Assassin's Creed Valhalla

• The only missables I'm aware of in the entire game are opening a door from the inside of a crypt when the story sends you there (unclear if you can get back there otherwise, there's an item inside), and two "Wealth" collectibles later in an area that feels very much like when you leave you're done, so when you are sent to a crypt or an area the game signposts that something is one-and-done, grab stuff.

• You can go back and forth between world-maps (between tutorial area and the main game region) at any time once you unlock the latter

• Respecs are free and infinite, and can be done on either a single-dot or full-tree basis. Once you put enough points into a direction to unlock the next area / clear its fog of war, if you respec you'll retain that vision until you leave the menu entirely. So once you get 20, 30 points under your belt, feel free to mess around and branch out and see what you can build towards.

• Broadly in the skill tree yellow = stealth, blue = ranged, red = melee/combat, but in practice, blue has a lot of QoL stuff (time slow on dodge/low health) and yellow has a smattering of ranged things (notably, steer-arrow-in-first-person).

• When a dot on your compass starts to wiggle/pulse, doing your Odin Sight (the pulse reveal thing) will change the icon to what it actually is, so you can tell if that yellow dot is a resource or an equippable item.

• Some of the wealth/mystery/artifact nodes on the map won't be accessible until a certain point in the questline for that region; however, there is no way to know this without using a guide, and the nodes will show up on your map anyway, taunting you with their impossible-to-get-to-ness. The best rule of thumb is to finish the Alliance quest for a region first, then go back up and pick up any of the nodes that you'd like to clear, otherwise you might find nodes that are literally impossible to reach until you come back later.

• You can go back to the starting zone whenever you want, so don't feel like you have to slog through the snow when the much more enjoyable main game zone will unlock soon.

• In the main game zone, you will run into endgame bonus boss encounter areas that are far above the level of the zone. Rule of thumb: If the area seems super sinister, it is. Come back later.

• At the beginning you'll be given an option to play as a male, female, or a third option that will change between them automatically at times as the story progresses. While the third option seems strange, it does end up making perfect sense. It does also mean that you spend the vast majority of the game playing as a female.