Dungeons of Dredmor:

• Starting without the Armor skill, and therefore without decent armor, makes the beginning rather tricky. Getting killed by ordinary Diggles is a very real possibility.
• Blue portals transport you to areas with enemies of varying strength. At low levels, you likely encounter ones that completely crush you a lot.
• "Eat food to regain health!" isn't advice you should ignore.

Pirates! Gold:

• Attacking a town isn't enough to free a prisoner. Apparently.
• Attacking a town can lead to severe casualties among your men.
• Severe casualties among your men can lead to not having enough to man all your ships, making it necessary to abandon some.
• Abandoning ships leads to less cargo space, making it necessary to throw stuff overboard, which has the effect that you can only take a fraction of the loot you got by raiding a town.
• Sometimes, ships just won't appear, no matter how long you sail near a town.
• Peace between nations is fickle and prone to end quickly. But so is war.
• Even with damaged sails, small ships can outrun you.
• Don't try to sneak into a town you recently raided. They will recognize you.
• Consider whether you want to end an expidition and share the money, before you hire new men. Not only is that stupid and pointless, it lowers the individual share.
• Your men don't like it when they get shares of roughly three hundred gold. Greedy bastards.
• Headwind is an asshole.

Asuras Wrath:

• When using the Mortal Life Gauge, always learn the opponents pattern the best you can.
• The Mortal Life gauge allows even sub bosses to one hit kill you, even on easy mode.
• Always press the prompts onscreen the best you can, it might not always cause you to loose health, but you loose lots of points, preventing an S ranking.
• Also, when fighting Chakravartin, try not to start comparing it to the final battle of Gurren Lagann while fighting him, or else you'll get distracted and get blown to bits by planets and comets coming at you.

edited 16th Aug '12 6:23:06 AM by Demongodofchaos2

Eggman monitors hurt you.

Mass Effect 3 (Multiplayer)

• When playing as a power-based class, you still have a gun. Use it.
• When playing as a weapon-based class, you still have powers. Use them.
• When playing a krogan, your gun can be used as more than a high-tech club. Try shooting stuff with it.
  • If you're routinely forgetting that you have guns and powers, take a break.
• 80% Damage Resistance =/= Invincibility.
• 100% Barrier restore on demand =/= Invincibility.
• You can turn Hunter Mode off. Do so when you're running for your life. Your shields will thank you.
• Identify your Dump Stat. If you completely avoid investing in one power, you can max all of the rest.

edited 16th Aug '12 10:35:53 AM by Stannum

Skyrim: If you go Dwemer-delving for scrap metal, do everything you can to lighten your backpack and improve your carrying capacity. Even so, you'll run out of space.

Adding to the above, 60% damage resistance AND on demand full shield refill is STILL not the same thing as invincibility.

Also, Fitness is not a Dump Stat. Ever.

edited 18th Aug '12 1:42:59 PM by Stannum

SWAT 4: if heavily armed North Korean paramilitaries storm a hospital and kill dozens of people, don't try to charge in with a beanbag shotgun to take them all alive. Doing so will get you jackhammered to the wall with automatic Type 56 fire. These are not car jackers. Go in loaded for war, with assault rifles, and send your squad in first whenever possible; better that they die than you.

Also: it doesn't matter if you have body armor. Two or three shots from an assault rifle at ten yards will still kill you dead.

Kingdom Hearts 3 D: If you try to level all your Dream Eaters equally - or even close to equally - they will all be horribly underleveled. Better to have a team for each character, and switch in replacements as you progress.

Capcom Vs SNK 2

• Shin Akuma and Ultimate Rugal are MUCH easier when you fight on their ground in a Ratio Match: 1 Ratio 4 vs 1 Ratio 4.
• Just let yourself die and continue if you get either of these on a K-Groove or S-Groove. They WILL kill you by countering everything and anything you do with a super if you get close to killing them on S-Groove and once they get a full gauge in K-Groove... well, You Are Already Dead.
• Never jump in on Geese. He will either counter or Raging Storm, guaranteed.

edited 19th Aug '12 12:44:14 PM by SuperFrost

Skyrim: You know how FUS RO DAH-ing an enemy over a precipice means a quick kill? The draugr deathlords at Arcwind Point know it, too.

edited 20th Aug '12 6:42:19 PM by ABNDT

Castlevania Chronicles

• If you get the Herb by some freak chance, NEVER LET IT GO. Whip candles from a distance just to make sure.
• Learn how certain enemy AI works. You'll have an easier time with any skeletons that have the higher ground if you take the time to throw them off with certain movements and spacing.
• It'll take you a lot of patience to learn a Medusa Head and Bat's pattern.
• When Queen Medusa's tail flashes, keep your distance.
• Just because it worked once doesn't mean it'll work again during the New Game Plus.

