Mass Effect 3

The achievment is self-explanatory for completing all MP maps on Gold. There are 6 maps, simply survive all 10 waves (and extract) on all of the on Gold difficulty.

In order to get this in SP, you need to complete all unique missions on Insanity (best done when doing your Insanity run). These are the missions where you land on a planet/space station, do something and leave. The random fetch quests for Citadel people do not count.

As per the in-game achievement tracker, there are 27 such missions. As far as I know they are as follows:

All Priority missions (story related and unmissable). 13/27.
- Earth
- Mars
- Palaven (Menae)
- Sur'Kesh
- Tuchanka
- Citadel (Cerberus)
- Geth Dreadnought
- Rannoch
- Thessia
- Sanctuary
- Cerberus Headquarters
- Earth Return
- Citadel Finale

All other planetary missions. For safety, do these BEFORE doing the Priority mission. 17/27.
- Tuchanka: Turian Platoon
- Tuchanka: Bomb
- Rannoch: Rescue Admiral Koris
- Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadrons

All N7 Missions (6 of them). 23/27.
- N7: Cerberus Lab
- N7: Cerberus Attack
- N7: Cerberus Abductions
- N7: Cerberus Fighter Base
- N7: Fuel Reactors
- N7: Communication Hub

Miscallaneous. 27/27.
- Grissom Academy: Emergency Evacuation
- Attican Traverse: The Rachni
- Kallini: Ardat-Yakshi Monastery
- Arrae: Ex-Cerberus Scientists

Eden Prime (from the From Ashes DLC) is not required for this achievement.

Note that both Grissom Academy and Tuchanka: Bomb are missable if you do not do them within three missions of receiving them. Do them ASAP. Thanks to Pyro1099 and Kennyannydenny in the comments for the intel on these.

In addition, you can obtain these across saves (you could, for example, miss Grissom Academy, reload a previous save and do the mission for the achievement progression to register). Thanks to Tony Starc in the comments for the confirmation of this fact.

As far as I am aware, these are the missions that must be completed on Insanity. You can keep track via the Achievements tracker on the Main Menu (there will a bar with #/27 completed).

If I missed anything, left anything out please let me know in the comments. Good Luck!

The achievment is self-explanatory for completing all MP maps on Gold. There are 6 maps, simply survive all 10 waves (and extract) on all of the on Gold difficulty.

In order to get this in SP, you need to complete all unique missions on Insanity (best done when doing your Insanity run). These are the missions where you land on a planet/space station, do something and leave. The random fetch quests for Citadel people do not count.

As per the in-game achievement tracker, there are 27 such missions. As far as I know they are as follows:

All Priority missions (story related and unmissable). 13/27.
- Earth
- Mars
- Palaven (Menae)
- Sur'Kesh
- Tuchanka
- Citadel (Cerberus)
- Geth Dreadnought
- Rannoch
- Thessia
- Sanctuary
- Cerberus Headquarters
- Earth Return
- Citadel Finale

All other planetary missions. For safety, do these BEFORE doing the Priority mission. 17/27.
- Tuchanka: Turian Platoon
- Tuchanka: Bomb
- Rannoch: Rescue Admiral Koris
- Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadrons

All N7 Missions (6 of them). 23/27.
- N7: Cerberus Lab
- N7: Cerberus Attack
- N7: Cerberus Abductions
- N7: Cerberus Fighter Base
- N7: Fuel Reactors
- N7: Communication Hub

Miscallaneous. 27/27.
- Grissom Academy: Emergency Evacuation
- Attican Traverse: The Rachni
- Kallini: Ardat-Yakshi Monastery
- Arrae: Ex-Cerberus Scientists

Eden Prime (from the From Ashes DLC) is not required for this achievement.

Note that both Grissom Academy and Tuchanka: Bomb are missable if you do not do them within three missions of receiving them. Do them ASAP. Thanks to Pyro1099 and Kennyannydenny in the comments for the intel on these.

In addition, you can obtain these across saves (you could, for example, miss Grissom Academy, reload a previous save and do the mission for the achievement progression to register). Thanks to Tony Starc in the comments for the confirmation of this fact.

