You’ll earn this achievement for completing all three of the Mass Effect games on Insanity difficulty. For more information on how to beat Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition on Insanity diffuclty, see the details for the Insanity I achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement for completing any two of the three Mass Effect games on Insanity difficulty. For more information on how to beat Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition on Insanity diffuclty, see the details for the Insanity I achievement.

To earn this achievement you’ll have to strike up a romantic relationship with one of your squadmates in all three of the Mass Effect games. For more information on how romances work in Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition, see the details for the Paramour I achievement.

To earn this achievement, you must beat all three Mass Effect games with the same character. Be sure to import your Shepard from the previous game when you start up a new game. This can be done by selecting “New Game” on the main menu screen, followed by “Import ME1 Character” or “Import ME2 Character”, depending on whether you’re playing Mass Effect 2 or Mass Effect 3, respectively.

To earn this achievement you’ll have to strike up a romantic relationship with one of your squadmates in any two of the three Mass Effect games. For more information on how romances work in Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition, see the details for the Paramour I achievement.

Like with the kill achievements (Recruit, Soldier and Veteran), this achievement tallies your total kills across all three games, unlocking when you’ve killed 100 enemies with melee attacks. This will obviously be easier to achieve on lower difficulties, as wading into melee combat on higher difficulties can be somewhat suicidal, especially in Mass Effect 2 and 3. If you want to grind this out, use a high-level character in Mass Effect 1 (preferrably on a New Game+ run), lower the difficulty to Casual, and start smacking enemies with your guns. Between the low difficulty and Colossus X armor, this should be a trivial grind.

You’ll earn this achievement for completing any one of the three Mass Effect games on Insanity difficulty. Mass Effect 1 is by far the easiest of the three games, just make sure you change the difficulty to Insanity while you’re on the Normandy before you deploy to Eden Prime.

If you want to make things even easier, wait until you second playthrough before you attempt this. Waiting has a few significant advantages: first, you can simply skip a lot of stuff on the second playthrough, as all you really care about is beating the game, not scouring every planet and completing every assignment. Second, while enemies scale to Shepard’s level, much of your relative power comes from gear, and this does not scale with your level. You’ll generally start seeing some models of the best gear start appearing when Shepard’s level is in the early-to-mid 20s (Legendary Edition scaling), and while you might not get the highest-tier versions at this point, even a Colossus IX suit of armor is generally far superior to alternatives.

Some of the stats provided by this late-game equipment make the Insanity run much, much easier than even a start-from-scratch playthrough on Veteran difficulty. Damage Protection (provided by armor) reduces damage by a massive amount (generally in the range of 65-79% for Colossus Armor) while the cooldown bonuses provided by Savant Omni-Tools and Biotic Amps and by Medical Exoskeleton mods allows you to use abilities much quicker. Simply put, the potency of late-game gear is more than a match for enemy level and difficulty scaling. That’s not to say Insanity is all sunshine and roses - Husks and enemies that are fond of melee attacks (especially Krogan Warlords/Battlemasters) can potentially down Shepard in 2-3 hits, so some caution is needed.

Arguably the best build for Insanity is an Infiltrator with the Lift bonus talent, as they’ll have access to Colossus X Medium Armor (71 Damage Protection), most of the Engineer debuffs (Overload to boost damage and take down enemy shields, Sabotage to overheat enemy weapons, Damping to force enemy abilities to cooldown), while the aforementioned Lift is perhaps the best debilitative ability in the game, useful for thwarting charging Geth Destroyer and Krogan Warlords, and leaving enemies (including bosses!) helpless for extended periods of time. They might not have access to the heaviest armor or all the weapon types, but Sniper Rifles provide plenty of damage output in a pinch, and they’ll gain access to the Fitness tree, which will give them Immunity - the most potent defensive buff in the game. The Infiltrator is basically the best combination of DPS, tank, support and control you can get on one character… something of a “jack of all trades” that just so happens to be good to great at most of those roles.

