The frontier of Assassin’s Creed III offers an incredible bounty of wildlife for a skilled and dedicated hunter. The wilderness positively sprawls before Connor, ensuring that its boundless resources are always available. Adventure awaits beyond the protective city walls of Boston, and I’d like to give you a glimpse of a tiny fraction of what you can expect to find within the forests and glades of the frontier.

Let’s begin with the simpler game Connor can capture, and a few examples of how he can put them to use.

The animals pictured in the image above can be found roaming the countryside in AC3, and you’ll find them the easiest to catch. Hares, foxes, deer, raccoons and beavers shouldn’t present much danger to a canny trapper like Connor, but these animals (so frequently preyed upon by the larger predators) can be incredibly skittish and will bolt if they detect a human presence.

Maintaining such a close relationship with nature has afforded Connor some unique abilities that you can exploit to make hunting easier. Activating Eagle Sense will enable Connor to detect nearby clues which, when investigated, will identify the location of game. A broken branch marks the passage of a fox, a bush with several nibbled leaves confirms a rabbit has had a recent meal or a patch of matted grass served as bedding for a dozing deer… any of these signs will help locate the tasty culprit.

Finding clues will point you to your quarry, which you will want to take great care in stalking, creeping up on through the underbrush or springing upon silently from up in the trees. Remaining undetected is crucial since you’ll need to approach without alerting your target… a hidden blade kill is your objective, because using larger weapons could damage the pelt, particularly of smaller creatures like hares or foxes.

Once you’ve taken down an animal, you must skin it and retrieve everything you can use in order to honor the beast’s sacrifice. If you slay wantonly without harvesting the bounties of the forest, you will lose synchronization with Connor and could be ejected from the Animus.

Game from the frontier offers a great many resources that residents of cities will pay handsomely for, so collecting the various pelts, meat and even bones or oils of beasts can be an excellent way to fund Assassins’ activities. There are also a few other uses for the bounty of the forest, but we’ll get into those in a future blog… we can’t reveal every secret just yet!

In celebration of all this game’s awesome… er, game, check out this Assassin’s Creed III themed EPIC MEAL TIME video!