As far as I am aware, these are the missions that must be completed on Insanity. You can keep track via the Achievements tracker on the Main Menu (there will a bar with #/27 completed).

If I missed anything, left anything out please let me know in the comments. Good Luck!

Unwavering Achievement Guide – Multiplayer

3/26/2012 Version 0.4: Added Firebase White map. Added Descriptions of other Maps

Table of Contents
A1 - Foreword
A2 - Enemy Selection
A3 - Team Composition
A4 - Gold Tips
B1 - Versus Geth
B2 - Versus Cerberus
B3 - Versus Reapers
B4 - Objectives Strategy
C1 - Firebase Giant
C2 - Firebase White
C3 - Firebase Reactor
C4 - Firebase Dagger
C5 - Firebase Glacier
C6 - Firebase Ghost

A1 Foreword:

Single player or multiplayer? There is no 'better' way to obtain Unwavering, obviously if you're more keen with competitive play, then the multiplayer way might be better for you. If you are more attuned to playing single player, and are a tactful commander, than it might be easy to just play everything on Insanity. The choice will be obvious the moment you start your first multiplayer match.

Why Multiplayer? If you have a good team on multiplayer, you can bust through this on average, 30 minutes per map, for a total of 3 hours for this Achievement. Albeit you are unlikely to get Unwavering in 3 hours when just starting multiplayer. Yet through the course of levelling up your MP characters to be able to beat Gold, you should be able to hit these Achievements as well.







Why Gold? Obvious reason being it’s the achievement requirement, but it’s more to it than that. Simply attempting the maps on Gold regardless if you feel like your team is good or not, is still worth it. The amount of credits you get in Gold is somewhat ludicrous. Wave 3 objectives give off 10-12k credits, which is already 2/3rd of what you get on beating all of the objectives on Bronze. Wave 6 gives off 15-20k, while Wave 10 gives off 40-45k, for a grand total of 75k+, which is more than enough for the elusive Spectre Pack which gives a bountiful amount of goodness.

A2 Enemy Selection:

Enemies selection is somewhat important, depending on your team composition. Regardless, what it boils down to is tactics and teamwork.

Why Geth? Among the three different army options, Geth are somewhat lax. They do not have any units that auto-kill you (Cerberus’ Phantom/Atlas, Reapers’ Banshee/Brute), and with the right class (Quarian Infiltrator), they are quite easy to tackle. Their boss unit, the Prime, is much easier to handle than the Atlas or the Banshee. However without a Quarian Infiltrator, they are struggle. Even with the current metagame and the Sabotage buff, Geth are still beatable with a QI aslong as you have the right strategy. My main grief with the Geth are the Geth Hunters, which can be a pain in enclosed maps with their cloak and shotguns.

Why Cerberus? One species and it's power can turn Cerberus from a pain into a cakewalk. The Asari's stasis bubble can freeze every unit that Cerberus has, except the Atlas and Turrets. One of the biggest pains for many teams are the Phantoms, but a quick stasis can put them in their place.

Why not the Reapers? Not a single playable species and their trio of powers have any advantage over the reapers. Sabotage is useless. Stasis doesn't affect Banshees, Brutes or Ravagers, making it useless. Banshee's charge towards you in biotic fashion, Brutes charge at you at high speeds, and Ravagers' 2-3 shot combo can kill you if you aren't mobile enough. It's not worth the medi-gel.

A3 Team Composition/Strategy:

Composition:

Generally you want a team composed of characters ranging from Level 15-20, but for those interested in trying to build up your characters to be able to beat Gold, I give the following look.

