Tips and Guides to getting the most out of your game.

What I wish I knew before I started playing the first time. What I wish the game explained better as I played through. Spoilers abound.

Introduction

Initially I avoided Assassin's Creed as the series seemed to be insanely popular therefore it must be bland "food for the masses". But after watching a friend play it, I thought I'd give it a go... and I was hooked. However, a lot of the information I wanted was all over the place or I had to find it somewhere on the web (and I'm the kind of person who likes spreadsheets). I'd like to share that information with you.

Things you should know about to get the most out of the game. *Big Spoilers*

I *hate* missing out on content because I did not know about it. So here are some things to keep in mind through your playthrough.

There are a total of 9 sequences.

Factions
Each faction (Courtesan, Thief and Mercenaries) have challenges associated with them that give rewards for accomplishing tasks, however they do not become fully available until the end of Sequence 3. It is best to get to those as quickly as possible since you will achieve most of them just playing through the game. I keep a list printed out to track my progress. You can view your progess via the menu; DNA - Guild Challenges; or by vising the faction's headquarters.

The Assassin's guild also has challenges, but they do not become available until you recruit your first two assassin's in Sequence 4. Achieving all of the challenges in the guild rewards you with the Sword of Altair, the best close combat weapon in the game.

Progress through faction achievements offers rewards, which you can read about here as well as a list of all the challenges -
http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Guild_challenges_(Brotherhood)

You can renovate faction buildings to house one of the three factions there, but it only offers a return on your 900-1200 investment of 48 florins per 20 minutes each, and puts a group relating to that faction nearby which you can hire.

Each faction has a questline that usually involves completing a chain of 4 quests, then returning to their headquarters for the next list of missions. The last missions appear as Sequence 8 begins.

Towers
As soon as you are able to take towers, you will find that 6 are unable to be taken (one is in an area that is available to you, but you need to repair the aqueduct first, which you cannot do until you have cleared a nearby inaccessible Borgia tower.) Those towers are to the very east, and the south.
At the start of Sequence 6, 3 eastern towers can be captured.
At the start of Sequence 7, all towers can be captured.
Make sure you loot the commander, he has 1000 florins and a fair bit of combat supplies.

Leo upgrades
You will notice that you cannot get vambraces until you get an upgrade from Leonardo. You will be able to get that after Sequence 4 memory 8, which starts with the boy crying at the docks.
Leo offers 3 upgrades to you, the double blade for 2 kills at a time (3800), the climb leap glove (6100) and the poison dart launcher (7500). All of them are almost compulsory to purchase. Once you have these items, you don't need to see Leo again so ignore the white diamond shapes with an L on them on your map.
Upon completing the war machine questline, he gives you parachutes.

Glyphs for "The Truth"
Unlike other games, you can actually drop to a glyph location on a wall and grab onto it before pulling yourself in. You can only access 8/10 glyphs intially, the last two are available at Sequence 6.

Glyph locations, solutions to the puzzles and the locations of the 5 artifacts present in 2012 are best shown here-
http://www.gamesradar.com/assassins-creed-brotherhood-clusters-and-2012-artifacts-guide/

Things you should know about to get the most out of the game. *Big Spoilers* Part 2

Romulus Lairs
Initially, 3 Romulus lairs are available to conquer. One appears as the main qust line progresses, another requires renovated aqueducts to access (just upgrade tthem all). The last one appears at the start of Sequence 8. Since it rewards the best armor in the game which doesn't need repairing, make sure you get it as soon as possible.

Christina Memories
There are five total memories. To unlock them, you must pass Sync rates of 15%, 30%, 45%, 60% and 75%.

Shrunken Head location
Those Sousenhoffer pauldrons and chest guard look pretty good, but the Shrunken Heads are very hard to get. There are two fixed locations you can access to get Shrunken Heads.
1 - In the Romulus lair titled "The Sixth Day", you come across a large cross near the end of the level. Just to the right of the cross is a passageway that leads to a chest with a Shrunken Head in it.
2 - The Centro district occupies the centre area. If you go to the South end of the district, the first chest past the boundary in the Antico district has a chest you can see on the map that is located on a cliff. That has a shrunken head in it.