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Incrementing the usage counter for Neural Shock requries you to damage an organic foe.

Use the Neural Shock ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Engineers, Sentinels and Kaiden all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

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To increment the usage counter for AI Hacking, you’ll actually have to hack a synthetic enemy.

Use the AI Hacking ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Engineers and Tali have access to this ability. Unlike the other abilities, you must actually take control of a hostile enemy to increment the usage counter on this ability, and since mid-to-high tier enemies are immune to the effects of the base ability, you’ll have to invest considerably more time (to level up) and talent points to effectively grind this achievement as compared to the other ability usage achievements. Level it up as much as possible and hack every turret, drone and geth you encounter until it unlocks.

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You’ll need to complete numerous playthroughs to rack up the 2,000 kills necessary to unlock the Veteran achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement by killing a total of 2,000 enemies across all three Mass Effect games. This will probably take thorough playthroughs of all three Mass Effect games to achieve (perhaps fewer if you complete more than one playthrough of any of these games). If you don’t earn this achievement by the end of your playthrough of Mass Effect 3, you’ll just have to grind out whatever kills you’re missing; pick your favorite game, set the difficulty where you want it, and get to killing.

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Use the “Stasis” ability repeatedly until this achievement pops - even crates are valid targets.

Use the Stasis ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Adepts, Sentinels, Liara and Wrex all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

Use the Damping ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Engineers, Infiltrators, Garrus and Tali all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

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Use the “Singularity” ability repeatedly until this achievement pops - even crates are valid targets.

Use the Singularity ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Adepts and Liara have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

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Use the “Lift” ability repeatedly until this achievement pops - even crates are valid targets.

Use the Lift ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Adepts, Sentinels, Vanguards, Kaiden and Liara all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

You’ll earn this achievement by killing a total of 1,000 enemies across all three Mass Effect games. This might take more than one playthrough to achieve, although completing a thorough playthrough of any two of the games should suffice (or two playthroughs of any one game).

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Use the “Barrier” ability repeatedly to earn this achievement.

Use the Barrier ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Adepts, Sentinels, Vanguards, Kaiden, Liara and Wrex all have access to this ability.

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Use the “Warp” ability repeatedly until this achievement pops - even crates are valid targets.

Use the Warp ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Adepts, Vanguards, Liara and Wrex all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

Use the Sabotage ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Engineers, Infiltrators, Sentinels, Garrus, Kaiden and Tali all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

Use the Overload ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Engineers, Infiltrators, Sentinels, Garrus, Kaiden, Liara and Tali all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

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Use the “Throw” ability repeatedly until this achievement pops - even crates are valid targets.

Use the Throw ability 25 times to unlock this achievement. Adepts, Sentinels, Vanguards, Kaiden, Liara and Wrex all have access to this ability. You must target an enemy or object capable of sustaining damage for the usage counter to increment - pretty much every enemy will count, along with destructible crates.

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Use First Aid any time you’re injured and have sufficient Medi-gel and you’ll unlock the related achievement before long.

Use the First Aid ability 50 times to unlock this achievement. To use First Aid, you must possess at least one unit of Medi-gel, and a character in your squad must have taken some health damage. Just use this ability any time you have max Medi-gel (enemies will drop this often enough) whenever you take damage and you’ll get this achievement before long.

To earn this achievement, you must complete the majority of assignments and missions in the game. Missions you’ll have to complete to get to the end of the game, but assignments are optional, and are the only missable part of this achievement… and mostly only because if you ignore said assignments.

