- Start on Silver difficulty.
- The game is enormous, so only do the sidequests you feel like doing. Two exceptions to this: do the "Tutorial Blacksmith" and "Tutorial Runemaster" quests in Sloeford, the first town, so that you can actually access them. Also, you probably want to look up how to find and complete the quest for your class's unique mount.
- Don't just activate every rune you see. Every time you level up a combat art with its rune, the cooldown time increases sharply. Be careful leveling up buffs, in particular.
- Each class has three schools of Combat Arts; each school has its own independent cooldown timer, which applies to all arts in that school. Once you've got more than one Combat Art slot, you can equip Arts from two different schools and not have to worry as much about waiting for cooldowns.
- Your personal skills can reduce cooldowns, improve damage, and unlock special bonuses on equipment. The "Focus" skills are incredibly good, especially since putting points into them grants you augmentations for your Combat Arts.
- Do not take the Dual Wield skill along with Sword Weapons or Hafted Weapons skill; the bonuses do not stack. Just pick one.