Inducing Substance: a Shepard's guide. (A playthrough of the Mass Effect series.)

[Xzarloxara]

I decided I may as well look into recruiting the last person I was given info on from Cerberus. Okeer was on a junk world, full of mercenaries and more mercenaries. I didn't have too much trouble with them really. After fighting through a ton of them, I finally met Okeer and he seemed really crazy. I am actually quite glad he died in the end, I thought he was a bit too crazy for the group. But there was the mater of his clone or whatever. Throwing caution to the wind I opened the tank and wound up with a much more sane krogan on my team, although with his origins he understandably had some issues... Seems that since I have now followed all the leads Cerberus had given me, my next mission is not going to be my choice.

Some images from the junkyard planet. I finally got to test the Cain in combat too, and it works wonders!

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

Hah, I'll be curious to hear your impressions of the Hammerhead missions. I never thought I'd say that but driving/flying that wobbly, fragile paper hovercraft made me miss the Mako.

 

[Xzarloxara]

Next up we got word of a collector attack in progress and headed directly to Horizon to see what we could do. It was a very difficult mission and I learned a bit about my enemy, and discovered some new types of enemies which I immediately learned to hate with a passion. I played through this mission twice for various reasons. The first play of the mission was a nightmare. I didn't know how to deal with the new enemy types and got a bit worked up about it. The Harbinger, of course, was one of the problems. Difficult to kill, but not overly threatening unless he advances right up to where you are taking cover, in which case it is a likely game over. More of a nuisance than anything else because of how he keeps knocking you out of cover. The new enemy I really hate though is the Scions. It takes practically every shot of ammo you have to kill just one of them with their heavier than imaginable armor, and, even though they move slowly, the weapon they use is insanely powerful and difficult to protect against. Even hiding behind cover doesn't seem to help against it. Husks are also easy to hate, even though they are primarily melee attackers. they move fairly fast and often will force you out of cover. The combination of the efforts of these three enemies made the mission miserable on the first try as I muddled through and was barely able to complete it successfully. One fight in particular seemed nigh-impossible to me, and I was practically forced to glitch the fight to win. It was the one when you approach the AA gun antenna and 2, not 1, but 2 scions come out to fight you while husks swarm all around you. I only managed to win by shooting the Scions from a distance before triggering the script to start the fight. They didn't react to being hit repeatedly by my Warps and eventually fell after I used about 20 warps on each or something...

Mission attempt 2 went much smoother even than I expected it to go now that I knew what to expect and was prepared. I discovered some tricks for dealing with some of the more difficult enemies described above. First, the husks: once their armor is depleted they can be instantly killed by tossing them into the air with my biotics, so all I have to do is throw a Singularity at the unarmored ones to kill them. Second, the Harbinger: after a few fights I realized that my Singularity is usually the key to his defeat. While it cannot throw him into the air and disable him fully, I figured out that if he gets hit by one, he is often staggered so much by it that he actually cannot move or fire his weapons. This turned out to be a crippling weakness for him against me. Then there are the most hated of the three, the Scions: I didn't really find a solution to these guys actually, and still dread meeting them in the future. I think maybe the singularity would stagger them enough that they cannot shoot, but I am not sure... What I did find was a solution to that one fight with the two of them that gave me so much trouble previously. The solution is as follows:

Spoiler

Aside from the combat issues I had with the collectors, I learned a bit about them and got some new questions to answer. First it does seem like they are working for the Reapers. Apparently the husk making spikes are actually Reaper technology, a fact that was not explained clearly in ME1 (in fact, in ME1 they made it sound like the Geth invented those spikes). Perhaps the Collectors merely stole the spike tech from the reapers and made their own modifications? It is unclear. I am unsure what the deal is with the Harbinger and the Collector general assuming control of his minions. The constant taunts he makes though, suggest to me that the collectors are harvesting humans to turn them into... something else... not sure what that something else could be yet. Husks? Collectors? It isn't clear. I enjoyed meeting Ashley at the end of the mission. She seemed set in her ideals, and I suspect she was up to something more than she let on, but it was still good to see her at least.

Now that I have completed this Horizon mission, maybe some new missions will be open to me. I wonder what I will do next... But first, some other screenshots from the horizon mission!
Collector ship on the horizon.

