One of the tech passives has a +40% weapon weight thing in it as well. That plus the 25% increase from the combat passives (or 50% if you get both 25%ers) makes it stupid easy to carry around whatever combination of weapons you want with zero penalty.
Anarchy: My understanding of the Angara/Kadara thing is that the Exiles made contact with the Angara a while ago, soon after they got kicked off the Nexus. It's just that none of them ever told the Nexus about it, for obvious reasons, and Ryder just made first contact with them for the Nexus.

 

Just beat the game. Holy fucking shit that final mission was amazing. Bioware has quite obviously left some things open - either for DLC or for another game, and I can hardly wait.

I got a perfect ending where nobody died - at all. Woot!
Now I just need to go through and finish all the sidequests and tasks, need to get that 100%.

 

It's brought up more as the game goes on but the Nexus wasn't first contact for the Angara. Jaal brings up in some of his missions that the Nexus will have to get used to Angara distrust because their first contact was with Milky Way raiders and exiles.

The timeline is more like Milky way arrives to Andromeda -> Exile people -> Exiles meet Angara -> Hyperion arrives -> Nexus meets Angara.

At the point you're at, it's only heavily implied that the Angara didn't first meet Milky way species when they met you. Later, they specifically say it.

 

Is this difficult to achieve? I'm playing on insanity difficulty and haven't had any trouble yet on missions, but I'm only like 4-5 hours into the campaign so not sure how much harder it will get. I know in multiplayer as a biotic fuck those shield guys with the orbs rotating around them you have to destroy.

I'm just playing multiplayer atm I won't play singleplayer again until the weekend when I get time to really sink into it.

 

Huh, I found the ending to be one of the weak points of the story. I found the circumstances leading to it be very forced and not very believable.

Spoiler

I liked the Archon at the beginning but starting from the flagship mission onward he falls into the same trap that Kai Ling did in Mass Effect 3 with the need of making him a credible threat (and have beat you in your race to Meridian) requiring a lot of in my eyes stupid ass-pulls.

That starts with him being suddenly able to mind/bloodread you depsite never before or after showing such an ability, being able to suddenly capture the Hyperion (while ignoring the nexus) and worst of all suddenly being able to highjack SAM despite there being no evidence of the Kett having any experience with high-end AI's. I mean really just why the hell didn't SAM simply shut down/cut the connection? It is a fucking AI after all... One of those things I could have accepted but taken together its the same old stupid, brute force and frankly sloppy method of building up an antagonist to have a climatic boss battle that wouldn't be accepted in pretty much any other medium. It is in my eyes simply bad storytelling.

I would have been far happier if the confrontation with Archon would have happened on the Remnant space station and the actual Meridian part would have been focused on the Remnant.

 

I don't think difficulty has anything to do with it, just the choices you make throughout your playthrough of the story. I figured something like this would happen and tried to tailor major choices around the thought that the more people I saved/helped/kept alive or whatever the more allies I would have to kick Archon's ass.

Erandil, I'll respond to your post when I'm not at work and have more time for a thought out response.

 

Exactly. Efvra isn't surprised to see a human, just surprised to see one who has found Aya, because it's a strictly kept secret.
That's the impression I got.

 

I had wondered how the kett and the angara suddenly seemed to know English. Makes sense.

Currently on Voeld, and feeling like I need to stop and improve my equipment - combat seems to have got a lot tougher all of a sudden, even though I'm not really that far into the game.

 

I honestly don't know what some of the weapons are in the game for. Some guns do so much damage while others do so little it seems almost pointless for the lower damage ones to be in the game. For example: I didn't use a single assault rifle my entire playthrough. They all either did small amounts of damage or were burst fire which wasn't what I wanted from an assault rifle, or they were both. Same with SMG's. Meanwhile there are snipers like the Isharay that do 1000+ damage, and with the right perks can have more than one shot. Even modding things doesn't really help much unless it's already a decent weapon. I was playing on normal difficulty so maybe things change higher or lower, but the entire class of weapons felt obsolete, and it was almost the same with pistols save a select few, and certainly not any of the SMG's. Researching weapons to higher tiers? Still not that much of an upgrade. I tried using a maxed out avenger with %damage mods and it was useless against anything with armor or a shield, and if I missed three or four shots it wouldn't kill a normal enemy either.

