How to make money...
In Assassins Creed 3 it's a bit harder to make money than in the previous games. In AC3 you must completley rely on trading with your caravans. As long as you ship the right items you'll make huge profit and the most profitable items you can't get until lategame, after you've completed most of the homestead missions.
Bear pelts / Hunting
But you can still make quite much money once you've reached seqeunce 6-7. Bear pelts are in the early sequences (5-6-7-8) the most valuable item to trade with. You can buy bear pelts from your hunter artisan, Myriam after you've finished some homestead missions but that won't be possible until sequence 9 I think. Buying bearpetls from Myriam is quite expensive and you won't make any big profit. The best option is to hunt the bears yourself, it's cheaper (actually free) the only thing it will cost, is a bit of your time. But in such an awesome game like Assassins Creed 3, what damage will 5 minutes to half-an-hour do?There's an awesome area full of bears in the frontier, if you wanna get rich this is where you should head:
Check for Connors symbol in the picture, it's located in the left edge of the map, almost in the middle, nearby the £ symbol. This is the area with the most bears in the frontier, it's called the Packanack area. It's for about 8 bears here and best of all, they respawn(at least in the PC version). Running around here for just 10 minutes will results in many bears, many pelts and much gold later on.
The red rings corresponds to the dock and the taken templarfort. You can fast-travel to these locations and get to the Packanack area by foot or by horse. These are the fastest alternative to reach the bear area.
The blue rings corresponds to the captured templarfort (Northwest), the Kanien'kehá:ka village (North) and the Davenport Manor (Northeast). Before you've become an assassin and rebuilt the Aquila you can only fastforward in the frontier from the blue locations (and the red templar fort). A tip is to capture the red templar fort early in the game, so that you can start fastforwarding there and reach the bears faster.
Also one note, nearby the Davenport manor exit in the frontier there are two bears nearby. This spot is quite wellknown since you see the bears when you make your way for Achillies with Connor, after leaving the Kanien'kehá:ka village. The bears are located on the davenport side of the lake, one bear is walking around meanwhile the other one is fishing.
Woah, in this picture you can even see the symbol of a bear. This is the bear area in Packanack, completley explored by me since I've been there hunting lots of bears. The "Island" just north of the Connor icon contains two bears, make sure not to miss them when you need to collect pelts.
Here you see the Packanack area. The southern river that passes just next to Connor and the "Island" makes the border of the bear area. On the other side of the river (to the North) the Lynx are located, you won't find any bears there, so Nothern Packanack region won't be of intrest if you're a bear hunter.
Here you can see two of the bears in this bear rich area. Just like 10 seconds before I took this picture I killed two bears already! :) And by the way, check the bear closest in the picture. It's lying on its back against a tree, with a small babybear in its arms.
Killing the bears, how to do it fast.
I got bored of the actionmoves where you fight the bear, pressing E, Q, [SPACE] and the first mousebutton. So I managed to find a faster way in killing them, whitout climbing trees. Climbing trees is good too, but it's only like two bears that walks beneath the trees, so in my opinion it's quite a waste of time.How I do it: When I see a bear on distance, I just start to run nearby it and in the last few meters I jump right to the bear, pressing the first mousebutton as in attack and mostly successfully killing it instantly. The bear won't be able to charge me thanks to this tactic, probaly because I'm in the air. It's not really a suprise, because the bear know I'm nearby and is ready for a fight, this I think is a glitch. At least it's to my benefit (and hopefully all the other gamers on this earth) becasue I just kill the bear in one second, like if I'd be jumping down on one from the trees or hide and strike a passing bear. This is how you skip the fights and just kill, kill and kill.
I made a video example so that players can understand what I mean. Enjoy!
Also one small tip. When arriving to the bear area, make sure not to chase the bears with your horse. That will cause some of the bears running around like idiots instead of attacking you. Well the problem is that you might have to spend minutes chasing them or waiting them out from a hiding spot, and that's quite lame so I recommend you not to. But it's your move!
Not going for full synchronization?
If you're not a huge fan and don't want full synchronization you probaly won't collect all the chests in the game. It's your choice but know this, you won't get much recipes for your artisans and can't assemble many profitable items to trade with, which results in less money. You can still rely on hunting bears for their pelts.Once all artisians are fully developed you can finally construct tradeships for naval convoys. To reach the full development requires some time though, so I understand if you don't cope with it. But the naval convoys are the most profitable in the game. You can still make it around with the tradecaravans though, just make sure to upgrade them early. The upgrade gives you more capacity, so that you can send more items and make bigger profits. The same goes for the tradeships which also got higher capacity than the wagons do, so don't forget to upgrade them too.
The homestead missions
These missons are essential if you want to have full synchronization or get really rich and perhaps fully equip Aquilla. Making all the homestead missions will provide you with artisans, these ones will be able to produce products which you later on can along with recipies develop into something profitable. Medicines, Alcohol, Bandages, Weapons, Clothes are just examples of what you can develop and sale.Reduce the risks and the taxes
Convoys are mostly at risk of getting attacked by redcoats in the start. You can reduce this risk by doing the naval missions of the game with Aquila and capturing all templarforts, which also will reduce the taxes and give you even more profit.After sending away convoys you'll get notified if the convoy is getting attacked. Mostly it will say something like: "Help the convoy. 5:45" The numbers are a countdowntimer that stands for 5 minutes and 45 seconds. If you don't rally to the convoys aid, within the timelimit your convoy will be defeated and your items for trade will be lost, and also the convoy wagons/ships will be destroyed, so you'll have to construct new ones. It's not a big deal to construct a new wagon or ship, but you'll still lose money to build one, not to mention all the money and time you spent on the items you sent with the convoy you just lost. Losing a wagon/ship filled with bear pelts is a terrible loss, of both gold and time.
Even though your convoys are at risk you can always give them your assistance or send your assassins to finish of the job. But beware, if your assassins are in a low level they might not manage to defend your convoys alone.