Collector swarms, ignoring me fortunately.

A Pretorian, whatever that is...

…And its death.

 

[Xzarloxara]

Lots of new stuff opened up after my visit to horizon. I will skip most of the minor stuff I did, if no one minds. I decided I should check out Ilium for new shopping opportunities first. While there, I found many old friends again, including my love interest from the first game, Liara. We had a touching reunion before I decided to explore more of the city. After poking around and solving some minor quests I decided to take on a mission to help Miranda protect her sister. It was a fairly easy mission, even though there were tons of engineers spamming annoying drones constantly... Since I am an adept, I decided it would be beneficial to train myself to use Miranda's Biotic Slam power, at least for now. I have also noticed that getting my usual discounts at stores is getting more tricky now, with most of the discounts hidden behind minor quests, but I still got all of them.

Not sure what I will do next now; maybe Jack's quest, not sure. There is quite a lot on my to do list now...

 

[Xzarloxara]

I did indeed decide to help Jack out with her personal quest next. It was a short quest, but it was definitely worthwhile. I found a gamechanger there. It came in the form of a boost to my biotic powers, which in turn allowed me to research a greatly reduced cooldown time for my powers. This turned out to be a huge boost to me; throwing out my powers so much more often is really helpful. I liked the looks of the jungle planet that her quest was on. Too bad we had to blow it up...

I always liked a good thunderstorm.

Making short work of the last battle in the place.

After helping Jack, I went back to Ilium to check how Liara was doing, and got involved in a very long and difficult mission to take down THE Shadow Broker! Spoilers ahead obviously...

Spoiler

Upon arrival at Liara's home, I found that someone had tried to kill her and an asari spectre investigating. After some investigation I followed her trail to some other building in the city which immediately blew up and was swarmed by broker agents. Then it turned out that the asari spectre was working for the Shadow Broker too. She made off with a disk containing the location of the Shadow Broker, and Liara, Jack, and I took off in after her. Following an exiting (seemed terrifying to Liara though) flying car chase through the city, we made the traitorous spectre crash on some kind of hotel. We followed and what happened next was a very long and difficult boss fight with multiple stages. The spectre was also a powerful biotic who loved to spam the shockwave power and jump around all over the place. I eventually won, though and we immediately set off for the headquarters of the Shadow Broker. It was some kind of ship on a really stormy planet. After fighting our way into and through the ship we found Liara's friend Feron, who was held prisoner by the Shadow Broker. We couldn't free him without confronting the Broker himself, so we did just that. He was a giant alien I had never seen before from a race that had been defeated by the council races long ago (and here I always thought the shadow broker would be a more familiar face...). Of course the meeting ended in a fight. He may have been a big brute, but he wasn't near as hard as that spectre... When we finally defeated him... To my surprise, Liara assumed his position and became the new Shadow Broker! Now she is using the vast resources of the Broker to aid me in my quest to defeat the Reapers. It seems that this resulted in me getting a new base of operations, too!
Unfortunately, I got so wrapped up in the mission I only managed to take one screenshot: the external of the Broker's Ship.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

Thanks for the spoiler tags on the Shadow Broker.

About the different enemy types:
I don't know how you're using your team and how far you've leveled their powers and yours.
I personally found it very important to have full control over their points, so I didn't use auto leveling for my squad and I controlled their powers in a fight instead of letting the AI do all the job.

Have you tried combining different types of skills or ammo yet?
In the old game, you could only combine biotic powers to amplify or create an AoE in ME2 and then in ME3 there were also tech and ammo combos like cryo explosions. Not sure if Legendary changed that or if it's still biotics only in ME2 and everything else later.

Anyway, there are some nice ones, you can either look them up or find them out by experimenting. You can prime with one skill and then trigger with another one or a certain ammo type to create an explosion with an AoE effect or greatly amplify your power, which can be key against particularly powerful enemies or swarms of husks, similar to the spell combos in Dragon Age: Origins.

