kick off the endgame, which locks you into your current loadout (until you beat it)
- Don't drive yourself crazy trying to get Full Synch on every mission! Full Synch simply opens up a few optional missions and 75% overall Synch will unlock them all. Getting 100% on a given Sequence unlocks a cheat code, but those can only be used when replaying missions. The game will cheat you out of getting Full Synch on a mission more than once, so just roll with it if that happens.