Asari Vanguard
Role: Support
Against: (Cerberus: Good) (Geth: Okay) (Reapers: Mediocre)
Ideal Recharge Speed: +100%-200%
Weapon : Shotguns or Pistols
Powers Tree:
Biotic Charge (6) -> Radius -> Power Synergy -> Barrier
Stasis (6) -> Duration -> Recharge Speed -> Stasis Bubble
Lift Grenade (3)
Asari Justicar (6) -> Damage & Capacity -> Power Damage -> Pistols
Fitness (5) -> Durability -> Shield Recharge
Notes: Unfortunately Gold brings the worst out of the other Vanguard species. other than the Asari. Biotic Charge becomes a useless power at this difficulty. One does not certainly want to be using Biotic Charge into a group of enemies, even the weakest of grunts. (Yes, I've seen cases where some Human Vanguards are capable of soloing portions of waves on Gold difficulty, but this is a team game). Thus Biotic Charge is used more of a defensive power in this build, as upgrading it to Rank 6 and choosing Barrier allows you to escape the trickiest of situations. If your barriers are gone, simply use BC to regain them, and then run away to find a more tactical position. Stasis is a self-explanatory power and the bread and butter of the Asari. One needs to be utilizing Stasis at every second possible. Thus you should carrying only one weapon to reduce your recharge speed. Shotguns for small maps, and pistols for the bigger maps. Not a fan of Grenades as they tend to do much to nothing. However, having a few are good in case of anything.

Asari Adept

Human Infiltrator
Role: Carry/Heavy
Against: (Cerberus: Good) (Geth: Good) (Reapers: Good)
Ideal Recharge Speed: 0%
Weapon: Sniper Rifle (Preferably Widow/Black Widow)
Powers Tree:
Tactical Cloak (6) -> Damage -> Recharged Speed -> Sniper Damage
Cryo Blast (6) -> Duration -> Cryo Explosion -> Frozen Vulnerability
Sticky Grenade (0)
Alliance Training (6) -> Weapon Damage -> Headshots -> Weapon Damage
Fitness (6) -> Durability -> Shield Recharge -> Fitness Expert
Notes; The Human Infiltrator's job is to keep dealing damage. Equipped with the Black Widow, Widow, or another sniper rifle with atleast Level X, and then modded with the Extended Barrel, you should be able to one-shot kill any unit with 100% health. Ideally you want to be cloaking, and then firing your shots to deal huge damage, courtesy from your Sniper Damage, and Headshots bonuses. When it comes to units such as the Atlas, Prime, Brute or Banshees, the Cloak->Fire strategy can rip through chunks of their health and shields/barrier. Know where your ammo crates are and when the situation calls for it, cloak to revive downed teammates.

Quarian Infiltrator

Strategy:

Weapons can be diverse, but as long as your supports have the lowest cooldowns as possible for their powers, and aslong as you have one teammate with a heavy weapon (Widow, Claymore, Black Widow, etc), then you should be fine. Weapons with high fire rates, accompanied with ammo bonuses, are excellent to take down shields and barriers. Overload, Energy Drain and Warp can do the same as well.

Your team should be sticking together no matter what. Every time I played on Gold, my team, not led by myself but by other individuals, would just end up in the general area. We’d beat the map cleanly. My illustrated, yet poorly artistic maps for each individual area will help give a sense of where your team should be. Going solo/lone wolf is generally a bad idea unless you know your Infiltrators are ready to jump in and save your butt.

Gold difficulty isn’t something to be taken lightly. Your team should be willing to put in Equipment (Ammo/Weapon/Armor Bonuses), and your team should have the maximum supplies possible (Missile Launchers, Clip Packs, Medi-Gel, Survival Pack) for optimal results.

A4 Gold Tips:
Melee is useless
Unlike Bronze and Silver where you can troll around spamming charged melee attacks all day err day, it does absolutely nothing on Gold. It's alot like other FPSs, if you're going in for the melee kill, then it gives your opponent time to shoot you down doing so. Only use it as a finisher when your enemies health is low.

One weapon to rule them all
Stick to a single weapon, it reduces your cooldown time by only having one. Know where your ammo crates are and refill it when need be.

Grabs are win
Grabs can take down every unit in the Geth army except for the Primes, and any unit in the Cerberus army except Guardians, Turrets, Banshees and Atlasus. Thus, it's an effective way to easily to one-off enemies that have shields/armor.

