One of the most fun aspects of Anno 1800 is optimizing your industry by using various combinations of items, such as specialists in trade unions. This can bring the economy of your empire from barely surviving to actually thriving.
This raises the question: which items in Anno 1800 are the best? And how do you best utilize those to become richer than Scrooge McDuck? Read on to discover the best items and how to use them most effectively.
15 Actor
Rarity: Rare
The Actor is a specialist that you can obtain early in the game from Eli Bleakworth (Wormways Prison). This is an excellent item to bypass or severely reduce the need to produce canned food.
This is particularly useful if your island does not have red pepper fertility, for example, this is the case for Crown Falls. The fact that the Actor also provides rum is a great bonus.
14 Costume Designer
Rarity: Rare
The Costume Designer is one of the best early-game items to quickly progress from Artisans to Engineers, without needing to import cotton from the New World. Furs are still required though.
Further along in the campaign, you will want to obtain Master Craftsman Franke (Rarity: Epic), enabling you to produce fur coats with nothing but wool and iron (do not ask how). At this point, the Costume Designer becomes obsolete.
13 Gordon the Master Grocer
Rarity: Epic
Gordon the Master Grocer provides your residents with beer and increased happiness. For the Old World, this may not seem like much, but where Gordon truly shines is in the New World.
Being able to supply beer to your Obrera residents without needing to import them, is a great boon. That is, unless you have the Seeds of Change DLC, as it allows you to make a hacienda beer brewery.
12 Chef Michel
Rarity: Epic
Chef Michel is an item you should be on the lookout for from the very beginning. Canned food is one of the more difficult items to produce in the early game, as you try to progress from Artisans to Engineers. Chef Michel allows you to skip more than half of the production chain.
You will no longer need to produce cattle farms, red pepper farms, or artisanal kitchens. Instead, all you need are pigs and iron.
11 Mr. Garrick
Rarity: Epic
Mr. Garrick provides your Investors with pocket watches and jewellery, and your Engineers with just pocket watches. Both products are difficult to produce, so being able to gain them for free within the radius of your town hall is very useful.
The bonus income from banks that Mr. Garrick provides is also significant, making him one of the best options for specialists to put in your town hall.
10 Gerhard Fuchs
Rarity: Legendary
Gerhard Fuchs allows you to skip half of the production chain for spectacles. You won't need a copper mine, zinc mine, or brass smeltery to make spectacles. Ordinary wood is enough.
Just this effect alone is very powerful but combined with the ability to produce pocket watches every third cycle, Gerhard Fuchs becomes a must-have for a town hall near your spectacle factories.
9 Susannah the Steam Engineer
Rarity: Epic
While steam motors are technically not difficult to produce if you have Bruno Ironbright, those should be saved for trading purposes. Having the ability then to replace steam motors with filaments to produce steam carriages is very useful.
Filaments are easy to make and gaining a light bulb every fourth cycle is another good bonus.
8 Hervé Savonne
Rarity: Legendary
Hervé Savonne is one of the two items you need for becoming rich through selling soap. The other item is later on this list. With Hervé, your soap factories will be more productive, require less workforce, and produce dynamite every third cycle.
In combination with the Docklands DLC, trading dynamite is a very lucrative and worthwhile endeavor.
7 Prof Ram Devi
Rarity: Legendary
Prof Ram Devi seems to do everything: he provides electricity to the light bulb factory and gramophone factory, increases their productivity, and has a long list of bonus items that are produced after several cycles. Four of these bonus items are rare and difficult to produce.
While this will likely not be enough to satisfy the demands of your citizens, do not underestimate their cumulative effect on your production.
6 Perfumier Prunella
Rarity: Epic
Perfumier Prunella is the main specialist that is needed to start selling lots of soap. The idea is to claim an island as close to Wormways Prison as possible, then fill it to the brim with lumberjack's huts and soap factories. Perfumier Prunella allows the soap to be made from just wood (again, do not ask how).
Combined with items that increase the productivity of your soap factories, such as Feras Alsarami, the idea is to produce as much soap as possible and create a trade route to sell all that soap to the prison. Just remember, do not pick up the soap.
5 Brother Hilarius
Rarity: Legendary
Brother Hilarius can take care of all your Rum needs. Especially if you combine him with other specialists such as Sir Lewis Brindley (Rarity: Epic), who also provides rum every third cycle, and Brewmaster Bill (Rarity: Epic), who provides electricity to the Schnapps Distillery.
Altogether, you will not only provide a lot of schnapps but a lot of rum as well. In Anno 1800, drunk citizens are happy citizens (and most importantly: tax-paying citizens).
4 Feras Alsarami
Rarity: Epic
At first glance, Feras Alsarami offers nothing special. Yet, the strength of Feras is that he affects every production building. You see, Feras Alsarami also affects oil wells. That means you can boost your oil production up to ridiculous levels.
You will want 200,000 Feras Alsarami units ready, with a million more well on the way. He deserves a spot in each one of your Trade Unions.
3 Dario the Mechanical Engineer
Rarity: Epic
Despite only having an 'Epic' rarity, Dario the Mechanical Engineer is one of the strongest items in the game. He allows you to make sewing machines with nothing but iron, bypassing the steel furnace. Since steel is one of the most needed items in the game, it is incredibly useful to be able to remove this from an entire production cycle.
It also saves you additional coal production and the corresponding pollution, while also giving you bonus production of two high-end items: pocket watches and gramophones. Dario is a must-have for all of your cities that are at the Artisan level or higher.
2 Jörg von Malching
Rarity: Legendary
Jörg von Malching is very special because he allows you to bypass the production of oil. You will no longer need oil wells, nor do you need to transport oil from the New World to the Old World.
If you put Jörg von Malching (or several copies of him) next to your mines, and increase productivity through electric power, you can get more than enough oil from your mines alone. The extra gold ore also doesn't hurt.
1 Bruno Ironbright
Rarity: Legendary
The best item in the game is none other than Bruno Ironbright. That is if you have the Docklands DLC. Bruno improves the productivity of your bicycle factories, sewing machine factories, and cab assembly lines. He also produces advanced weapons and steam motors every third cycle.
If you surround Bruno with the factories that he affects, you will have an enormous production of advanced weapons and steam motors. You can either sell these or trade them with a very beneficial exchange ratio. Whether you want to trade for coffee, cigars, or champagne, Bruno has got you covered.