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The geth have begun setting up a number of small outposts in the Armstrong Cluster of the Skyllian Verge. You must eliminate these outposts before the incursion becomes a full-scale invasion.

Acquisition Edit

This assignment is acquired by simply traveling to the Armstrong Nebula. You will receive a transmission from Admiral Hackett detailing four geth outposts that need to be destroyed. This assignment can also be gained by hacking one of the geth terminals at the ExoGeni building on Feros or by hacking into a terminal in the Genophage Labs on Virmire.

The four outposts are in the Vamshi, Hong, Tereshkova, and Gagarin systems on the planets Maji, Casbin, Antibaar, and Rayingri, respectively.

Preparation Edit

All of these worlds are full of geth, large and small, so Tungsten Ammunition for your weapons is strongly recommended. Apart from that, the appropriate squad and equipment selection will depend on which tactics you plan.

General Tactics Edit

On many of the worlds for this assignment, you will find the geth base in a valley - which makes it easy to fight from a distance if desired. Several strategies for taking on the outdoor foes are possible, and you may also wish to use a mix of methods depending on the situation.

Sniper Rifle From a Distance: if you are trained for sniper rifles, the layout of the bases and the fact that you can usually get the higher ground makes sniping from a distance quite tempting. This will earn you full XP from every kill; you will just need to avoid incoming missiles from the geth. While executing this strategy you will usually be too far away to make much use of squad powers, so you will want to concentrate on a squad with high weapons damage preferably with sniper rifle training. Obviously when you head indoors on Rayingri and Solcrum powers and shorter range weapons will become relevant. The important thing while outdoors is to find a good location for your party to fire from. You might want to circle around each geth base for the "perfect" location. It is important to find the location that fits your skills - choosing a location that's too far away will mean the party never hits their target, while choosing a location too close might expose the party to geth fire (in which case, the effect of the higher ground is lost).
Mako as Cover: You can bring in the Mako, park it in a good position, and then get out and use it for cover. This allows you to bring your own cover to an on-foot strategy, and thus you may be able to engage with assault rifles, shotguns, etc. Just remember that once the Mako has been pounded on by enemies and is "sparking", you can't get back in it until all enemies are dead - otherwise you will die instantly. In an emergency you can return directly to the Normandy by going to the Map screen from the game menu. Many of the geth bases feature a metal wall around them, which can be used as a spot to dismount from the Mako while limiting the number of foes you will face at one time.
Stay in the Mako: It is entirely possible to eliminate the above-ground forces of all four bases without leaving the Mako, it just lowers the total XP you will receive. After finding a good firing position, it is possible to snipe all geth forces with the Mako's main cannon while zooming in. This has the added benefit of removing yourself and your team from immediate danger, although it is important to prioritize the anti-armor capable enemies first, especially Geth Snipers whose Assassination ability cannot be dodged. You can always jump out after softening up an enemy to deal it the final blow on foot for higher XP rewards, but this is not recommended when there are still lots of geth shooting you and missiles flying around.

Squad Planning Edit

Neither biotic nor tech abilities will be effective at long range, so if you're going the sniper strategy you'll probably want to emphasis squadmates with sniper training on the outdoor worlds - Garrus and Ashley.

For indoors or close range work, however, powers of either type can be most useful. Some of the most valuable powers include Sabotage to keep the geth guns silent, Hacking to turn the geth on each other, and Lift/Singularity to keep even a massive Geth Armature off its feet. Obviously many other powers will help as well, and ultimately the best squad mix will depend on your strategy and Shepard's own class and abilities.

Walkthrough Edit

You can do the first four planets in any order you like; here they are simply listed in geographic order from the side the cursor starts on by default. As it happens this means the first three worlds are all-outdoors, while the fourth one plus the final Solcrum base which appears later have substantial indoor components.