B1 Versus Geth:

Strategy: Geth Hunters and Pyros are the biggest problem you'll likely face. Try to keep as much distance as possible and finish them off when you can.

Units:

Trooper
Health=Regular
With no shields or armor, Geth Troopers are the easiest things to take down. However much like anything on Gold, don't underestimate them!

Rocket Trooper
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
If you're trying to sabotage geth, this unit is the number one priority. It can take out it's brethren at long range, and that means it's not focusing on you.at long range either.

Pyro
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Useless at long range, punishing up close. Make sure you take this sucker out when you can. Only sabotage Pyros when they are near other Geth as they will burn them down. Otherwise, take them out with conventional means.

Hunter
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
These guys are a huge pain. Either it's a bug or my sabotage is useless, but it doesn't affect them when they are cloaked? Make sure you know where they are on the map, or else by the time you do know where they are, it's on top of your corpse that needs to be revived.

Prime
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Stay in cover. The Primes can 3-shot you and it's not very pretty. They release Turrets and Drones that fire on you and regen their shields, respectively. Either way, there are many ways to take out Primes, either by sabotaging surrounding Geth to fire on it (Rocket Troopers/Pyros most importantly), by sabotaging the Prime and then firing on it, or letting your sniper fire headshots at it as it's a slow moving unit.

B2 Versus Cerberus:

Strategy: Cerberus is an army you can generally finish off by staying in cover. They love to talk so that should give you a heads up of whether or not they are flanking/around you. Make sure you have your sights on whatever your Asari is using stasis on, and if you are the blue femme, then spam that power all day long.

Units:

Assault Trooper
Health=Regular
The Cerberus bread and butter. And their defenses are like butter. Headshot dead, move along.

Centurion
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
Throwing Grenades like this is Call of Duty, the Centurions will love to annoy you with their smoke and rapid firing rifle. Just make sure your team at least has Overload, Energy Drain, Stasis or a strong sniper to rip those shields apart and then you're set against them.

Nemesis
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
These girls love to take down your shields in one shot but their killing blow ability is laughable. Despite that their agility is remarkable and they'll dodge your sniper rifle bullets like they're Usain Bolt. Thus I advise to leave them to last.

Guardian
Health=Regular
This unit is a joke. Sniper rifle headshot, dead. Stasis, dead. Pull, dead.

Engineer
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
Much like Guardians, make sure you take down their shields, and then punish them. Engineers, while they do dispense turrets, shouldn't be the priority to take out as they are somewhat harmless.

Turret
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Nothing much to be said other than to stay in cover, and let your heavies take them out.

Phantom
Health=Regular, enforced with Barriers
The biggest pain in the Cerberus army, these units have cloak, some tiny gun that packs a punch and the ability to one-off you with their swords. Make sure your Asari uses stasis on them immediately and let your heavies pick them off accordingly.

Atlas
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Fire on their canopy to deal loads of damage. Other than that, stand your ground when you're against them, and if there are multiples, it's time to bring out your Cobra ML.

B3 Versus Reapers:

Strategy: What are you doing? I told you to play against the other armies instead!

Units:

Husk
Health=Regular
Easily killable by just about anything, make sure you take out Husks before they end up in your face, leaving you a sitting duck for other more dangerous Reaper units

Cannibal
Health=Regular
Annoying grunt unit with rapid fire weapon and grenade spam. Put these Batarian mutants out of their misery with a well placed shot between their four eyes.

Marauder
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
With the ability to revive dead units, make sure you take out Marauders out when you can. Similar strategy as Centurions, Energy Drain/Overlord/Stasis does wonders against them.

Ravager
Health=Armor
With their 3-shot kill combo, make sure you stay in cover against these suckers. The giant circle/mouth is their weakspot, so make sure your sniper fires on that. They leave a puddle of poison, so don't run through that either. It's best to take down Ravagers before they pin you in position, allowing Banshees or Brutes to move in for the kill.

Swarmer
Health=Regular
These come out of the Ravager looking for food. Support cast should take them out, ideally with Stasis or their small arm weapons.