As you explore, keep an eye on your minimap for “!” icons, which indicate a mission-or-assignment sensitive object, location or character. Interact with all of them and clear out assignments as you go - you don’t need to complete anywhere near all of them for the achievements, but you should be aware of one thing: the point of no return. There are four core missions after you’re done with your first visit to the Citadel: Therum, Feros, Noveria and Virmire, listed in the order we suggest completing them. Once you’ve completed all four of these missions you’ll be funneled down the path to the endgame, which doesn’t completely prevent you from finishing outstanding assignments, but it will limit your access to the Citadel… which coincidentally is where many assignments occur. For that reason, we strongly suggest you only complete the first three core missions (Therum, Feros, Noveria), then deal with every assignment in your journal, take care of any and all possible exploration, and only after that’s all done should you finish Virmire.

A list of all the assignments in the game follows:

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Unlocking all the race-related primary codex entries is mostly a matter of exhausting dialog options early in the game.

Archivist is a fairly missable achievement, as you need to “find all primary Alien: Council Races, Extinct Races and Non-Council Races codex entries” in a single playthrough. Codex Entries are recorded bits of lore gained primarily from talking to NPCs, and in the case of all the Codex Entries required for Archivist, NPC dialog is the source of all of them.

Unlocking most of these aren’t a problem, as you can pick them up by talking to various characters on the Citadel, but a few - like the codex entries gained from Nihlus and from Ashley early on - can be missed. On the plus side, there aren’t very many required Codex Entries for this achievement, and most of them can be obtain very early in the game (before you leave the Citadel for the first time), so while missing it sucks, it’s not a massive, game-spanning timesink.

A list of all the codexes you need and where you can find them follows:

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Flirt with the squadmate you want to end up romantically involved with after every core mission and you’ll earn this achievement when you travel to Ilos.

To earn this achievement you’ll need to strike up a romantic relationship with one of your squadmates. Your options in Mass Effect 1 are fairly limited; Liara is interested in Shepard regardless of their gender, while Kaiden and Ashley are only interested in heterosexual relationships.

Regardless of whom you choose to romance, establishing a romantic relationship is remarkably similar. Talk to the character you’re interested in after each core mission (Therum, Feros, Noveria and Virmire) and generally stick to the upper right dialog options. If you flirt with more than one character, they’ll eventually start questioning you about their rival - if you express interest in their rival or disinterest in the character you’re talking to, you may end up sabotaging the romance. If you continue to flirt with two characters, at some point you’ll be confronted by them and have to pick one.

You’ll know you’ve successfully set up a romance after you complete all four of the aforementioned core missions, as your romantic interest will try to console you when the Normandy is grounded at the Citadel. The achievement won’t unlock there, but it should unlock shortly thereafter when you travel to Ilos.

You’ll earn this achievement for completing the final mission, Race Against Time. It cannot be missed.

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Refuge is home to the fabled Ilos, the setting for the penultimate mission in Mass Effect.

You’ll unlock this achievement when you complete the phase of the mission Race Against Time that takes place on Ilos. To unlock this mission you must complete the four core missions on Therum, Feros, Noveria and Virmire. It cannot be missed.

The achievement description is a bit misleading as you don’t have to acquire 75% of the points in the game (a silly notion when you consider that you can technically acquire an infinite amount of points), but rather you’ll earn this achievement when you fill either your Paragon (blue) or Renegade (red) bars up to 75%. There’s plenty of points to go around, but if you want to ensure you get this, you’ll want to complete as many assignments as possible (making this another achievement you’ll likely obtain during your hunt for Completionist) and whenever you get the chance stick to either the top right (Paragon) dialog options or bottom right (Renegade) dialog options and pick Charm (blue) or Intimidate (red) responses whenever they pop up. To ensure you have access to Charm/Intimidate choices (and hence, can gain the Paragon/Renegade points from selecting them) you’ll need to invest some talent points into Charm/Intimidate.

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Earning the Charismatic achievement will requires quite a few ranks in Charm or Intimidate.