 

[Xzarloxara]

@Urdnot_Wrex
I kinda let my squad do their own thing in combat for the most part. They use their powers on their own, and it usually works out fine for me. Usually. I am not very good at micro-managing teammates in Mass Effect games; I usually have enough trouble keeping myself alive and dishing out my own powers and damage. I do, however, take control of their leveling and how they spend their points. Being new to the ME2 system I am always second guessing how to spend talent points, though. Sometimes I don't spend them all right away in order to save up for a higher tier power or because I simply am not sure how to best spend the points. This particular problem has been alleviated somewhat by the Shadow Broker mission mentioned above, as one of the rewards allows me to spend Element Zero to retrain squad mates (hope that isn't too much of a spoiler).

I have not encountered many combos in ME2 yet. Indeed, all of the ones I know of do involve biotics. Actually there are only 2 I really noticed. The Warp power will detonate other biotic powers under certain conditions, such as with singularity, and I use this quite a lot. Jack's Warp Ammo also does increased damage to enemies being similarly affected by biotic powers. That really seems to be it for ME2. I think for the most part the LE plays by the same rules as the classic versions, but with slight tweaks and much better graphics. I wouldn't know about any changes beyond ME1 obviously, having never played past it previously. Probably the most significant gameplay changes to ME1 were much harder Thresher Maws, a few extra enemies in certain battles, and an overhaul of the various types of guns and their functions.

I will be looking forward to the increased variety of power combos in ME3.

 

[Xzarloxara]

The next mission I decided on was recruiting Samara. She turned out to be a rather odd asari with an even more strange code of honor. The mission wasn't too terribly hard, despite the toxic chemical clouds and heavy hardware everywhere. Like usual, I ended the final fight in an instant with my Cain.

After this I went to an uncharted world where a merchant ship had crashed. After exploring it a bit, a sandstorm started raging and mechs started attacking. I was still able to escape to complete the mission.

A screenshot of the uncharted world.

After this it looks like, once again, my next mission is chosen for me. The Illusive Man has found a disabled collector ship for me to raid. Oh joy...

 

[Xzarloxara]

The disabled ship was a trap, of course. The collectors were trying to get me. They failed, of course, but it was a tough fight to get out of that ship. I encountered a new enemy type too: Abominations. Not sure what exactly they can do, but they seem to be a type of Husk that explodes when it dies. While I was on this giant ship I learned some startling things. The collectors are actually Protheans who have been genetically re-engineered by the reapers! Also this is the same ship that attacked the Normandy 1, that attacked Horizon, and everything. Maybe they only have the one ship? I somehow doubt that, but it would be nice if true. While I was there I learned to use Assault Rifles in addition to my standard weapons. That is a good deal. Next the Illusive man wants me to go see a derelict Reaper somewhere. I don't want to do this yet though, I have a lot of unfinished business with my team. I just hope there aren't too many more of these surprise "Do this right now!" missions I have to deal with...

Screenshots of fighting aboard the collector ship.

After getting off the collector ship, I decided to help Samara with her quest to hunt her daughter. After a bit of investigation and a sting operation on Omega, we were able to get into her apartment. Well, I was alone at first... Samara's daughter tried to seduce me and dominate me with her powers, but I was able to resist (and I have heard that this is a very difficult thing to do...). Samara finally showed up and the two got into a deadlock. I had to choose who to kill. A choice between some kind of goofy asari version of a paladin, or a murdering rapist... Yeah, I will take Samara over her daughter pretty much any day (though I read that the two have different powers). Having finished this quest, I decided to retrain to get Samara's special Reave power instead of Slam, which was not working very well for me...

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

The disabled ship was a trap, of course. The collectors were trying to get me. They failed, of course, but it was a tough fight to get out of that ship. I encountered a new enemy type too: Abominations. Not sure what exactly they can do, but they seem to be a type of Husk that explodes when it dies. While I was on this giant ship I learned some startling things. The collectors are actually Protheans who have been genetically re-engineered by the reapers! Also this is the same ship that attacked the Normandy 1, that attacked Horizon, and everything. Maybe they only have the one ship? I somehow doubt that, but it would be nice if true. While I was there I learned to use Assault Rifles in addition to my standard weapons. That is a good deal. Next the Illusive man wants me to go see a derelict Reaper somewhere. I don't want to do this yet though, I have a lot of unfinished business with my team. I just hope there aren't too many more of these surprise "Do this right now!" missions I have to deal with...