Brute
Health=Armor
Ideally your sniper should be able to take down the Brute in a handful of shots. Just stay behind cover and make sure you aren't in their charging lane or else you'll be down to one bar health.

Banshee
Health=Armor, enforced with Barriers
Run away. Adepts can tear their barriers apart, leaving the Banshee easily killable from any of your heavies. Problem is on Gold is that once Banshees start showing up they don't stop showing up. So make sure the team is on the move at all times.

B4 Objectives Strategy:

Your team will be faced with three objectives over the 10 waves, spaced out at Wave 3, 6 and 10.

I: Hacking (4 Locations) – This is the easiest and fastest objective to complete, and hopefully the most numerous one you have in your maps. Whether or not you move as a team or as individuals does not really matter with this objective, but if you are moving as a team, make sure it’s the heavies who are not uploading. If you are against Geth, it's best for your Quarians to be sabotaging rather than hacking. If you are moving as individuals, then it’s a best bet to allow your infiltrators to cloak, and then upload the data.

II: Hacking (1 Location) – This requires your team to be within a certain area for an allotted amount of time. The more people you have in the area, the quicker the upload will be. The areas will generally not be the area you are already in, so your whole team will have to move. You can generally finish this in thirty seconds/a minute, however you will be swarmed by enemies like crazy. If you are against Geth, it's best for your Quarians to be keen to Sabotage. If you are against Cerberus, make sure you stay away from potential death dealers (Atlas/Banshee). If you are against the Reapers, good luck. If the situation calls for it, you may have to use Cobra Missile Launchers to get out of their alive. Once the upload is done, move back to the suggested location.

III: Priority Targets (x4) – This is generally a big pain on Gold difficulty. While some maps tend to make the priority targets simply weaker grunts, but sometimes it’s all Primes/Atlas/Banshees, and those don’t exactly go down very fast. The best option is to move as a team and take down the targets together. However after killing one target, you are then rushed or blocked by other enemies from your next target -> then the best solution is for Infiltrator to cloak. They can then move out and take out the target with whatever means necessary (Missile Launcher, etc) .

IV: Wave 11/Extraction – It’s not the best idea to always rush to the landing zone once your timer starts. It’s actually best to be spread out as much as possible on the map so that enemy spawns are erratic. Only once the timer hits 30 seconds remaining, should the entire team be rushing to the landing zone. This wave is the time you should be dishing out as many Missile Launchers as you see fit. You will still complete the map regardless if you have a Partial or Complete extraction, however if your team fails on Wave 11, you won’t get credit for the map for Unwavering.

Individual Map Strategies:

C1 Firebase Giant (Tuchanka)

Notes: This is by far the easiest map to complete on Gold, and probably the one you want to test out first to see if your team can pull the achievement off. Due to it's large area and large rooms, you'll have alot of space to work with. Obviously with that said, the best option in weaponry is Sniper Rifles. From the map below, you can see that the upstairs room gives the best vision for your team, and the best survivability chance.



Strategy: Players 1, 2 and 3 should be equipped with long range weaponry, and at least one of them should be a suport so that the main force straight ahead of you can get sabotaged/stasised. Player 4’s role in this is to be the lookout, to make sure that your team is not flanked at all. Generally, Player 4 should be camping the top ladder. My biggest grief with this strategy is that your lookout/support really has to make sure no enemies are coming to flank your team. Regardless, the amount of time it takes from where the enemies spawn to where your team is located should give you enough time to blast them to bits.

C2 Firebase White (Noveria)

Notes: While its size may seem quite small, the downstairs room gives you the best option to complete this. You have a lot of different exit strategies in the room, and enough ammo crates to complement your fire power. However being small in its entirety, you should make sure your team is ready to move in case the situation gets hairy. Your support should be on a sabotage/stasis first, shoot later mentality. You might be thinking "Oh, well in Bronze and Silver my team likes to stay at the top and we did just fine". Well, if you actually manage to execute that in Gold, I commend you. There's no cover in the top area and it's so easy to get flanked. I highly recommend staying at the bottom area as it blankets the enemy.