You have two opportunities in each playthrough to earn the Charismatic achievement: One is during the mission on Virmire, where you’ll have to pass a Charm or Intimidate check during the confrontation with Wrex. Both of these options will require 8 ranks of Charm or Intimidate. The other opportunity is during the final mission of the game, Race Against Time. When you confront Saren in the Council Chambers, pass a series of Charm/Intimidate checks (you’ll require at least 9 ranks in either for this) to talk him out of a fight.

You’ll unlock this achievement after completing the mission on Virmire, which you’ll gain access to after completing two of the previous three core missions: Therum, Feros and Noveria. Story-related, it cannot be missed.

You’ll get this achievement for landing on any eight uncharted worlds. Most of the solar systems in the game have at least one place of interest where you can dock or land, either boarding some other spacecraft or, somewhat more commonly, landing on a planet. You’ll likely earn this achievement while working on Completionist, as you’ll land on most of the uncharted planets in the game in the process of completing some assignment or another. Whether that assignment is gained ahead of time in another location, or found while exploring and scanning planets is irrelevent as far as earning this achievement goes - you’ll likely need to do quite a bit of both to find enough planets to land on.

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You’ll certainly unlock this achievement as you play through the game(s) - just kill enemies until it pops.

You’ll earn this achievement by killing a total of 250 enemies across all three Mass Effect games. Just playing through any one of these games should provide you with a high enough body count to earn this achievement.

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Complete 5 missions and/or assignments with Kaiden in your active party to unlock this achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement for having Kaiden in your active party when you resolve any five missions or assignments. An easy way to grind this out - aside from just rotating your party until all these achievmeents pop - is to just ignore all assignments until you’re done with your first mission on the Citadel, after which go and complete the mission on Therum to recruit Liara. Now you should have all the possible squadmates in the game, and the Citadel should be crawling with assignments. Most of these are incredibly easy, requiring no combat (depending on how you complete them, anyways). Make a hard save, exit the Normandy onto the Citadel, pick the squadmembers whose achievements you need, and complete assignments until their achievements pop. Reload, pick a different squad, do it again. Repeat until they’re all unlocked, then play through the rest of the game with whatever squadmates you choose.

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Complete 5 missions and/or assignments with Wrex in your active party to unlock this achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement for having Wrex in your active party when you resolve any five missions or assignments. An easy way to grind this out - aside from just rotating your party until all these achievmeents pop - is to just ignore all assignments until you’re done with your first mission on the Citadel, after which go and complete the mission on Therum to recruit Liara. Now you should have all the possible squadmates in the game, and the Citadel should be crawling with assignments. Most of these are incredibly easy, requiring no combat (depending on how you complete them, anyways). Make a hard save, exit the Normandy onto the Citadel, pick the squadmembers whose achievements you need, and complete assignments until their achievements pop. Reload, pick a different squad, do it again. Repeat until they’re all unlocked, then play through the rest of the game with whatever squadmates you choose.

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Complete 5 missions and/or assignments with Ashley in your active party to unlock this achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement for having Ashley in your active party when you resolve any five missions or assignments. An easy way to grind this out - aside from just rotating your party until all these achievmeents pop - is to just ignore all assignments until you’re done with your first mission on the Citadel, after which go and complete the mission on Therum to recruit Liara. Now you should have all the possible squadmates in the game, and the Citadel should be crawling with assignments. Most of these are incredibly easy, requiring no combat (depending on how you complete them, anyways). Make a hard save, exit the Normandy onto the Citadel, pick the squadmembers whose achievements you need, and complete assignments until their achievements pop. Reload, pick a different squad, do it again. Repeat until they’re all unlocked, then play through the rest of the game with whatever squadmates you choose.

You’ll unlock this achievement after completing the DLC assignment Bring Down the Sky. This is an optional assignment, so you must complete it before heading to Ilos, at which point you’ll be locked into the endgame. What choices you make during this assignment do not matter, just that you finish it.