Screenshots of fighting aboard the collector ship.
View attachment 2807View attachment 2808

After getting off the collector ship, I decided to help Samara with her quest to hunt her daughter. After a bit of investigation and a sting operation on Omega, we were able to get into her apartment. Well, I was alone at first... Samara's daughter tried to seduce me and dominate me with her powers, but I was able to resist (and I have heard that this is a very difficult thing to do...). Samara finally showed up and the two got into a deadlock. I had to choose who to kill. A choice between some kind of goofy asari version of a paladin, or a murdering rapist... Yeah, I will take Samara over her daughter pretty much any day (though I read that the two have different powers). Having finished this quest, I decided to retrain to get Samara's special Reave power instead of Slam, which was not working very well for me...

I hope you don't see this as a spoiler, but don't go after the derelict Reaper and the IFF before resolving every open NPC quest, getting all available Normandy upgrades and basically doing everything else you want done that's still left open and important or you'll regret it.

 

[Xzarloxara]

I hope you don't see this as a spoiler, but don't go after the derelict Reaper and the IFF before resolving every open NPC quest, getting all available Normandy upgrades and basically doing everything else you want done that's still left open and important or you'll regret it.

Excellent info to have, thanks!

Next up I decided to help Garrus out with his vendetta. Tracking down his former team member, Sidonis, meant going through an old acquaintance of mine, Harkin. Harkin had a few mercenaries and a ton of Mechs in his base, including two of the really big ones, which would have been really difficult to beat had I not brought my Cain. After finally "persuading" Harkin to set up a meeting with Sidonis, Garrus sent me up to lure him out so he could be sniped. I, of course, decided to get in the way and find out more about the situation. As I suspected, Sidonis didn't betray Garrus because he wanted to, and the betrayal had been eating away at him ever since. In the end, Garrus couldn't bring himself to kill Sidonis and let him walk away.

Next I figured it was high time I got Tali on my team. She was on an old Quarian colony in Geth space that had an unusual star. I had to fight through the Geth to get to her while avoiding direct sunlight due to the lack of a magnetosphere. The Geth had a rather annoying Colossus just outside where Tali was held up. It liked to repair itself frequently, but I got close and shot a Cain at it while it was weakened; that took care of it. I found quite several new weapons for my squad in the area, including a Geth Pulse Rifle. Tali was happy to see me and joined up with the group, although she was very uneasy about the cerberus people on my ship. Jacob said something really dumb to her as she was leaving. "Make sure you introduce yourself to the ship's AI." Tali gave him a death stare, but didn't say anything. I wonder how Jacob could not know that the Quarians hate AI...

Hiding from the lethal radiation of the sun; if only my squad were as smart...

 

[Xzarloxara]

After Tali Joined, I followed up on a lead EDI gave me regarding the crashed merchant ship mission I did prior to investigating the collector ship. It took me to a derelict space station. The VI of the space station had apparently killed the entire crew for some odd reason. It was an extremely short and easy mission, without any gunfire even.

After this, Tali informed me that the migrant fleet had accused her of treason for some unknown reason, so I went to deal with this immediately. When I got there, I got a crash course in Quarian politics... What a mess that was... Tali had been sending disabled Geth tech to her father for research, and her father made the stupid mistake of putting the Geth back together. We went to investigate the ship where he was working and found a ton of geth (how many parts did Tali send him anyway?) and no survivors... Not even Tali's father. Once again the final fight of the mission was solved with my trusty Cain, and it was probably a very good thing I had it with me too; A battle with a powerful Geth Prime and minions in such closed quarters would have been miserable... Tali begged me to keep her father's name clean and allow her to be exiled for treason, but I managed to keep his name clean without her being exiled.

Returning to Ilium, I decided to recruit the assassin guy. This led us to a building owned by Nassana Dantius, a cruel and paranoid asari from my past. She sicked her mercs on me thinking I was out to kill her. After fighting my way up to her penthouse, I finally got to meet the assassin: Thane. I don't know a whole lot about him or why he wanted Nassana dead, but he was successful in killing her before agreeing to join me on my quest. I still do not know much about him, but he seems a decent enough sort, I guess...

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

Congratulations on solving the mess with the Quarians, and yes, Thane is a decent enough sort.