Strategy: Two players (#1,2) should keep a lookout for possible enemies from upstairs, while two players (#3,4) should be on the lookout for enemies outside. Players 1 and 2 should be in cover, and 3 if needed, and ready to grab enemies like crazy. Player 4 should have some sort of long ranged weapon, and lessen the load of enemies that are entering the room.

C3 Firebase Reactor (Cyone)

Notes: When I first started ME3 multiplayer, I thought that Reactor would be the toughest to go through on Gold simply because of its chunkiness and the fact that it’s also one of the smaller maps. After completing it, I think my consensus was correct, however it’s really not that bad. If you stay in the suggested area on the map below, the choke points in which the Geth go through just make your life much easier.

Strategy: Similar to Giant, have three players looking straight down the corridor, while one player is on the lookout for possible flankers.

C4 Firebase Dagger (Ontarom)

Notes: Dagger's long hallway provides good vision across the entire map and an easy time if your team is decked out with long range weaponry. The key is to watch your flanks and have good communication.

Strategy:

C5 Firebase Glacier (Sanctum)

Notes: Glacier is a hellhole, a map that asks your team to utilize grabs and to constantly be on the move. While it's generally a good idea to stay at the top of the map in the beginning of each wave, be ready to move in groups of two to sweep/survive.

Strategy:

C6 Firebase Ghost (Benning)

Notes: Ghost is a large map, but rather messy. Due to the fact that it's so wide open, your team will be transitioning from cover to cover depending on where the enemies spawn, which can be erratic at times.

Strategy: Ghost's landing zone is a complete flustercuck on Gold. Just move around the map and only come back to it when the timer is < :30.

Unwavering Achievement Guide – Multiplayer

3/26/2012 Version 0.4: Added Firebase White map. Added Descriptions of other Maps

Table of Contents
A1 - Foreword
A2 - Enemy Selection
A3 - Team Composition
A4 - Gold Tips
B1 - Versus Geth
B2 - Versus Cerberus
B3 - Versus Reapers
B4 - Objectives Strategy
C1 - Firebase Giant
C2 - Firebase White
C3 - Firebase Reactor
C4 - Firebase Dagger
C5 - Firebase Glacier
C6 - Firebase Ghost

A1 Foreword:

Single player or multiplayer? There is no 'better' way to obtain Unwavering, obviously if you're more keen with competitive play, then the multiplayer way might be better for you. If you are more attuned to playing single player, and are a tactful commander, than it might be easy to just play everything on Insanity. The choice will be obvious the moment you start your first multiplayer match.

Why Multiplayer? If you have a good team on multiplayer, you can bust through this on average, 30 minutes per map, for a total of 3 hours for this Achievement. Albeit you are unlikely to get Unwavering in 3 hours when just starting multiplayer. Yet through the course of levelling up your MP characters to be able to beat Gold, you should be able to hit these Achievements as well.







Why Gold? Obvious reason being it’s the achievement requirement, but it’s more to it than that. Simply attempting the maps on Gold regardless if you feel like your team is good or not, is still worth it. The amount of credits you get in Gold is somewhat ludicrous. Wave 3 objectives give off 10-12k credits, which is already 2/3rd of what you get on beating all of the objectives on Bronze. Wave 6 gives off 15-20k, while Wave 10 gives off 40-45k, for a grand total of 75k+, which is more than enough for the elusive Spectre Pack which gives a bountiful amount of goodness.

A2 Enemy Selection:

Enemies selection is somewhat important, depending on your team composition. Regardless, what it boils down to is tactics and teamwork.

Why Geth? Among the three different army options, Geth are somewhat lax. They do not have any units that auto-kill you (Cerberus’ Phantom/Atlas, Reapers’ Banshee/Brute), and with the right class (Quarian Infiltrator), they are quite easy to tackle. Their boss unit, the Prime, is much easier to handle than the Atlas or the Banshee. However without a Quarian Infiltrator, they are struggle. Even with the current metagame and the Sabotage buff, Geth are still beatable with a QI aslong as you have the right strategy. My main grief with the Geth are the Geth Hunters, which can be a pain in enclosed maps with their cloak and shotguns.

