Mechanics

The Davenport estate is the nearest thing Assassin's Creed 3 has to a factory floor, and the systems around it are steps on one line rather than separate hobbies. A side mission brings a tradesman home, the tradesman puts a block of recipes inside the accounting book, each recipe swallows material dug out of the ground, skinned off an animal or made earlier at another bench, and whatever comes out the other end either ends up in Connor's belt or rides a convoy to a port that pays for it. Our Homestead guide and artisans levelling guide cover the staffing end of that line, the crafting recipes list covers the middle, and the money making guide covers the payout.

Two kinds of settler: the ones who make things and the ones who sell you parts

Everybody who moves onto the estate is called an artisan, but the recipe list treats them as two different populations. Five trades are written into recipes as a requirement, so nothing they cover can be built until that person is living on your land at the right level. Four more never gate a recipe at all and exist to supply raw material: the Lumberer sells lumber, bark, kindling and charcoal, the Miners sell ores and limestone, the Farmers sell hides and wool, and the Huntress sells pelts plus the madder that Inks need. Bear grease comes off your own kills rather than off a counter. The Priest is the odd one out, promoted in Boston in Sequence 9 alongside the Blacksmith and then named nowhere in either list.

The innkeepers are worth singling out because they are the one trade the book never asks you to promote. All seventeen of their entries, eleven dishes, three drinks, plus bait, soap and the Joseph Priestley Soda Apparatus, are satisfied by a level 1 innkeeper. Once the innkeepers are settled, in Sequence 7 on our schedule, the kitchen is finished for the rest of the game, while the Blacksmith and the Doctor are the two trades whose recipes keep reaching for a fourth level.

The hiring calendar runs Sequence 5 to Sequence 11

Recruitment opens when you meet Achilles in Sequence 5, and the manor icons scattered across the map are the missions that do the hiring. The Homestead page counts seven sequence missions behind the four main ones, and they are the only route to a bigger workforce, since this game dropped the property buying of Brotherhood and Revelations in favour of a settlement that grows through favours instead of money. The artisans page is blunt about the cost of ignoring them: skip a few and a tradesman can be left unable to take a later promotion, which quietly caps what the book will let you build. Weather matters too, because a lot of these missions are shut in winter, so the summer months are when you clear the backlog.

The one genuine trap in the schedule is the Encyclopedia of the Common Man. Achilles Davenport hands it over in Sequence 6 and it has to stay open, because the Sequence 7 promotions are written to run while it is unfinished. Beyond that the geography is fixed: the Farmer's mission is out in the Frontier, the Miner's is in Boston, the Blacksmith joins from the Frontier in Sequence 8, and Sequence 9 is the busy one, bringing the Tailor in New York along with the Doctor, the Priest, the Huntress and a Boston Woodworker.

What each promotion actually unlocks

Our recipe list runs to 131 entries across eleven categories, and sorting them by the person they name turns the levelling guide into a shopping decision rather than a chore. This is what a promotion buys you.

Twenty-three recipes want two trades in the room at once, which is where an unbalanced estate stings. Arrows need a level 1 Blacksmith and a level 1 Woodworker, Bandages need a Doctor and a Tailor, Inks need a level 2 Tailor and a level 3 Woodworker, and the three sizes of saddle bag all want a level 4 Blacksmith beside a level 3 Tailor. One caveat on the top of that ladder: the sequence plan we publish finishes with the Doctor on level 3, while Medical Equipment, Medical Charts and Hysteria Medicine are all written for a level 4 Doctor, so those three sit past the end of our own schedule.

Half the book is made of things you also have to make

Sixty-three of the 131 recipes take at least one ingredient that is itself a recipe, which is why a crafting list looks shorter than it plays. Seventeen items exist mainly to be consumed by other items. Sewing Threads, which is wool through a level 1 Tailor, turns up in seventeen recipes; Glass Bottles, which is sand through a level 1 Blacksmith, in fourteen; Linsey-woolsey, Weapon Blades, Weapon Handles, Black Powder, Dyes, Paper and Inks all feed something further up. Among raw material, Iron Ore is the workhorse at eighteen recipes.

The exception to all of this is the Special Iron Ingot, which no artisan produces. Twelve weapon recipes want it, from the War Tomahawk up to Washington's Battle Sword and the Royal Navy Sea Service Flintlock, and the crafting page points you at the mission for the Miners and a chest behind the manor. Recipes themselves are picked up around the map or discovered by mixing things together, and a failed experiment destroys what you put in, so blind trial and error is a cost centre rather than a shortcut.

The convoy is the exit, and you build that too

Crafted goods become money by travelling, and the vehicles that carry them are themselves woodwork: the Land Convoy and its capacity upgrade come from a level 1 Woodworker, the Naval Convoy from a level 2, and the naval capacity upgrade from a level 3. Load one with crafted goods, send it to a distant port and the return is both cash and fresh material for the next batch, which is the loop the Homestead page describes. It is not free of risk, because a loaded convoy can be ambushed and stripped, and you either ride out to defend it yourself or send recruits to do it. You do not have to walk home for any of this, since the accounting book sits in the manor study but opens from more or less any general store in the game.

What the money then buys is weapons, consumables and ship parts, and the yard supplies the Aquila directly: masts, sails, the Naval Axe, the Naval Duckfoot and the sea service flintlock all come off the same benches. When you take that ship out, the bonus objectives attached to those battles are laid out in our naval missions guide, and the same standard applied to Connor's story missions is in the 100 percent sync guide.

Earning without making anything

The estate is the steady income, and everything else in the money guide is a way of topping up between batches. Citizen work, delivering a package or taking a contract, pays faster and gets dull faster. Pickpocketing and robbing convoys work but put the city on alert. Treasure chests are described as bonus money rather than a wage, and they want either the key or the three-step routine on our lock picking guide, which is a stick in each hand until the pad buzzes and then the trigger. Hunting is the one the money guide recommends without a caveat, because a clean kill leaves an undamaged skin worth real money and the larger animals come back, so the same clearing pays out more than once.

The last earner is a board rather than a trade, because of the three games on the estate it is the Morris table that you can put money on. Once the bulk of the settlement missions are done, the tables open: Bowls arrives with the fourth Homestead mission, Godfrey and Terry, and Fanorona from Sequence 5 in the manor. Our mini games guide has the rules and the board tactics for all three, with one warning worth repeating, which is that the Bowls field on the Aquila does not count towards the award and the one by the Inn does. The betting side of the Morris table, including the trick of opening a completed line and closing it again, has its own 12 Men's Morris page.

Everything the estate produces ends up worn, fired or sold, and the wearable end of it is in our unlockables guide. Campaign, ship and collections are all indexed on the Assassin's Creed 3 hub.