Maji (in Vamshi system) Edit

A long, winding route into the mountains will take you past five turrets. Destroy them if you wish but they are not required to complete the mission. The turrets will always launch their missiles at the front of the Mako, so backing up slowly, perpendicular to the missile tracks, is an effective method for taking them down. Since you usually only face one turret at a time, you can also jump out of the Mako when a turret is heavily damaged and apply the killing blow on foot to receive a higher XP reward. Just be careful not to jump out at the moment a missile lands.

Continue to a small outpost at the top of the hill with another set of 3 Geth Snipers and 6 Geth Rocket Troopers. Once they've been cleared, a Geth Colossus will be dropped from overhead. Since you fight the Colossus by itself, it can be treated somewhat like a mobile turret - jump or back up to avoid the bolts it aims at the front of the Mako, while applying damage as fast as your guns recharge. Again you can jump out at the last minute to receive higher XP rewards - just time it so you don't get disintegrated in the process.

Casbin (in Hong system) Edit

This is an outdoor outpost east, northeast of your landing position. The easiest path is to go north and then swing around the mountains to get to the outpost. However, you can go directly over the mountain by driving near the Samarium deposit and then heading towards the Uranium deposit. As you get close, swing towards the outpost. The outpost itself is defended by three Geth Snipers and six Geth Rocket Troopers. Once they have been destroyed, a Geth Dropship will fly and linger overhead. It drops off Geth Shock Troopers. You can either attack the dropship with grenades or the Mako's cannon until it is forced to retreat, or engage the Shock Troopers as they appear. After twenty or so kills, the dropship will give up and leave. You'll accumulate more ammo and weapon upgrades than you will ever need this latter way.

There are also three Geth Armatures and three turrets at a post in the mountains marked 'Anomalous Signal'. It is not necessary to eliminate them to complete the assignment on Casbin. If you decide to do so anyway, be careful, as frontal approach can get your Mako overwhelmed by the sheer amount of firepower. A much easier method is to drive beneath the hills on the right side of the outpost until you encounter the lone turret. It will alert two armatures, which will come in range after about three minutes, giving you ample time to defeat the turret and wipe out unsupported armatures, then deal with the rest of the outpost.

Antibaar (in Tereshkova system) Edit

The geth have built another outpost in the mountains in the north central of the map. It is also guarded by 3 Geth Snipers and 6 Geth Rocket Troopers, but this time they're joined by the Geth Colossus. When you get closer, unless you have high level combat optics, your radar will be jammed. Once the ground troops are taken out, a Geth Dropship will drop reinforcements consisting of two Geth Primes, 3 Shock Troopers and 2 Rocket Troopers. Focus on the Primes first as they provide damage and defense bonuses to the smaller geth, and they are the greatest threat.

Insanity Tips: This is by far the most difficult of the worlds because the geth base is tightly surrounded by mountains that make it very difficult to obtain a good firing location - even for the Mako - without having all ten geth unloading on you. The direct fire (bullet) damage alone is pretty gruesome even if you avoid all the rockets.

So stay in the Mako, don't worry about scrounging extra XP, at least until you've winnowed the numbers down a lot.
The best firing location for the Mako is on the north side of the camp (the ground at the south is very uneven and throws the aiming reticle way off), so drive around on the east side of the mountains and come in from the north. From there you'll be able to at least partially obscure the Mako while winnowing the field.
Take out the snipers first because they do the most direct fire (undodgeable) damage.
Sneaky way to avoid death: if the Mako gets damaged really quickly and you don't think you can make it to safety in time, you can go to the "Map" screen and instantly return to the Normandy.

Rayingri (in Gagarin system) Edit

The geth have taken over a research outpost. Follow the beacons into the hills to an underground facility surrounded by dragon's teeth. Make sure to park the Mako in front of the entrance; the reason for this will be apparent later. Enter the facility to discover it is infested with husks. The entry chamber has a Weapons locker and Storage locker in it (Easy Decryption, so loot it then move on to the main chamber. The latter contains about eight husks so take them out then find a med kit on a pillar. When you go to the back rooms the tunnel will open and six more husks will run out at you. Take them all out then grab some cover because as soon as the last husk is dead you will be ambushed by a large geth force. The force has two Geth Destroyers, two Geth Snipers, and three Geth Troopers. Once the geth are down head to the back rooms and loot the place. The right room holds an unlocked crate and a malfunctioning object, while the left has 3 unlocked crates and another malfunctioning object. Head outside when you are done.

