Feros->Therum->Noveria->Virmire; Ideal ME1 Mission Order?

I always did Therum last to get this line when Liara starts complaining.




Starting @ 4:55 leading up to the line said.

Yep. Its the only time Shepard can be mean to her.

That's another reason why I do Therum last. Don't like the mind meld thing. Once is enough with the T'soni character.

When playing on an easy difficulty, I do Feros first because of the whole 'colony under attack' thing. But normally I'm on Insanity so I do this:
1st: Therum because it's the easiest.
2nd: Feros because it's the second easiest.
3rd: Asteroid X57 so I can level up for the Krogan fights on...
4th: Virmire.
5th: Noveria because the rachni are quite difficult and the Benezia battle is quite horrible with lower class weapons and skills.

I go Therum > Noveria > Virmire > Feros

Therum to recuit Liara, and then to Noveria acting on the information Liara gives. She then goes to Virmire because it's urgent, and I feel Feros makes for a good finale to this since she's able to save everyone there, which leads on very nicely from the defeat at Virmire.

I've tried all the different combinations in my various playthroughs, but I tend to go with Therum > Feros > Noveria > Virmire these days. You could make the case for either Therum or Feros being the most urgent - Feros is under attack, true, but Liara is related to Saren's second-in-command and has Prothean expertise to help decipher the info from the beacon. Delaying could allow Saren to get to her first.

I do like the idea of Feros before Therum, though, for the reasons CosmicGnosis stated in the OP. As long as it's not a run where I want Liara in the squad the whole way, I may do it that way in future.

It's just 2 joinings in total though, isn't it?  In my current playthrough, I've done Therum > Feros > Noveria, with only one joining so far (Feros).  Post-Virmire will be the second.

That's a fair point.  The thread was kind of making it seem like it happened after every mission, and I didn't think it was quite that bad 

Good points have been made. I've always considered Virmire to be the start of the endgame, so I'm not sure that I could ever change my personal canon on that one. Saving Noveria for last also prevents certain assignments from being available earlier, and I don't want them slowing down the story when it's time to go to Ilos.

Aw, what i love so much about ME1: BioWare didn't know they were going to burn their budget like crazy by implementing all sorts of variations to the scenes throughout the game depending on which order you played the missions in, so they actually went all the way with it. I've played ME1 at least 8 times and I still see new things in the main story because for every scene that I've only had once due to picking a different order I have yet to get the renegade responses and such things. I was really impressed with how Liara's dialogue changes if you recruit her after every other main mission is done and she's almost going crazy inside the barrier from isolation.

That said, one thing I like about ME3 though is how Garrus, Liara and James all have slightly different introductory dialogue depending on when you check in on them the first time in their hangout places. Eventually they'll comment on your absence if you ignore them for too long and otherwise if you do it after Palaven they'll talk about EDI.

I've always gone Therum > Feros > Noveria > Virmire

Maybe it doesn't make the most sense from a role-playing perspective, but that's the order I went through ME1 during my very first playthrough and it doesn't feel right to me when I do it differently.

Feros goes first. It's a human colony in imminent danger. The Geth wouldn't openly assault a world unless they wanted something importent. Hence there aren't any open Geth incurions besides Eden Prime, Feros and of course, the attack of the Citadel.

Noveria an Liara can both equally be considerd targets of opportunity. Neither lead has any direct link to finding Saren other than the obvious Geth Connection. Should Feros have yielded nothing of importance, than the best way to do is probably Noveria, given it's history.

Once Virmire becomes available it should be completed ASAP, As it has the most direct links to Saren's wherabouts. After that there is nothing left but relocating Liara.


One thing though that bothered me about the ME1's approach though is that Udina just more or less casually throws out the leads for the main plot in the docking bay, he doesn't even state where he got his information. There should have been in-depth briefings, both on the Citadel and in the Normandy, concering both satalite information and planetary history, for example the fact that Exogeni was financing the colony on Feros in their search for Prothean Artifacts should have been made clear long before landing there.

On that note, Both Feros and Therum should have had some Alliance presence, Feros was a human colony in imminent danger and it is never explained as to why the Alliance didn't divert ships for a counterattack. Likwise therum is actually an Alliance mining world (Even though Anderson says the entire cluster is uncharted) We even see the Infrastructure the Alliance constructed on Therum but we do not see a hint of actual human activity, not even bodies or signs of a fight.