Before you finish the game.
Everything becomes available, the final faction missions, all the items in the shops, all romulus lairs at Sequence 8
However, the first main questline in Sequence 8 also starts the “on the rails” missions leading to the end of the game. Do not start the first main mission in Sequence 8 until you are ready with everything else. Yes the game has 9 Sequences which made me think that the final mission was during Sequence 9 but boy was I wrong. If you are like me, I don't like finishing the final questline as it feels like the game is finished and I don't feel like completing other side missions or getting 101 borgia flags.
Make sure your armor is fully repaired (unless you have the armor from the Romulus questline which needs no repairs). I lost 4 health squares from damaged armor during my first playthrough at the final battle.

Art merchants
Each district (except the Vatacano district) has art merchants and each sell treasure maps specific to that district and different paintings. Visit all of them to get all the maps and artwork you want.

Feathers
Once I had 5 feathers, the art merchants sold maps that showed the location of all flags and feathers in the game. They were at least 15k each. Some say the maps are available for purchase in Sequence 4 but that was not my experience.

Weaponry for stealth missions
The best stealth weapon is the poison dart thrower as it is very difficult to detect and the death throes of the enemy attracts attention from other guards away from you as long as they haven't seen you yet., who you can then poison. I have only been detected once, and that was when a guard was within close combat range and was looking at me. One shot kill (although it takes about 15 seconds for them to die)
Crossbows are great for killing solo enemies such as the ones on rooftops. They have a better firing rate than the poison dart thrower. If you shoot a guard that is in a group, you have a chance of being detected (sometimes, firing from up high is usually safe).
Throwing daggers are not particularly reliable. It does not guarantee one shot kills so if you are in a mission that requires stealth, it is too risky to use them. Lightly armored targets are usually one shot kills but it can be hard to work out if they are able to be one shot, whereas the poison dart and crossbow offer a 100% chance of of one shot kills so they are more reliable. You don't want to waste time assessing a target to see if you can oneshot it when you can actually one shot it with one of the other two weapons.
Obviously your hidden blades are great but they can often take more time to get into the correct position in some cases.

My favorite close combat sword was the Heavy Weapon sword Stucco. It has 3 for damage, 5 for deflection and 5 for speed. I used that when it was available until I received Altair's sword.

Trade Goods and Florins

If you are looking for the sale price of different trade goods, feel free to visit
http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Trade_objects

Vendors near your hideout on Tiber Island are the only ones that offer shop quests which require trade goods to complete. Tailors offer 1 quest to add 5 to your maximum crossbow bolt limit, Art merchants offer a treasure map of the Vaticano district (kinda useless), Doctors offer Fast poison (victims die faster?) and Blacksmiths have 3 quests (Faith - nice starting sword, Blood Money - a heavy sword and finally Exotica - offers Seusenhofer Pauldrons and Seusenhofer Chest Guard, the best purchasable armor in the game.) Exotica requires two Shrunken Heads which are difficult to obtain, so see above for their locations. Visit the shops to see the trade good requirements for each shop quest..

Items marked with a * are integral to shop quests. Once you have completed that shop quest, sell them all to your heart's content.

Since they have no weight or limit, I merely made a list of items that I should sell to each vendor to maximise the amount I get from each sale. You can sell to any vendor but if I sell Alum to a doctor, I get 1131 florins, whereas a Blacksmith will pay only 522 florins. Surprisingly, some trade goods required for missions by a vendor actually have a better sale price elsewhere.

Blacksmith
Coffee Beans
Copper Ore
Gold Ingot
Saffron
Silver Ore
*Piper Nigrum
*Tomato
*Nutmeg

Tailor
Claddagh Ring
Jeweled Headdress
Velvet
Wool
* Cardinal's Purple Dye
* Silk
* Pomander
* Ambergris

Art
Green Jasper
Rabbit's Foot
Red Jasper
Sapphire
* Vlad the Impaler Coins
* Terracotta Pot
* Indian Diamond
* Elephant Ivory

Doctor
Incense
Jar of Leeches
Quicksilver
Tartar Emetic
Venetian Poison Ring
* Totem
* Buddhist Prayer Beads
* Papaver Silvaticum
* Alum
* Aconite

Do not sell Shrunken Heads as they are damn hard to come by.

