First Insanity trilogy playthrough advice

If you sell a weapon to her and buy it back from her, it costs you the same as what you sold it for (no net "profit"); so it is probably considered to be exploiting the system.  It suits my renegade Shepards though... who aren't above doing a little gun running for profit.   The more honest way would be to just sell all the unwanted stuff you collect to her rather than selling it to any of the other merchants or needlessly converting it to omni-gel.

Getting the Spectre Gear is certainly recommended for any insanity run.. it is just heads and heels better than anything else in the game.

I forgot to mention, whether the Spectre Gear unlocks (at 1,000,000 credits), the seller for it is either the C-Sec Requisitions Officer or Normandy's Requisition Officer.  It is expensive (over 200,000 credits for even just the pistol, which is the cheapest of the set).  The first set that comes up for sale is Level VII (which is outdo even most of the other Level IX and Level X weapons stat-wise).  The Level X weapons unlock when you hit Level 50 and their stats just blow everything else away.

Also, Dr. Michel's inventory doesn't ever change... she basically sells one of each Level of First Aid Interface, Medical Interface (except Level V, I think) and one Level VIII Medical Exoskeleton.  She will continue to buy stuff from you at the premium rate though even if there is nothing left in her inventory for you to buy.  The other merchants will change out their inventories each time you level up (early in the game) or every few level ups (later on in the game).

Ok I've got the Stinger 2 and picked up Liara successfully. Seems like I'm doing ok without the suped-up weapons. Question: never had a million credits in all my playthroughs - can you get that amount legit? IF so, how?

Update: I'm doing some random UNC missions - I'm stuck on UNC: Privateers.  Died a few times.  I've been using Liara and Tali (since I thought a full biotic would go best with a full tech) but I might be wrong.

Can you suggest which group members might be the best for me? If it's not a geth mission, I assume Tali isn't good?  ty for more input.

Absolutely, you can get more than 1,000,000 credits legit.  As you level up, the amount of credits you get for opening crates increases significantly, as does the amounts you get when making kills.  The weapons you collect are worth more and more to sell... and selling them to Dr. Michel is totally legit (it's the reward for having done that side quest).  THe exploit is only in the buying back of those same weapons from other merchants to would chard you less for buying them back.  As I said, if you buy them back from Dr. Michel, she will charge you exactly what she paid you for them.   Other "budget-wise" factors include

1) Open every crate, find every mineral and other items, and be good about getting the hacking game down so you don't wind up using omni-gel.  This will give you some credits for opening these things and will also give you a lot of loot you can sell
2) Don't let your inventory get too full; sell everything you don't intend to use immediately on yourself or your squad after every mission... that will prevent you from having to reduce items to omni-gel when your inventory gets too full.
3) Be kind to the mako since repairing costs a lot of omni-gel
4) Don't hoard omni-gel; that is, convert items to omni-gel as you need to use omni-gel
5) Avoid buying a lot of substandard gear and armor early on in the game, but make do with whatever you collect until you get your first 1,000,000 credits saved up.

I reached the 1,000,000 credits during my very first playthrough... and I didn't even every buy back any weapon at all during the entire game.

Another way is to import your ME1 character again into ME1 (perfectly legit thing to do... known as an NG+ game and the only way you can advance a PC to Level 60).  When you do that, you start with the amount of credits you left off with and your start the game earning more for everything you do in the game.  This, in fact, is what I do for essentially all of my insanity runs... where having good equipment actually matters.

Just because I said that using this exploit "suited my renegade Shepards"... doesn't mean I use it in every game I play.  I also have a lot of paragon Shepards who would never engage in the practice of "gun running."  The set up is LIKELY an exploit... something that Bioware just never considered... but there is also the possibility that they did consider that some of their players might want to roleplay their Shepard as a war profiteer.

Thanks guys, I must have already had a million credits b/c the Spectre gear level 7 is on the Alli Req. Officer on the Normandy. It's expensive though now and I can't afford it.

How do you switch parties easily on side-mission planets? You mean go back to Normandy and land again? I wish the Mako would stay in the same spot.

Also couple more questions: is cover at all useful in this game? I find it much harder to do than ME2/3. And, should you bottleneck enemies in a doorway (like I'm at that merc base layout w/ small entrance room, then large room with all the enemies. I could hang in small room and have them all come to me. This has had mixed results though.

One more question: if a Krogan (or anyone) turns on Immunity - should I not waste bullets or attacks on them and just try to CC them until it wears off?

And I assume u need both Elec and Decryption to unlock all the crates, etc. It's a pain to not have Tali then, but yeah she sure seems gimped against organics.

Final thought: I'm realizing with biotic combos things get a lot better in ME2/3. If Liara drops a singularity now, all it does is CC and I can't combo anything.

I wish I could just take 2 squadmembers for the whole game, but sounds like that won't work on Insanity. Thanks for more input!

P.S. I've started using the AR when my Pistol overheats for some decent damage.

Agree with thoughts above, here are some of mine:

Money - In a relatively completionist run without DLC you can legitimately get to 9,999,999 cr, which is the absolute maximum you can even have. After that you get no money for selling things, and can just omnigel whatever else you pick up. The speed at which you make money is somewhat related to how fast you gain XP (because higher tier items are unlocked based on your level), and partly on how many side missions and crates you unlock. The Charm and Intimidate store perks also have an affect.

Tali on side missions - I take her on a lot of them early largely because the very first thing I do when building her is to get master sabotage and overload in order to be able to unlock hard decryption and electronics objects right away. Those are also her two best powers as sabotage is a good cc power that does a little damage, and overload reduces damage protection in addition to the shield damage it does. Electronics also gives a shield buff, so that makes Tali fairly durable early game. Kaidan has Barrier, but can't get that and max electronics + decryption as early, and Garrus's talent tree has Electronics hidden under First Aid 7(!).

