Coming out of Laslea Glen you know how to swing a sword and how to feed. You have probably not been told what the stone shrines are, why your skill points will not buy the perk you want, or why the towers refuse to let you climb them. All four are answered in the first hour if you know where to look.
A shrine does four separate jobs
Shrines look like a fast travel network and they are, but only between the ones you have already found. They are also the only place you can learn a perk, the only place you can skip time on purpose, and the only place you can reach your storage.
That last one matters sooner than you expect. Go over your weight limit and you become overencumbered, which stops you running and stops you fast travelling. The fix is to sell, destroy, or stash, and stashing needs a shrine. Finding one early is worth more than the loot you are carrying.
Skill points are rarely the thing holding you back
Two different keys open the perk list, and only one of them is a skill point. A Swordmastery or Witchcraft perk has to be made available first by reading the manual that describes it, and manuals are found out in the world. Until you read one, the perk cannot be bought at any price.
Vampirism works the other way. No manual exists for it. Vampiric perks become available by drinking blood, and the more you drink the more of the tree opens. So a run that avoids feeding is a run that closes half its own progression.
Learning an advanced perk spends time
Exploring is free against the thirty days. Learning is not. Advanced perks carry the hourglass, which means buying one moves the clock, and the time bar tells you how many segments before you confirm.
It is a small cost each time and it is easy to miss, because nothing else about the character panel feels like it should touch the calendar. Budget for it the same way you budget for a quest.
The eleven towers need the vrakhir form
There are eleven scouting towers, and each one reveals the activities around it. You cannot climb any of them as a human. Reaching the top needs Shadowstep and Planeshift, which are vrakhir powers, so towers are night work.
Planeshift lets you walk up a flat wall or across a ceiling, and it drains stamina while you move. Run out up there and you fall, or drop into a Clawride if a wall is within reach.
Set both equipment presets before you need them
The inventory keeps a separate preset for the human form and the vrakhir form, and they swap themselves at the start of every day and every night. Quickslots are part of the preset, which is the part people forget.
In combat you can only reach a consumable that sits in a quickslot. That includes blood vials. So a night preset with no blood in a quickslot is a night preset that cannot heal you, because drinking is the only way a vrakhir restores health. The one exception is the Story difficulty, which lets you drink straight from the inventory whenever you like.
Learn the three Focus Mode colours
Hold Focus and the world sorts itself into three colours. Gold is a quest person or object, red is hostile, white is a container or a plant you can harvest. Almost every point of interest starts with a Focus sweep, and several quests will not begin until you do one.