Another word of warning, since you mentioned urgent quests with an invisibly ticking clock:
Once you go for the derelict Reaper (remember, AFTER everything else. Did you talk to crew members in the dialogue options where you can ask for suggestions to improve things or be better prepared? Some suggest how they could improve the Normandy etc. Take them very seriously.), make enough hard saves. Something will happen eventually after that that will seem urgent, and it is. Not the "run instead of walking" kind of urgent, but the "don't go on side missions or a shopping tour now" kind of urgent. To be as clear as is possible without spoilers, when you seem to have a pressing reason to go through the Omega 4 relay, don't hesitate with more preparations, go.
Also, on the mission towards the end game, you will have to make choices where you assign squad mates to certain tasks. If you want a good outcome, make sure to select them according to their skills and qualifications, not just personal preferences.
I don't suppose it's a spoiler to say that Shepard can survive the suicide mission, considering there's a third game, but it's not guaranteed that everyone else does, and much of that depends on preparedness, time and how qualified they are for the assignments you give them (i.e. don't send the cook to fly the ship or the engineer to headbutt a Krogan... those won't be the choices you'll need to make, of course, but I hope you get my meaning).

Speaking of Krogans, have you done Grunt's quest already?

 

[Cahir]

Congratulations on solving the mess with the Quarians, and yes, Thane is a decent enough sort.

Another word of warning, since you mentioned urgent quests with an invisibly ticking clock:
Once you go for the derelict Reaper (remember, AFTER everything else. Did you talk to crew members in the dialogue options where you can ask for suggestions to improve things or be better prepared? Some suggest how they could improve the Normandy etc. Take them very seriously.), make enough hard saves. Something will happen eventually after that that will seem urgent, and it is. Not the "run instead of walking" kind of urgent, but the "don't go on side missions or a shopping tour now" kind of urgent. To be as clear as is possible without spoilers, when you seem to have a pressing reason to go through the Omega 4 relay, don't hesitate with more preparations, go.
Also, on the mission towards the end game, you will have to make choices where you assign squad mates to certain tasks. If you want a good outcome, make sure to select them according to their skills and qualifications, not just personal preferences.
I don't suppose it's a spoiler to say that Shepard can survive the suicide mission, considering there's a third game, but it's not guaranteed that everyone else does, and much of that depends on preparedness, time and how qualified they are for the assignments you give them (i.e. don't send the cook to fly the ship or the engineer to headbutt a Krogan... those won't be the choices you'll need to make, of course, but I hope you get my meaning).

Speaking of Krogans, have you done Grunt's quest already?

I agree with that. I went against my instincts to choose squadmates' role following my heart and chose them according to what they were good at. This seemed to be a great choice.

And yes, Thane is a good lad. Surprisingly, one of my favorite squadmates (that voice!)

 

[Xzarloxara]

The crashed merchant ship led me to a derelict space station, and the space station led me to yet another facility on another planet. That was my next destination. Here I learned that I had been seriously missing out on the Throw biotic power... It may sound underwhelming at first, but it is really a nice one to have! Aside from that, it was basically just a warehouse full of mechs. A bit of an anti-climactic ending to the quest chain.

Next I went to a frozen planet where the Geth were researching... something... and I had to use the M-44 Paper Airplane to steal their research or something... Was kind of boring...

But after that I did a mission where I had a lot of fun. Project Overlord. It was a long and difficult mission where I fought all kinds of synthetics, including Geth, being hijacked by a rouge VI, and was guided by the last survivor of the project, the lead scientist. First I had to knock out a transmitter dish to prevent the VI from causing a technological apocalypse by hijacking the extranet. Then I flew the Paper Airplane around a scenic landscape to several different outposts. First I went to a geothermal lava river plant and jump steam jets and hop across lava rivers on rocks that drifted with the current. Lots of fun. Then I went to a crashed Geth ship and destroy its main turret while dodging its massive blast radius. Getting into the ship was easy, but all the Geth activated once I was in and I had to fight my way out. Finally, I had to destroy the VI core. That is where things took a dark turn... The lead scientist had told me he interfaced his brother with the Geth network in an attempt to control the geth. Fighting my way through the final facility, I learned that his brother was a low functioning autistic savant who had a knack for mathematics. The final battle with the VI core was quite difficult. I had to destroy nodes that were attempting to hijack the Normandy while taking fire from the Geth. Once the core was vulnerable I shot it with my trusty Cain to quickly end the difficult battle. Then I beheld a horrific scene... I thought that when the scientist said he had interfaced his brother, it was some kind of virtual interface, but he was quite literally wired in to the network... I decided to take the poor man away from the scientist for treatment. Too bad the fun mission had to end on such a sour note... But at least I have plenty of wonderful screenshots!