How to get trade goods?
Looting - The best people to loot for trade goods are thieves / bandits and Hermeticists. They are loaded. If I wanted to farm these guys, play / replay the first mission in the Davinci Disappearance questline, Roll of the Dice and don't worry about getting 100% sync if you have already earned it.
Assassin recruit missions - Some of the missions reward you with trade goods, see the description.
Investing in a shop - There are 3 levels on investment you can put into each individual shop, and each rewards you with trade goods. If you are missing an item, you can visit a few shops and find which one offers you the good you are after, then keep investing at every opportunity. This is the best way of chasing specific items you want. You can only invest with one shop at a time, and when the game informs you that you have received a return from the global market, you can re-invest again.
Opening treasure chests - Buy one treasure map, make it all back in 2 chest openings.

Getting money
For me, I love maxing out my earnings, so here are some ways to max out your florins. Unless you really need an item or upgrade for a mission, sink your funds into improving your income stream.
Buy shops - These offer the best return for your money. Once you conquer a district, buy out all the shops to increase your regular earnings. Aqueducts are also worth purchasing.
Assassin recruits - These guys go on missions that rewards experience for them and florins for you. Once you have reached max level on these guys, send them on solo missions that reward around 1000 florins. Sure there might be a mission that offers 2,600 experience and 500 florins, but you don't need any more experience, you want the cash.
Completing quests - Obviously.
Looting - again, the most amount of florins comes from thieves / bandits and Hermeticists (about 150-200). Guards reward you with like 6 florins each.
Pickpocketing - Not a great earner and can attrach too much attention.
Investing in a shop - Does return some florins to you.
Remember that your bank can only gold 10,000 florins per bank that you own.
Sell trade items you don't need.
Tackling (or killing) Borgia Messengers and Pickpockets. Its a good amount of money, but you can waste a lot of time chasing them. If I haven't caught them in 30 seconds, I move on.

At the start of sequence 6, you receive a 25% discount on renovation costs, however it is still worth renovating prior to that as the accumulated funds earned up to that point still have a good return.

Gold Sinks for people who have too much money
Landmarks - Very poor return on investment. For a total investment of between 320,694 (with 25% renovation discount) and 427,950, you can increase your earnings by 772 florins every 20 minutes! At the maximum price, it will take you 28 hours of playing to break even. All of the shops renovated give you 12,300 every 20 minutes. It does lead towards getting 100% of Rome renovated which rewards you with a notoriety free cape.
Artwork from each art merchant in the three districts - No achievements, no increase in funds earned, but your lair looks pretty.
Weapons and Armor you don't need - Why not? Just make sure you don't have a crap weapon equipped when you leave the shop.
Investing in the Roman Global Economy - Once you have the trade items you want and you don't have anything better to do with your money.

Technical issues

Game won't start at all. And when I run ACBSP.exe, it says something about ordinal and winmm.dll.

Copy the "winmm.dll" from your windows\system32 directory and paste it into the same directory as your ACBSP.exe file (which for me is "C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Assassins Creed Brotherhood". Even if you have that file in your folder, copy over it with the one in system32. The game should work now.

Occasional freezing.
Some people experience short freezes in the game that are REALLY annoying. Here is an example -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WhIn8nvxpI
There have been many solutions offered from upgrading video cards, the memory the game takes, loading issues. For me, I changed my BIOS settings to Optimal and the problem went away.

Bomber doesn't respond to controls.
The bomber mission in Leo's war machines questline is full of errors for PC players. You will notice that the bomber may not respond to you when you are attempting to make it go in a particular direction. The way to solve this is to turn on Vsync and lower your resolution (I chose 800 x 600) and then the bomber will respond. That was 40 minutes of frustration I did not need.