Why Cerberus? One species and it's power can turn Cerberus from a pain into a cakewalk. The Asari's stasis bubble can freeze every unit that Cerberus has, except the Atlas and Turrets. One of the biggest pains for many teams are the Phantoms, but a quick stasis can put them in their place.

Why not the Reapers? Not a single playable species and their trio of powers have any advantage over the reapers. Sabotage is useless. Stasis doesn't affect Banshees, Brutes or Ravagers, making it useless. Banshee's charge towards you in biotic fashion, Brutes charge at you at high speeds, and Ravagers' 2-3 shot combo can kill you if you aren't mobile enough. It's not worth the medi-gel.

A3 Team Composition/Strategy:

Composition:

Generally you want a team composed of characters ranging from Level 15-20, but for those interested in trying to build up your characters to be able to beat Gold, I give the following look.

Asari Vanguard
Role: Support
Against: (Cerberus: Good) (Geth: Okay) (Reapers: Mediocre)
Ideal Recharge Speed: +100%-200%
Weapon : Shotguns or Pistols
Powers Tree:
Biotic Charge (6) -> Radius -> Power Synergy -> Barrier
Stasis (6) -> Duration -> Recharge Speed -> Stasis Bubble
Lift Grenade (3)
Asari Justicar (6) -> Damage & Capacity -> Power Damage -> Pistols
Fitness (5) -> Durability -> Shield Recharge
Notes: Unfortunately Gold brings the worst out of the other Vanguard species. other than the Asari. Biotic Charge becomes a useless power at this difficulty. One does not certainly want to be using Biotic Charge into a group of enemies, even the weakest of grunts. (Yes, I've seen cases where some Human Vanguards are capable of soloing portions of waves on Gold difficulty, but this is a team game). Thus Biotic Charge is used more of a defensive power in this build, as upgrading it to Rank 6 and choosing Barrier allows you to escape the trickiest of situations. If your barriers are gone, simply use BC to regain them, and then run away to find a more tactical position. Stasis is a self-explanatory power and the bread and butter of the Asari. One needs to be utilizing Stasis at every second possible. Thus you should carrying only one weapon to reduce your recharge speed. Shotguns for small maps, and pistols for the bigger maps. Not a fan of Grenades as they tend to do much to nothing. However, having a few are good in case of anything.

Asari Adept

Human Infiltrator
Role: Carry/Heavy
Against: (Cerberus: Good) (Geth: Good) (Reapers: Good)
Ideal Recharge Speed: 0%
Weapon: Sniper Rifle (Preferably Widow/Black Widow)
Powers Tree:
Tactical Cloak (6) -> Damage -> Recharged Speed -> Sniper Damage
Cryo Blast (6) -> Duration -> Cryo Explosion -> Frozen Vulnerability
Sticky Grenade (0)
Alliance Training (6) -> Weapon Damage -> Headshots -> Weapon Damage
Fitness (6) -> Durability -> Shield Recharge -> Fitness Expert
Notes; The Human Infiltrator's job is to keep dealing damage. Equipped with the Black Widow, Widow, or another sniper rifle with atleast Level X, and then modded with the Extended Barrel, you should be able to one-shot kill any unit with 100% health. Ideally you want to be cloaking, and then firing your shots to deal huge damage, courtesy from your Sniper Damage, and Headshots bonuses. When it comes to units such as the Atlas, Prime, Brute or Banshees, the Cloak->Fire strategy can rip through chunks of their health and shields/barrier. Know where your ammo crates are and when the situation calls for it, cloak to revive downed teammates.

Quarian Infiltrator

Strategy:

Weapons can be diverse, but as long as your supports have the lowest cooldowns as possible for their powers, and aslong as you have one teammate with a heavy weapon (Widow, Claymore, Black Widow, etc), then you should be fine. Weapons with high fire rates, accompanied with ammo bonuses, are excellent to take down shields and barriers. Overload, Energy Drain and Warp can do the same as well.

