Mission: Find The Conduit

Knockin' Boots

When you're done on the Citadel, you can take off for Ilos. Before you land, you'll have the opportunity to complete your romantic subplot with your chosen mate. Do what you do best, then get ready to head for Saren's base on the planet.

Override The Security

After you land, head south into the Plaza, being careful not to upset the two Armatures there. Well, you can't really help but upset them, but you can kill them when they come around to attack you. Head down the ramp into the Lower Ruins here; there's a computer marked Armature Control that will presumably shut down any Armatures you haven't encountered yet.

Geth Primes are no joke; get a move on through this area.

Anyway, continue to make your way south through the Courtyard, towards the elevator down that way. When you reach the bottom, move into the Armature Room, but hide behind one of the stairwells on your left or right and use it as cover from the many Geth here. You can also try to hack into one of the Armature Repair Bays here, to turn an Armature to your side, but it's probably not necessary. Get to the security room here and access the panel to open the path to the Archives.

The Archives is essentially one long line. Some light Geth defenses will have been set up, but nothing major. Make your way to the force field and then exit the Mako, entering the doorway and elevator nearby. The Watcher is there.

Save The Citadel

After your lengthy conversation with Vigil, you'll have to restart your pursuit of Saren. Head through the trenches below the Archives to reach the Conduit, which has already been activated. You'll have to drive through it to make your way back to the Citadel. You can talk with Avina if you wish, but your main goal here is to reach and use the elevator near your starting point.

After you get stuck in the maintenance shaft, start walking! You have plenty of enemies to fight here, but you should be well-geared for combat, so you won't have much to worry about. The farther you go, though, the more likely you'll be to run into an enemy dropship. When you do, quickly find the three Citadel Defense Turrets scattered around it and hack them. If you do so quickly enough, you can shoot down the dropship automatically while your party concentrates on the enemies themselves.

The Citadel isn't going to save itself, now.

Eventually you'll reach the Exterior Defense Grid, where a number of heavy turrets will have been set up. You can avoid them by sticking to the long access trench to the east, or you can hack and blow up the turrets themselves for lots of experience. At the southeastern corner of the Grid is a panel that will let you return to the interior of the Citadel.

Finish This

Make your way up through the Citadel Tower towards the Council meeting area. More Geth stand in your way, but hey—they're there to be killed. You'll find Saren at the end of the line. It's time to end this fight once and for all, but before you head up to him, you'll want to save your game; the final portions of the game involve some choices.

First Saren Fight

In the first dialogue with Saren, an interesting option appears. If you've increased your Charm or Intimidate enough (presumably you need to max it out), then you can actually talk Saren into shooting himiself in the head! It's a pretty badass option, and one you'll definitely want to use if you're playing on a difficulty higher than Normal.

You're awfully persuasive.

If you don't have enough speechcraft abilities, or simply wish to fight, then get started on Saren. He's fairly tough, understandably. He's got a lot of shields, does good damage with his pistol, and dashes about the area very quickly; he'll be hard to hit unless you have aim assist turned up. What's more, he can use Sabotage and Damping on your characters, preventing anyone from attacking for a while.

The best way to proceed here is to wear him down over time. Use Polonium or Inferno ammo to prevent him from healing, use Overload of your own to wear down his shields, and let your teammates do most of the damage if you're having a hard time hitting him. He's immune to most biotic attacks while he flies around, so you'll want to take him down with your weapons. Keep up the pressure on him, prevent him from healing with special ammo, take down his shields, and eventually he'll fall—literally. He'll actually give you loot when he dies, but it's all terrible level two stuff.

The Choice

Your choice now is to either save the Council—a paragon act—or ignore their distress calls. You can save your game immediately after killing Saren here, if you like, in case you want to investigate the three options available to you.

Second Saren Fight

After you make your call, Saren will reanimate and come at you again. He's essentially a super-powered Geth Hopper at this point; he'll jump all over the walls and the ceiling while attempting to shoot at you. He doesn't seem to use his Sabotage or Damping powers here, but he'll still be very tough to beat, if only because he's so difficult to shoot.

Hitting him while he floats is the best way to take down Saren.

Luckily, Saren/Sovereign is not immune to biotics or tech, at least not on Veteran difficulty. Every so often, a lucky Lift will break through, incapactitating him for a few seconds; it's at these times that you want to unload on him with Marksman or whatever your weapon skill might be. Overload his shields down (he has a lot of them) and keep the pressure on him at all times to prevent the shields from regenerating.

There will be an interlude in this mission, after which his shields will probably be fully restored, so watch for that. Also, he'll periodically attach himself to the ceiling and rapidly fire rockets at you. Hide behind the single pillar in the room to avoid these, and be sure to use Unity as soon as possible after a teammate goes down. If you head into this fight without a lot of medi-gels, it can be difficult to survive, especially on higher difficulty levels, but if you wait until Saren's incapacitated by a Lift or Singularity or something, you'll have a much better chance of taking him down.

The Endgame

After completing the game, you'll unlock a new difficulty setting, Hardcore, as well as the ability to reach level 60 in the game. You can also restart the game with the same character you have now, at the same level. You'll need to ramp up the difficulty to keep things challenging, though. Or you can restart the game with a new character class for extra fun.

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