Shadow Of War: 12 Tips & Tricks The Game Doesn't Tell You

4. WTF Are Training Orders & Why Gems Matter

I'm grouping these together as two extremely helpful components of play that can easily be looked over in the deluge of menu prompts that make up the game's first Act.

Training Orders: Chances are when partaking in your first Siege or when telling an orc to killer another, you noticed the 'Training Orders' option and found a couple of buffs therein. They tend to be things like elemental damage, a troupe of additional orc followers or specific weapon changes etc. that the orc will carry into every future battle, but then... they disappear from the same equip screen.

The reason is because these are optional extras locked away inside loot boxes - drops of gear from the Market you can purchase with *shudder* real cash, or with gold coins accrued from daily challenges. Extremely helpful, make a point of completing a few challenges before outfitting your favourite Borgface The Stab-Lover with the best Training Orders to ensure they make it through a Siege, one-on-one showdown or appearance as your bodyguard.

Gems: Easily thought of as yet another collectible to keep track of, first you want to spend some Mirian unlocking the requisite 'gem slots' for each weapon, as they do make a pretty huge difference to gameplay.

The way they work - outside of "red = damage, green = life and white = XP/recruit levels granted on Domination" - is all the lower tier gems can feed into the higher ones. You'll need three of the first tier to forge one of the second, three of the second for the third and so on. So rather than letting those gem-collecting orcs (denoted by their white arrows on the minimap) go by, kill them, and even if you get a standard gem, forge everything together into sequentially better buffs over time.