Mass Effect...

If you only got to level 44, then you most certainly did not complete all but one side quest. There is a whole lot of them in the game and some are well hidden. A few only appear after you have finished a main quest planet. Some only show up when you're Paragon or Renegade enough. Some you can only find by exploring random planets. There are also a couple of areas that are not strictly speaking "quests", but feature high-XP creatures like Rachni Brood Warriors.

On my last playthrough, I got to level 56 (about halfway to 57). Now that they've released the downloadable content, it should be possible to reach 57 or maybe even 58 (I have not played yet it so I don't know how much XP you get). Level 60 is impossible without playing twice, but 50 should be well within your reach.

One last tip: always kill everything on foot. Whenever you finish something off with the Mako, you only get 40% of the XP for killing it. It's OK to damage stuff while you're driving, but always get out to deal the final blow.

 

lol the keepers. I have done like 6 side quests that require travel to new systems and all off the side quests in the main area that I have found.

I wonder if I had a bug, I just beat the one where I had to assasinate the 2 crime lords and I wanted to arrest the lady but then a shield would raise in the doorway and I could not get into the room to kill her or her baddies. so I had to agree to let her keep running the syndicate

 

Did you try shooting at the shield? With the exception of the plot one on Feros, most shields that appear in doorways are vulnerable to weapon fire. I never actually tried to arrest her (I prefer to convince her to disband the syndicate instead), so I don't know whether this shield is special. It would be pretty amusing if it was, but I doubt it.

 

I did shoot at it maybe one or two times I think. As for disbanding I could not select it not enough paragon points.

 

Well, I did all the missions that showed up in my journal anyway...

Thanks for the tip about killing things on-foot. Never would have considered that.

 

I also shot at it several times but it didn't make a difference. I just got the gist that I wasn't supposed to be able to advance at that point and moved on.

 

Downloading the Bring Down The Sky content right now

 

I...must...not..download the extras...must do more modding...instead of playing ME...

 

lol.... I was going to ask what you were modding... as in modifying... modding your case or something... but then I see you are a moderator here... ho ho ho... I'm new here

Don't feel too bad, I'm at work, but I download it here because it's fast internet, hehe.

 

It doesn't help by the fact that I am constantly addicted to 2 games all year round...PES2008 (or its newer/older versions) and CSS... So ME just takes up time for everything else...lol Good job I completed it quickly...hehe

 

I should be able to run this game on medium right? what about high? I'm worried about my cpu being a bottleneck.

 

Medium should run fine, what resolution screen do you have?

 

I run everything maxed out (no forced AA) except no dynamic shadows or motion blur and get 20-25 FPS on 1600x900 or a constant (due to V-sync) 30 FPS on 1280x720.

The CPU may hurt performance a bit though, but I wouldn't think by much.

 

V-Sync should lock you a 60fps not 30 unless you have a very odd display with a 30hz refresh rate.

1280x800 maxed out I only get in the 30's average with a 9700gt.

Well I guess more like 40fps average but there are things that make it drop all the way down to 30ish, the frame rate varies quite greatly depending on whats going on, and it seems to drop when entering a new area when the textures are loading.

 

IIRC V-sync will set the FPS at a divisor of your refresh rate. Thus, optimally it would lock it at 60 FPS, but because I can't handle 60 FPS, it drops down to 30 FPS (1 frame per two refreshes) and 20 FPS if 30 is too difficult to render. When there's a lot going on, I think it may drop to 20 FPS, but Mass Effect is still very playable at that point, so it didn't bother me too much. Also, dynamic shadows and motion blur will lower FPS quite a bit (~5-10 IIRC).

 

Never have I heard that before, nor have I experienced it but guess I was always above the 30fps mark.

Mass Effect has a frame limiter of 62fps built in aslo so if you have a killer rig like my desktop the max frames is 62 even with v-sync off. I did take the time to over write this in the engine config file for benchmarking reasons but to play the game I would have it on.