Where's my DLC?
Most of us are used to games that automatically apply the DLC without us having to do anything. Not here. You actually have to start the game, go into EXTRAS - EXCLUSIVE CONTENT - ENTER CODE and enter all the DLC codes in there to activate them, otherwise they will not be available.

[Dioblackironoyster]

If you visit Leonardo after each main assassination he comments on the news!

[Cat on Linux]

I found myself starting out enthusiastically (with all AC games) but then as I'm getting same types of activities, often useless for main story or character power, I'm starting to feel it's a job rather than a game. Then I just drop all side missions and go ahead to complete main story to be done with it. All these tailing and timed missions ruined all the fun for me.

[Kaorimoch]

Cat on Linux - Unfortunately for you Assassin's Creed games are grindy by nature (except the tiny games like China). When you see any game tout itself as "open world", replace that phrase with "this game involves lots of grindy grindy" because no one will explore a world for no reason - grinding materials and killing monsters force you to go and explore. Assassin's Creed games have gotten worse as times go by. To upgrade weapons in Assassin's Creed Origins can involve getting the real world equivalent of a warehouse of materials in order to upgrade your sword.
You can thank the people who say "LOL this game makes getting epixs ezy mode" for that.

Besides, fun is subjective. The developers are finished with this game so the only fun you can find in this game is what you are able to scavenge from your own end. If you want to play blindly through the game to find out things out on your own and don't mind missing content, this guide is not for you.

[Cat on Linux]

"getting the most out of your game" - shouldn't it be about fun? instead you're teaching how to grind, complete repulsive missions for factions to get useless trinkets (armor and weapon are useless in this game).

I wish someone can have a guide how to turn this boring grind fest into fun game. why do we need Romulus armor (and all these awful liars completed) if you wear it only once when it does not matter what you wear? why do you need sword of Altair if all melee weapons suck in this game and you deal damage when you kick them in the nuts or counter-attack?

[OPA_Cheaterman]

About the bomber thing, my personal fix was to disable CPU boost temporarily and put it in powersave mode, lowering the framerate - I stayed at 1080p and it worked.

One more thing that might be worth including here is Leo's tank mission - full synch is incredibly hard, particularly because of the end fight ; there seems to be a bug where you're supposed to fight the tanks one by one (left one first) but almost half the times both tanks will activate simultaneously. If that happens to you, make sure to reload the last checkpoint before you get hit, this way you don't have to restart the whole mission 30 times like I did.

[OPA_Cheaterman]

That is an incredible guide, must have taken a massive amount of work in writing and research. As usual, some people still manage to complain, mostly beause they can't read (or write, from what I'm seeing), but that's fine. Thanks a lot for your hard work - I'm about to start my second ever playthrough after initially finishing the game in 2013 or so, and this will probably be useful. :-)

[Kaorimoch]

ReVIZen - the title of the guide is "Tips and Guides to getting the most out of your game." Underneath the title is the tagline "What I wish I knew before I started playing the first time. What I wish the game explained better as I played through. Spoilers abound ."
The first article is titled "Things you should know about to get the most out of the game. *Big Spoilers* "
Do you see the word "spoilers?"You were warned, you just didn't read.
If you want to get the most out of the game, you will be reading spoilers as it makes sure that you don't miss out on content. Revealing content = reading spoliers. I wish I did know this stuff during my first playthrough since I missed out on a lot of stuff and I am happy to read this stuff as I play the game and have questions. However, you may be different. Obviously you are, since you missed the word spoilers, decided my article was about playing the first time when it is not, and you can't comprehend words.

[GIGA CHAD]

Bruh you posted a guide about what to know during first play through and you keep all the spoilers. Whats the fking point of your guide. If we cant read it without spoilers. You are dumb as f

[Cipher]

how can I discharge all the armor I have bought?(including the one bought in the main story)

[mbutton15]

A little tip with Pickpockets - when you spot them on the mini-map just wait til they get near you. DO NOT FACE HIM. They will turn and run as soon as Ezio is facing them so the closer you let him get before chasing the easier/quicker he will be to catch.