A few tips:
- Visit every quest board in town and take every contract you see. These are the quests with descriptions like "destroy 5 Spartan war supplies" which you will complete through normal play and net huge XP.
- Ignore quests with the hourglass icon, these are the equivalent of Radiant Quests in Bethesda games (constantly randomly generated) and if you complete the objective accidentally you can always turn them in anyway.
- Take all other side quests (exclamation mark in a diamond icon), they're largely well written and many feed back into the main story branches. Ignoring these means missing some of the best content in the game.
- You can pay off mercs but it's more fun to hunt down the bounty giver (money bag icon with a sword) and take them out. Your wanted level also goes down over time if you stay out of sight.
- The stat modifiers on equipment are more important than damage and armour, focus your efforts on making equipment sets that suit your play style. The game now has loadouts you can save so it's easier to refine builds than it was at launch.
- Before you start getting legendary sets, just keep replacing your equipment with whichever is best for your build, loot comes in fast so no need to be attached, and if you like how equipment looks all appearances are saved for transmog even if you get rid of the item.
- If you do like the stats on a particular item or have a legendary you like, upgrade every ten levels because this is when the stat modifiers increase, otherwise you just upgrade damage or armour which aren't that important.
- Engravings are cheap and make a big difference, engrave anything you use. There's an engraving list in your equipment menu where you can keep track of your progress for engravings with special requirements.
- You'll need A LOT of materials in this game, so dismantle rather than sell extra equipment. Or, if you do need money, sell all purpled and dismantle blues and whites.
- There's a chest on your ship where you can store equipment you want to keep hold of but don't need/can't dismantle. DON'T STORE LEGENDARY SETS UNTIL THEY ARE COMPLETE. When you complete a legendary set, all items automatically boost to your level, as long as you have them in your inventory.
- Experiment with your ability tree, you can respec any time for a negligible fee. Eventually you will have enough points to fill the board, if you want to.
- Warrior, Assassin and Hunter are all viable, focus on whichever suits you, or switch between them. At endgame, I have builds I swap between for all three (plus a fire build).