 

This seems to be a pretty good guide about VSync. Whenever its on I notice that my FPS is always either 60, 45, 30 or 20 (within 1 due to fluctuations)

 

My screen resolution is 1024X768

 

I'm pretty sure that if your comp can't maintain vsync's 60 fps limit then it limits the fps to 30 fps (half the refresh rate) to avoid tearing.

 

Maybe you can even set it to high.

 

Finished the game last night, VERY fun and entertaining game. I've been telling people it's like playing through a movie, and the ending did not disappoint!

So much for downloading the BDtS extra content... I had a chance to go do it but I got excited and went after Saren instead and never got the chance to actually play it, hehe.

I played through as a pure Adept, have to say it was interesting since I usually play the Warrior or Thief type guy in RPG's, but the Adept sounded like too much fun to pass up. Maybe I'll give it another run through in a couple months, although I may not get to it, I just don't have the time I used to to play video games, and I have a stack that I haven't played yet.

Still to go: Crysis, Sins of a Solar Empire, maybe Oblivion with lot's of mods, Two Worlds, STALKER... I still haven't even played through Half Life Episodes 1 and 2 yet.

 

Downloading BDtS dlc right now! Cant start shooting those batarian *******s since its been a while that Ive played, making my return today!

All in all, the most rewarding experience was playing through on insane difficulty, low aim support, and with no subtitles. Needless to say, it pushed me towards inventing a few interest ways of defeating my enemies. surprisingly after three play throughs Im still finding new conversation branches and scene outcomes. Its really just a fun game to play through just for the story and action irregardless of how many times you go through it.

btw,any word on bioware releasing a mod program?

 

Is Ilos the last mission?

 

the last mission before you're sucked into the ending.

 

Crap, so that means that I can't complete any of the side quest anymore?

 

You have to put something around ten shots into it before it'll dissipate. As you shoot it, the shield becomes more transparent, before finally disappearing completely.

 

Affirmative

Spoiler about point of no return:
Once you leave the Citadel after Virmire you cannot return. Also once you reach Ilos, you cannot leave and go back to the Normandy.

 

Ok, so, the shotgun seems pathetic to me. Like, unless I'm standing on the guy, ot doesn't do much. And the super charge bomb thing it does doesn't seem very useful either. For the record, I'm playing on Insane mode.

 

Well....carnage with double rail extension VII and the High Explosive Round X does the most damage of any weapon I believe. Its one shot overheat though but if you hit, you hit hard.

 

Yea, the high explosive roudns are pretty much useless to me. I use them in the sniper rifle.

 

WOW! You brought one back from the grave here....Use the explosive rounds on the sniper it will take longer to cool but you can kill everything so fast with it. Use sniper then switch weapon shoot with new weapon, change back to snip shoot. You get the picture.

 

Yea, I used the search feature

I have the PC version. One of the Achievments is to play the majority of the game with a certain character.

Now, do the Achievements all add up through the several careers. Or is it just one career. So once I beat it, in order to unlock that achievment, I have to play through again with two other characters?

 

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Just be sure to keep the saves for the different classes separate. I don't know if the achievements are stored on a separate file or the game scans all the save to figure out where you are.

 

So, once you load a career, you have to stay the same class, right?

 

If you refer to make the achievements valid, then the answer is no. You can create a totally new profile and the bonuses from the achievements will be there.

 

I have not played yet on insane mode, but I found the shotgun was on a similar level to the rifle (not the sniper rifle, the other). Of course you would have to use the zoom fuction to make the shotgun useful, otherwise...

 

I personally find the explosive rounds crappy.

 

any word of more DLC's coming out for this, or is Bioware going full speed on ME2 and their Star Wars MMO?

EDIT: some info. on a new DLC coming out sometime soon
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6212353.html

 

Shotgun is pretty much useless. I'm working on making the sniper rifle something I can take in to any character.

After that, I'm either going to be a full Biotic or a half bio/half tech