Note to self: P4 Arena does not equal Mv C 3. Chicken blocking will not get you out of pressure, it'll just make you pressure cooked. <_>

edited 20th Aug '12 7:20:14 PM by Mihashi

More Castlevania Chronicles:

• DO NOT panic and button mash like a ninny when using the Herb, unless you want to exhaust your supply of hearts for nothing.
• The dolls tend to freeze up when you're climbing the stairs. Take advantage of this and guide them into an easy whipping.
• The dolls freak out and dodge when you whip at them, but not when you use a subweapon. Throw an axe and goad them into dodging into the axe's arc.
• With your downward diagonal jump whip, it's easy to critical hit the axe armors.

Meta-lesson: WINE is not by any measure equivalent to actual native compatibility. You thought Fallout New Vegas crashed a lot in Windows? Try running it in WINE under Linux.

But very handy for controlling enemy aggro and taking out things like the firebomb-throwing hollows early one.

Devil May Cry 3 (HD Collection):

• Don't stand still for too long
• Saving your game mid-mission does not save your actual progress in that mission, but it does save your current inventory, so if you used all your vital stars and a holy water in a tough battle, then saved and quit, now you need to either do the battle again without the stars and holy water, or earn enough red orbs to buy more.

Me and my friend built a map variant in Halo 3. It was filled with over a dozen inter-linked teleporters, explosives, and Grav-lifts.

We learned one lesson from creating and playing this monstrosity which has both come in handy and been the butt of many jokes.

"Walk, don't run."

Darksiders 2: Sometimes simple is good. So if you see a large tower with two openable doors, one of which you just went through, at the very least try the other door first. Might save several minutes of trouble.

Kerbal Space Program - staging is incredibly important, and if you mess it up, you will end up jettisoning fully-fueled stages and thus not being able to transition from a sub-orbital ballistic trajectory into a stable orbit (your second stage just dropped off without firing or something), or inversely, unable to come back down from one (you just dropped off you third stage or whatever, which you intended to use for orbital maneuvers).

Same game - parachutes have only enough material and strength to bring a crew capsule to rest. Usually, the chute will flare open and promptly rip itself off your capsule under the extra strain.

Same game - solid rocket boosters are not fond of heat, and have a tendency to explode.

Same game - the larger the rocket, the less stable it will be when you launch it. You will need RCS thrusters or better still, control surfaces, in order to keep the thing pointed in the desired direction of travel, lest you end up nosing the thing over ten second into flight and having a spectacular collision with the ground.

Same game - SRB's are best jettisoned when they are EXPENDED. If you release them while they are under thrust, they tend to slam into your rocket with predictable results.

Same game - budget your fuel once you're in space. Running out of fuel will strand you, unless your trajectory will have you eventually scraping the atmosphere of Kerbin for an eventual landing.

Same game - RCS thrusters can be used in Translation mode as primitive retro-rockets (see above), but they have very low thrust ratings and your RCS tanks aren't very large. They're better than nothing at all, though.

Same game - it is best to change Periapsis when you're at Apoapsis, and vice versa, to minimize fuel use.

Same game - Orbital Inclination changes are best done in small amounts initially to ensure that you're not shifting it the wrong way.

Same game - if your rocket explodes on the launchpad, slapping more fuel onto it is not going to fix anything.

Dragon Age II: During Isabela's recruitment quest, don't search the bodies until she tells you to.

Civilization 4. If your civilization is armed to the teeth with high tech, new and shiny modern armors, but you haven't taken care of that roaming barbarian warrior, you can still get screwed over.

Brytenwalda:

• You have 17 warriors. Nine of them are Franks. Don't get confused and think this means you can defeat 13 Franks. Unless the rest of your army is up to the task, your nine Franks can't really carry the battle.

• No one else uses bows on horseback. This either means it's a dumb idea, or something you can exploit. I've been going with exploit.

• Here's why you should exploit horse archery: You can carry 21 javelins, or 80 arrows. The javelins can break shields and kill enemies quickly, but once those 21 are out, you have to slow down and pick more up, or retreat to your baggage and pick up a new set. And that's only 21 if you decide to forego a shield. You get 40 arrows in a pack, eighty total if you forego the shield again. Javelins do a lot more damage per hit, but you only get so many hits. A well placed missile, period, can stagger a foe, leaving his shield unused and his attacks disrupted, giving your troops a free hit.

• Arrows suck for direct kills, but if your goal is to make things easier for your troops, 80 potential staggers with minor damage beats 14 to 21 potential major injuries/staggers.

edited 23rd Aug '12 5:27:18 PM by Journeyman

Civilization IV: If you want to achieve something, you have to aim for it from the very start of the game. You want to be the first civ with cities on multiple continents? Aim for Astronomy from the minute you have your capital up. If you get distracted, the AI will beat you to it.

Relatedly, if you're aiming for a certain victory, plan your way from the beginning - Culture victories are particularly bad in this way.

Soul Calibur IV : Abusing the defend button is an alternate way to get naked. Fire Emblem : EVERY SINGLE MOVE MUST BE PERFECT. Xenoblade Chronicles : Avoid enemies the size of your television. Final Fantasy : Save every elixir, ether, X-potion, Megapotion for the final fight. Megaman : Avoid spikes at all costs.

Civilization IV: The mounted version of a gunpowder unit (like riflemen) doesn't count as a gunpowder unit, only as a mounted one: Unit types are mutually exclusive.