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Complete 5 missions and/or assignments with Liara in your active party to unlock this achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement for having Liara in your active party when you resolve any five missions or assignments. An easy way to grind this out - aside from just rotating your party until all these achievmeents pop - is to just ignore all assignments until you’re done with your first mission on the Citadel, after which go and complete the mission on Therum to recruit Liara. Now you should have all the possible squadmates in the game, and the Citadel should be crawling with assignments. Most of these are incredibly easy, requiring no combat (depending on how you complete them, anyways). Make a hard save, exit the Normandy onto the Citadel, pick the squadmembers whose achievements you need, and complete assignments until their achievements pop. Reload, pick a different squad, do it again. Repeat until they’re all unlocked, then play through the rest of the game with whatever squadmates you choose.

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Feros is the setting for one of the game’s core missions.

Feros is one of the core missions you can undertake after your first visit to the Citadel. This achievement cannot be missed.

You’ll unlock this achievement after completing the mission on Noveria. Story-related, it cannot be missed.

You’ll get this achievement for landing on any four uncharted worlds. Most of the solar systems in the game have at least one place of interest where you can dock or land, either boarding some other spacecraft or, somewhat more commonly, landing on a planet. You’ll likely earn this achievement while working on Completionist, as you’ll land on most of the uncharted planets in the game in the process of completing some assignment or another. Whether that assignment is gained ahead of time in another location, or found while exploring and scanning planets is irrelevent as far as earning this achievement goes - you’ll likely need to do quite a bit of both to find enough planets to land on.

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Complete 5 missions and/or assignments with Garrus in your active party to unlock this achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement for having Garrus in your active party when you resolve any five missions or assignments. An easy way to grind this out - aside from just rotating your party until all these achievmeents pop - is to just ignore all assignments until you’re done with your first mission on the Citadel, after which go and complete the mission on Therum to recruit Liara. Now you should have all the possible squadmates in the game, and the Citadel should be crawling with assignments. Most of these are incredibly easy, requiring no combat (depending on how you complete them, anyways). Make a hard save, exit the Normandy onto the Citadel, pick the squadmembers whose achievements you need, and complete assignments until their achievements pop. Reload, pick a different squad, do it again. Repeat until they’re all unlocked, then play through the rest of the game with whatever squadmates you choose.

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Complete 5 missions and/or assignments with Tali in your active party to unlock this achievement.

You’ll earn this achievement for having Tali in your active party when you resolve any five missions or assignments. An easy way to grind this out - aside from just rotating your party until all these achievmeents pop - is to just ignore all assignments until you’re done with your first mission on the Citadel, after which go and complete the mission on Therum to recruit Liara. Now you should have all the possible squadmates in the game, and the Citadel should be crawling with assignments. Most of these are incredibly easy, requiring no combat (depending on how you complete them, anyways). Make a hard save, exit the Normandy onto the Citadel, pick the squadmembers whose achievements you need, and complete assignments until their achievements pop. Reload, pick a different squad, do it again. Repeat until they’re all unlocked, then play through the rest of the game with whatever squadmates you choose.

You’ll unlock this achievement after completing the mission on Therum. Story-related, it cannot be missed.

You’ll get this achievement for landing on any one uncharted world. Most of the solar systems in the game have at least one place of interest where you can dock or land, either boarding some other spacecraft or, somewhat more commonly, landing on a planet. You’ll likely earn this achievement while working on Completionist, as you’ll land on most of the uncharted planets in the game in the process of completing some assignment or another. Whether that assignment is gained ahead of time in another location, or found while exploring and scanning planets is irrelevent as far as earning this achievement goes - you’ll likely need to do quite a bit of both to find enough planets to land on.

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You’ll earn the Distinguished Service Medal by completing the mission on Feros.

You’ll earn this achievement for completing the mission on Eden Prime - the first mission in the game. It cannot be missed.

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Complete the mission “Expose Saren” and you’ll be inducted into the ranks of the Spectres.

You’ll earn this after completing the mission Expose Saren. Story-related, cannot be missed.