Damage Protection - Everything in the game has some amount of damage protection, which is a percentage of damage that it will ignore. You will see damage protection listed in your armor stats, or in some mod stats. This only applies to damage to health. So if I had 50% damage protection and am hit on health from an attack that does 100dmg, I will only take 50. Different sources of damage protection do not stack additively, which is why you can't get an actual 100%..

Immunity is a temporary large buff to damage protection. The ideal way to fight an enemy that has the ability is to ragdoll them before they can activate it. This isn't always practical, so the next best thing is to counter by debuffing. Warp and Overload in ME1 lower the damage protection of the target, although Warp drops it more.

Damping - does in fact extend enemy cooldowns, but the problem is that they have to use the power to get into the longer cooldown.

Side Missions, Squad, Cover, etc - Privateers and Asari Diplomacy may be the hardest missions available early. Abandoned Mine can be rough if you want to do it without biotics for whatever reason. I don't find taking cover to be very useful in ME1, for the most part, but using it as soft cover is very useful. For the side missions that inevitably involve a fight inside a prefab, I don't mind fighting the enemies using the door as a choke point and cover. This helps block some enemies from having LOS. In addition, although it is cheesy, it is possible to exit the buildings if need be. This will miraculously revive the squad if needed and give you time to regen health.

Whether or not more biotics is helpful or not just depends on how you have built them. Kaidan is pretty useful for cc early, but Wrex may end up really being more of a tank if you have focused on Immunity, Barrier, Passive. He only has Throw as a cc power, which is more of an "oh shit" button than a great cc power, assuming it is leveled high enough to work. It is hidden under Warp 7(!) on him, so requires a bit of investment, unlike on Kaidan.

Is it that your squad are dying on you?  Try taking Liara and Wrex for the fight (you will need to switch out after the fight to bring someone with decryption to look the base, but Wrex is far more likely to stay on his feet than anyone).  That gives you 2 lifts (with your own) and a singularity and a throw for cc; plus 2 warps you can use to lower their damage protection.  If you don't want to worry about changing out after the fact... Try Kaidan and Liara.  Kaidan has decryption and he still has lift.  He just doesn't have warp.

Next - Let's try positioning.  Tell your squad to take cover on one side of the door before you open the door and you take cover on the other side.  Peek around the side of the door and fire at whoever comes towards the door... and the krogan will come to the door, but they will not generally cross the thresh hold of that door (i.e. it is extremely rare that any enemy will come into that "lobby" room with you and your squad in cover right by the door).  They will walk in a clear pattern back and forth in front of the door firing at you.  When they are in front of the door, lift them or throw them and fire away at them from behind the safety of that door frame.  Once you get the two krogan down, you can release your squad from cover and move into the room as you normally do.

Just another thought... If you haven't already... make sure that your squad power usage is set to "Defense Only."  If set to "Active," they generally just fire everything all a once when you first open the door... putting everything you need into cooldown.  In "Defense Only" mode they will only activate their passives (like putting up a barrier), leaving you the ability to decide when and on whom they target with their offensive powers (like lift and warp).

Also, remember you also have grenades and, since you're a soldier, you can also quickly reset your cooldown on your own lift by activating your adrenaline burst... which will make it available again right away.

Also, if you have put 1 point into Liara's stasis, you can use it to slow down the advance of the two krogan.  You won't be able to damage them while they are in stasis, but it's still a great way to get a breather in order to get to cover whenever a krogan charges you.  Wrex also has stasis available.  You should never need more than 1 point in it though.

Where were you reading that?  This is the first I've heard of it.  I regularly throw a single point in stasis (both Liara and Wrex) in ME1 and have never noted a problem with it.  It should be noted that, in ME1, squad mates will not automatically use their stasis regardless of whether or not squad power usage is set to "Active.".  It's a power that you have to activate yourself.  In addition, enemies in stasis in ME1 will not take any damage at all and, I don't believe, there is any damage bonus active when stasis breaks (that's a feature in ME2).  I also think it doesn't work on either Benezia or Saren; but I've honestly never tried to use it on either of those two.  However, if you don't trust to put it on Liara, just use Wrex's stasis instead.

Why just one point?  It's long enough to take the pressure off even at just one point, so there is no purpose in investing more into it just to make it last longer.

Yeah, that's the power wheel bug. Liara is always able to activate any of her powers on her own (if allowed), but Shepard won't be able to activate her Overload if she has all talents activated. The icon will simply not be there when you pause. So I always avoid Stasis too.

OK, I see now.  I don't think this is a particular issue with her stasis, but with being unable to use one of her powers if you assign points in all of them.  For me the one that gets thrown off the wheel when I assign that point to stasis is Liara's Overload, which normally goes along with her electronics skill).  I can still use her electronics to unlock crates and her stats still seem to count towards any mako repairs that I do and I ususally have a techie squadmate with her that has overload... so I personally feel I get more use out of putting that single point into stasis on her... but if you want to keep her overload active, then leave her stasis empty.  I don't think I've ever had it where a different power other than overload goes missing... but I wouldn't necessarily say it would be impossible and you certainly wouldn't want to lose any of her biotic powers in the process.

I forgot to mention - Kaidan also has Stasis.

Ok I did it! I got Kaiden one point in Stasis - helped lock people down - also his neural shock is awesome. I tried 4x with Wrex and Liara, no good. Then third try with Kaiden and Liara worked. And I could unlock everything too My gear is pretty crappy - I really need that spectre gear - think I might do the Dr. Michel thing.

Question: what level would you suggest before heading to Noveria/Feros? And which planet would u suggest going to first? I'm pretty close to level 18.