I just HATE the list of things to do at every location. A list of treasure chests to find? How many leaders there are? Why give the player a list to check off? It kills the element of discovery and exploration.
So you know whether or not you're close to finishing the fort (or whatever it is). Sometimes there are other objectives in a fort. When you finish that objective, you need to decide if you want to finish up the fort and get the xp for doing so - the list helps that. Or maybe it's getting late and you need to decide if it's worth finishing off the fort before bed. If you don't like it, just don't hold down the ALT key to see it and don't scan the area with your bird.
To my earlier question about the first DLC: it shows up as a quest sometime in your low 20's, though it would be pretty hard to play it then.
Other tips - take with a small cube of salt…
Break down common equipment that you don't want. You'll need the resources.
Sell the purples, they're a fine source of cash.
For the blues, sell if you think you're short on money but break down otherwise.
Keep the epic yellows. You can put them in your ship's storage.
Wood is a very important resource used to upgrade your ship and weapons. Special arrows cost you quite a bit of wood, too. You can get wood by breaking down weapons, picking small trees, ramming other ships to death, and just flat out buying it from blacksmiths.
Skins get more important once you start getting into upgrading your armor to match your level, which you likely won't want to do much until you get some legendary stuff. Get it off dead animals, breaking down armor, and buying off of blacksmiths.
Gems and obsidian are used for enhancements, which I'm still not doing much of because new weapons/armor are always showing up.
Money is good for buying the occasional weapon/armor piece but, every time I do that, something just as good seems to show up within half an hour anyway. I probably should be saving it to buy more wood and skins.
Orichalcum can buy some special stuff - mostly legendary gear and some cosmetic things. You can find orichalcum by wandering around but those only give you one at a time. Message board quests with orichalcum as a reward are handing me 10 and some of those quests are QUITE easy. Note you probably won't find the store until you finish your first conquest battle.
Speaking of conquests, I'm not seeing much use for these. You can get one piece of good gear for defense and two if you go on offense but going on offense seems to mean you'll be facing another mercenary. Even if you beat the merc, doing so takes up valuable time. Does the overall balance between the two factions matter to us?
The tiny canyon from the movie "300" is in the game.
The Λ in the title screen is actually the symbol used by the Spartans.
Pets: wolves are good for a quick distraction but that's about it. Cats are better. Bears are definitely good to have and can live through multiple battles if you take care of them.