Insanity Tips: The last four husks are in the "back hallway" of the base. Before you kill them, assign your squad to say near the entrance (or at least the entrance of the main room which is well-protected), and then draw the husks out to them there. That way when the huge force of Geth appears you won't be trapped in the back rooms with a bunch of Geth Destroyers rushing you.

When you leave the outpost, you will find a Geth Dropship sending in reinforcements. There are 3 Geth Troopers, 2 Geth Rocket Troopers, a sniper and a Shock Trooper. If the Mako was parked at the facility's entrance before you entered it, you can use it as cover during this battle. Otherwise, retreating behind the facility will prevent the geth from attacking all at once, although they will still try to flank you. The dropship will not linger as it did on Casbin, and once the ground troops are gone this outpost is clear. Be careful around the spikes in the outside battle as ramming the Mako into them can cause it to get stuck at the top (if this happens, go to the Map menu and use it to return to the Normandy).

Solcrum (in Grissom system) Edit

When all four outposts have been destroyed, one of your squadmates will say that they expected one of the destroyed outposts to be the main outpost for the attacks. Then the other will say that the signal is coming into the outpost. They say that the signal must be coming from somewhere inside the cluster. It leads to the Grissom system, where the geth have a main base of operations on Solcrum, the small moon beside Notanban.

The entrance to the underground base on Solcrum is guarded by three Geth Rocket Troopers in sniper towers and two patrolling Geth Colossi. Insanity Tips: While driving around the base in a circle and staying on the move to avoid missiles, take out the Rocket Troopers first to quickly reduce the total Geth firepower. Then by staying close to the base itself and slowly circling it (preferably in reverse if you're good at that sort of thing) you can usually keep one of the Colossi behind the base while wearing down the other.

The interior of the base is laid out as a prefab two story with balcony on the left rather than the expected underground pattern. Inside the base there are only some destructible crates for cover and it manned by a contingent of three Geth Destroyers, three Geth Hoppers (two Stalkers and one Sapper) and a Geth Juggernaut on the balcony. Unlike many other missions, there will be no containment cells to aid you in the fight. Once the geth are dead, a paragraph summary will appear, saying a recording of a quarian singing a lament has been transmitted back to the geth worlds behind the Perseus Veil by a terminal.

Insanity Tips: Lift or Throw are useful to stun the hoppers to keep them still long enough to shoot. You should be able to safely snipe the Juggernaut from inside the entrance chamber once a few of the hoppers are down. Watch out for the Destroyers trying to get close -- save a biotic ability like Lift or Throw, or a tech ability like Damping or AI Hacking to stun one if it rushes you.

Don't forget to go through the door opposite the entrance on the ground floor to grab an upgrade kit, secure crate (Average Decryption) and hack the data terminal (Easy Decryption) for geth data files you can bring to Tali for the supplementary assignment Tali and the Geth.

Complete this assignment by returning to the Normandy for a congratulatory message from Admiral Hackett.

Enemies Edit

Trivia Edit

If you start off with Rayingri, then move to Antibaar and clean up there, one squad member will comment that there's "only one more outpost to go", although you've still got two more to destroy. After going to Casbin and wiping out the outpost there, you will get the location of the geth headquarters.
Similarly, if you do Maji, Casbin, and then Antibaar, the conversation for destroying all four bases will trigger and Solcrum will become available without having to complete Rayingri. The conversation at Casbin will still say the system is half cleaned out, despite the next location (Antibaar) triggering the last base. Rayingri can still be completed, however.
After taking out the fourth base and deducing the location of the fifth on Solcrum, whoever speaks last in the short cutscene will say their last line twice — once in the cutscene and once after you've regained control. This may be the result of a bug.