Arrival.

The VI in a Geth.

Scenic views.

 

[Xzarloxara]

Congratulations on solving the mess with the Quarians, and yes, Thane is a decent enough sort.

Another word of warning, since you mentioned urgent quests with an invisibly ticking clock:
Once you go for the derelict Reaper (remember, AFTER everything else. Did you talk to crew members in the dialogue options where you can ask for suggestions to improve things or be better prepared? Some suggest how they could improve the Normandy etc. Take them very seriously.), make enough hard saves. Something will happen eventually after that that will seem urgent, and it is. Not the "run instead of walking" kind of urgent, but the "don't go on side missions or a shopping tour now" kind of urgent. To be as clear as is possible without spoilers, when you seem to have a pressing reason to go through the Omega 4 relay, don't hesitate with more preparations, go.
Also, on the mission towards the end game, you will have to make choices where you assign squad mates to certain tasks. If you want a good outcome, make sure to select them according to their skills and qualifications, not just personal preferences.
I don't suppose it's a spoiler to say that Shepard can survive the suicide mission, considering there's a third game, but it's not guaranteed that everyone else does, and much of that depends on preparedness, time and how qualified they are for the assignments you give them (i.e. don't send the cook to fly the ship or the engineer to headbutt a Krogan... those won't be the choices you'll need to make, of course, but I hope you get my meaning).

Speaking of Krogans, have you done Grunt's quest already?

Also very good to know. I have been getting all the upgrades I can from my crew. I have plenty of excess resources, so upgrades aren't a problem, except the ultra expensive ones you have to buy for credits.

I have not been to the Krogan areas yet, but I can do that next if you think I should... One thing I am kind of looking for is the final squad mate for that empty slot... No clue where to find whoever it is though...

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

Also very good to know. I have been getting all the upgrades I can from my crew. I have plenty of excess resources, so upgrades aren't a problem, except the ultra expensive ones you have to buy for credits.

I have not been to the Krogan areas yet, but I can do that next if you think I should... One thing I am kind of looking for is the final squad mate for that empty slot... No clue where to find whoever it is though...

Do the Krogan area whenever you feel like it once Grunt needs to go there, it doesn't matter that much when. I think you're going to like that quest though.

Don't worry about the last empty squad mate slot, that's going to happen along the way of the main quest, don't waste time looking for them before going to the Reaper thing.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

(When I said it doesn't matter when you do Grunt's quest, of course I still meant before the Reaper IFF)

 

[Xzarloxara]

I headed to Tuchanka next. Was happy to see my old pal Wrex there. Sounded like he was really doing a lot of good for the Krogan. I was not expecting to find a minigame though...

After looking around a bit, I decided to first help grunt out on his rite of passage. It was an interesting one, with native monsters coming in waves and topped off with a thresher maw, which I killed with Cain power. This really seemed to impress the other krogan. The first few times I did this trial, though, I encountered an odd bug and had to reload.

A critter of some kind.

Cain vs. Maw.

 

[Xzarloxara]

Next I decided to do a bit of exploring in various nebulas I had not fully explored yet. I encountered two missions on two uncharted worlds in the Crescent Nebula. First I killed a bunch of Eclipse mercs that had taken over a mine of some sort. Then I went to a world with a chlorine swamp where the Blood Pack was doing some mining. While I was there I found data on another Blood Pack base which I will visit later. The planet had a beacon that I had to follow and I got a nice screenshot from it.

After this, I returned to Tuchanka to help Mordin with his quest. It revealed a lot about Mordin that I did not expect. He has a soft side and had some doubts about his work on the genophage. His colleague, who we went in to rescue, was actually not a prisoner and was doing horrific experiments in an attempt to cure the genophage. Mordin wanted to kill him at first but I convinced him not to. In the end we wound up keeping the data from the experiments