 

To be fair, weapon balance has never really been a thing in Mass Effect. To be effective, you always have had to use shotguns, sniper rifles, or some variety of powers.

The only exception I can think of is that DLC pistol from ME2 with the laser sight. That thing hit like a truck; 'twas a proper hand cannon. The rest of em are just sorta whatever.

 

Yea that one had 4x headshot damage bonus. The assault rifles were all pretty decent in ME3 though. So decent that halfway through my vanguard playthrough I upgraded the revenant to max and just unloaded with it.

Put a whole bunch of points into the revenant in this one and that thing is so weak...

Really have to stick to shotguns and snipers in this one.

 

Fought my first Architect, on Voeld. Fucking awesome.

 

Havarl was really easy to clear, was sort of surprised by it actually. One of the missions was super irritating for me though, but not difficulty wise more plot related.

Spoiler

You literally kill all of Taavos's men in front of him, ones he states are actually good friends of his and literally seconds later he's picking up whatever you give him and leading you to the vault without any strings attached? I know reliving the past memories would be disconcerting, but within a matter of minutes it's as if butchering his entire team didn't matter at all. Really minor irritant for me, but an irritant nonetheless.

Just met the exiles, wondering if you get them onside by making the planet viable. Or if they just keep doing their own thing regardless (That's musing, no-one actually answer that for me haha, avoiding spoilers).

 

There's one back on Eos as well, but it's fuck in the middle of nowhere. That's the first one I came across once I realized that after the main mission in that place was done, there was 10000 more things to do. I wanted to 100% that world before continuing.

Yeah, the balancing is pretty terrible. There are assault rifles which fire a billion time a minute and do 30 damage and carry 500 rounds and seem pretty useless, and some that do like 250 damage and have a 20 round clip. That's the kind I use. It's a Sandstorm V and semi automatic, kills normal Chosen in like 3 hits. Even so, I still use a sniper rifle, because headshots kill normal guys in 1 hit. Even the sniper rifles are kind of weird. You've got ones that do 1000+ damage but only have one round, while the one Im using right now is like 600 damage with a 7 round clip. I've also never found an item that is better than something that you can just craft, not even the "super rares" which really aren't that rare.

 

Is the sandstorm the scoped one? I want something close to my revenant from ME3, tons of damage with a huge clip, but huge spread. Used it kind of like a shotgun. Charge in, blast them to shit with it point blank.

 

I just crafted the Dhan and... hoo boy. That fucker hits like a truck, but I'm awfully disappointed at how the Mattock is no longer viable - that thing had a long shelf life of viability. I'm waiting to see if the Reegar Carbine is still fun - ditto Hurricane, Raptor, Revenant and Hornet.

I also have to say, the Asari sword is just awesome. It takes forever to score the hit but it hardly matters when it auto-targets and blinks you into invulnerability. To anyone who has used, how does it compare to the Kett melee weapons, the Carfalon and the Vakarsh. The damage reduction after the strike of the former looks neat, as does the DOT from the latter, but I like blinking through stuff to swipe assholes.

At the same time I'm disappointed in the biotic amplifier punch melee weapon (animation and damage... and sound), compared to how much melee in ME3 face-fucked everyone.

 

Weapon wise I'm having a lot of fun with a loadout of a Sweeper assault rifle (Remnant tech, so cool down rather than ammo based), an Isharay sniper rifle, which can one shot basic enemies even on the second version, and can take down tougher enemies in two or three shots, and an Ushior pistol, which hits for nearly as much damage as the sniper rifle.

Anyone else finding that when they start the game up again, either after dying or taking a break, that they've changed power/profile loadout? I keep finding it's loaded up my 'Favourite 1' setting, which is a little frustrating.

 

I vastly prefer the Carfalon to pretty much all other melee weapons, playing as the typical Vanguard charge/annihilation/melee/shotgun build.

The Carfalon is much faster than the Asari sword, and any issues of damage taken are easily handled by the heal from the weapon itself. It seems overall to be the best melee weapon in the game.

 

So do augmentations work on your weapons only when you have them as your "active" weapon? When does my 5% biotic power damage come into account? Are my melee weapons always giving me the bonuses?

Also the asari sword has 4 augment slots vs Karfalon's 3 and Shiv's 2 :/

 

I believe augments are always active while you have the weapon equipped, and mods are only active when you have the weapon out. Not 100% sure, I haven't done any real testing on that, but it seems to bear out.