First Playthrough - What are your quick tips?

Do talk to your team mates when on Tempest. Explore places. Talk to everyone you meet, for example when you have settled Eos, and you come back there are people to talk etc. Its been 600 years and they've left everything behind.

Also: Shut Up SAM! (mod)

If you like the open worlds: Just explore them by driving around, picking up stuff as you go and occasionally clear an enemy camp. You don't really have to do every quest in the journal as a standalone thing, most often there are several right next to each other. If find that I also come around to most quest markers naturally when exploring without a real plan. There are only a few on each planet where you have to really go out of your way to reach them.

If you don't like the open worlds: You can skip most of the driving around, side missions and the assignments without any impact on the larger game. Just doing the main and loyalty missions gives about as much playtime as ME2 and really tightens the whole experience. You can even completely skip some quests marked as main missions, but those usually have a (small) impact on the end of the game, in the form of finding or not finding certain people again.
Also: The game is open ended, so you can do most minor quests after the main story ending, if you want to.

Kind of contrary to the first point: Don't try to do everything on Eos during the first visit. You can come back later and have a much more pleasant time on the planet. You'll also have access to all Squadmates by then.

I'm a completionist, so good to know about saving Eos for later. I'm still on the planet and am wondering if every planet is gonna be like this.
Right now I'm still early game, so it's just a lot of information overload right now. 

Also, my combat sucks when I can't micro-manage lol

There are a lot of combo options so focus on being able to make combo explosions yourself. Just forget about your squad, it's too hard to sync combos with them. I think they let you know when they have prepared an enemy for an explosion but for me it's too hectic to figure out which enemy that might even be.

You can put mods on all your armor parts and weapons and also when you craft them yourself. These can also include combo detonator bonuses and other nice perks to powers.

It's really jarring to go from ability to pause and be tactical to the hectic on-your-toes mess that is ME:A's combat. It's a fun mess though once you get the hang of it! You get these nice "CRAP!!" moments where you just try to flee in panic.

Thanks, though I'm not necessarily looking for "easier" per se. I guess I'm still trying to find my groove and "forget" my OT habits. For now, I'm dumping a single point in every skill and trying them out- I'll give the turret a try when I unlock it.



So far, I've played most of the early game as a Vanguard with backlash and cryo beam/incinerate to prime, though lately I'm running as a Singularity Adept.

I would love to hear everyone else's favorite builds

Spreading out too much in skills/talent will turn into a problem as you level. MEA has a more aggressive level scaling than MET and skills only improve if you upgrades them (outside gear passives). Also, some skills change drastically with their 6th upgrade.

My favorite builds:
Charge, Lance, Singularity + shotgun (or a Talon pistol pretending to be a shotgun) - Negative: some combat encounters require long range weapons, so I keep a sniper around just in case.

Turret, Unknown (Remnant VI), Overload + whatever weapon - Negative: very passive gameplay, construct unsummons if you switch to another profile and it's not in the same slot. They also unsummon when you enter/exit the Nomad.

Singularity, Shockwave, any detonator. The middle Shockwave can be Peebee with the primer upgrade, in that case you can pick another detonator skill. Explosions everywhere, all the time.

The troll build: Pull + Throw...pull an enemy and throw it on the rest of his gang. Also work with explosive cannisters. Add Singularity for more explosions....just throw the people at the Singularity. 

Annihilation + fast detonators (like Lance or Overload). Annihilation is a field around you (off when Charging) that prime enemies. Sneak up on them and explode away with detonators.

Note that you can switch profiles while in combat, there is a cooldown on skills when doing that thought. Also, when you command party members to attack something, they will try to use one skill (the one market near their image) if it's not in cooldown.

Yeah, I wasn't planning on playing that way the entire game - I was just test driving as many skills as possible to get a glimpse of how they work in actual combat and whether or not I like them.

Right now, I've re-specced with a heavy focus on biotics...still torn between Vanguard vs Adept gameplay. Sounds like Peebee will come in handy!

I found that all skills were really satisfying to use once you level them up a bit. If you complete most of the game, you will have plenty of time to try different combinations of skills so it's not like you have to try them all in the beginning. In the beginning, it's best to stick to levelling 3-5 skills first which appeal to you most because otherwise you'll be in trouble in some early missions. Unless you spend points, test, then reload an earlier save and re-allocate points again.

In higher levels you can have different profiles, e.g. a biotic profile and a tech profile or a soldier profile and then switch between them on the fly based on enemy type. Switching the profile activates cooldown though.

Again, I wasn't going to play the whole game this way (I'm totally of the same school of thought as you), there are powers and power combos that are brand new to the series, so I had to give them a test drive - what are your favorites?

In general I'm looking for the juicy nuggets that Bioware doesn't tell you or the stuff you all learned by doing. For example, in ME3 you can use Overload on a CAT6 Heavy to destroy their shield even though Overload appears as 'not-applicable' on the power wheel.

Appreciate the advice so far, I'm just happy to chat with other fans of the series - keep it coming!

That works with all 3 type of ammos (Disruptor and Cryo). You have to hit them with enough "bullets" to prime them thought. If it survive a Cobra RPG, it also prime them for a fire combo.
Ammo primer will replace any skill primer on the enemy.