As good as Mass Effect is, there are a number of things about it that aren’t documented properly in the manual and that I wished I knew when I started playing it. Here are some tips in case anyone is still making their way through the game.

• Asteroid belts can contain resource deposits that can be surveyed. In fact, I believe that the only way to complete the survey mission is to survey asteroid belts. This is tedious to do since you basically have to mouse over the entire length of the belt to find if there is any object that you can interact with, just like the old point and click adventure games.

• Consider hoarding your money until you manage to amass one million credits. This earns you the “Rich” achievement which in turn unlocks “Spectre” weapons that you can then buy either from the C-Sec Quartermaster in the Citadel or your own quartermaster on the Normandy. Once you get the achievement, it doesn’t matter if your cash falls below one million. You just need to have the achievement to access those weapons which are far and away the best weapons available in the game.
• Keep in mind that beginning with the series 7 of equipment, weapons and armour have two slots for modding instead of one, so they’re hugely better than the series 6 equipment even if the stats show only a slight improvement.
• Don’t hesitate to play as an Adept or to use the Adept NPC that you get in the game. In the KOTOR games, pure Force casters were notably weaker than pure fighter classes, but biotics in Mass Effect are extremely powerful. The “Lift” power for example, makes just about anything in the game easy to kill. For more cheese, play as a Vanguard to exploit both the biotic powers and the Soldier’s “Adrenaline” power to automatically get rid of all your cooldowns.
• Similarly the pistol in the game is a fairly good weapon, unlike other games where pistols are merely backup weapons, so there’s no need to switch it out for another weapon if you like using it. It might do as much damage as other weapons, but its advantage is that you can fire for a long time before it overheats and it’s possible to snipe enemies with it since it retains accuracy over quite a long distance.
• On the other hand, if you prefer to use a portable Mako cannon, try modding a sniper rifle with high explosive rounds and damage boosts. Every shot will cause your rifle to overheat but it’ll be like shooting an artillery piece at your enemies.
• If you’re short of money, there’s a locker on the Normandy next to the medical station which periodically gets filled with equipment that you can use or sell. That’s pretty unlikely though since there’s so much money in the game and so few things to spend it on.
• Once you hit level 20, you’ll get a special mission that takes place in the Local Cluster. You might want to complete that mission as soon as possible because it unlocks a specialization class.
• If you’re going to replay the game after completion, understand that repeatedly using a skill eventually earns you an achievement that allows you to select that skill when starting a new game with a new character even if you pick a class that doesn’t normally have access to that skill. For example, if you kill enough enemies in one game with assault rifles to unlock the associate achievement, you can choose to have that skill available if you replay as, say, an engineer, who is normally restricted only to pistols and shotguns.
• Finally, a last tip that’s somewhat spoilerish, if you want to complete all of the sidequests, do them before travelling to the final confrontation. Unlike games like Oblivion, there’s no way to return to exploring the galaxy once you complete the main plot.