Your team should be sticking together no matter what. Every time I played on Gold, my team, not led by myself but by other individuals, would just end up in the general area. We’d beat the map cleanly. My illustrated, yet poorly artistic maps for each individual area will help give a sense of where your team should be. Going solo/lone wolf is generally a bad idea unless you know your Infiltrators are ready to jump in and save your butt.

Gold difficulty isn’t something to be taken lightly. Your team should be willing to put in Equipment (Ammo/Weapon/Armor Bonuses), and your team should have the maximum supplies possible (Missile Launchers, Clip Packs, Medi-Gel, Survival Pack) for optimal results.

A4 Gold Tips:
Melee is useless
Unlike Bronze and Silver where you can troll around spamming charged melee attacks all day err day, it does absolutely nothing on Gold. It's alot like other FPSs, if you're going in for the melee kill, then it gives your opponent time to shoot you down doing so. Only use it as a finisher when your enemies health is low.

One weapon to rule them all
Stick to a single weapon, it reduces your cooldown time by only having one. Know where your ammo crates are and refill it when need be.

Grabs are win
Grabs can take down every unit in the Geth army except for the Primes, and any unit in the Cerberus army except Guardians, Turrets, Banshees and Atlasus. Thus, it's an effective way to easily to one-off enemies that have shields/armor.

B1 Versus Geth:

Strategy: Geth Hunters and Pyros are the biggest problem you'll likely face. Try to keep as much distance as possible and finish them off when you can.

Units:

Trooper
Health=Regular
With no shields or armor, Geth Troopers are the easiest things to take down. However much like anything on Gold, don't underestimate them!

Rocket Trooper
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
If you're trying to sabotage geth, this unit is the number one priority. It can take out it's brethren at long range, and that means it's not focusing on you.at long range either.

Pyro
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Useless at long range, punishing up close. Make sure you take this sucker out when you can. Only sabotage Pyros when they are near other Geth as they will burn them down. Otherwise, take them out with conventional means.

Hunter
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
These guys are a huge pain. Either it's a bug or my sabotage is useless, but it doesn't affect them when they are cloaked? Make sure you know where they are on the map, or else by the time you do know where they are, it's on top of your corpse that needs to be revived.

Prime
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Stay in cover. The Primes can 3-shot you and it's not very pretty. They release Turrets and Drones that fire on you and regen their shields, respectively. Either way, there are many ways to take out Primes, either by sabotaging surrounding Geth to fire on it (Rocket Troopers/Pyros most importantly), by sabotaging the Prime and then firing on it, or letting your sniper fire headshots at it as it's a slow moving unit.

B2 Versus Cerberus:

Strategy: Cerberus is an army you can generally finish off by staying in cover. They love to talk so that should give you a heads up of whether or not they are flanking/around you. Make sure you have your sights on whatever your Asari is using stasis on, and if you are the blue femme, then spam that power all day long.

Units:

Assault Trooper
Health=Regular
The Cerberus bread and butter. And their defenses are like butter. Headshot dead, move along.

Centurion
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
Throwing Grenades like this is Call of Duty, the Centurions will love to annoy you with their smoke and rapid firing rifle. Just make sure your team at least has Overload, Energy Drain, Stasis or a strong sniper to rip those shields apart and then you're set against them.

Nemesis
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
These girls love to take down your shields in one shot but their killing blow ability is laughable. Despite that their agility is remarkable and they'll dodge your sniper rifle bullets like they're Usain Bolt. Thus I advise to leave them to last.

Guardian
Health=Regular
This unit is a joke. Sniper rifle headshot, dead. Stasis, dead. Pull, dead.

Engineer
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
Much like Guardians, make sure you take down their shields, and then punish them. Engineers, while they do dispense turrets, shouldn't be the priority to take out as they are somewhat harmless.

Turret
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Nothing much to be said other than to stay in cover, and let your heavies take them out.

Phantom
Health=Regular, enforced with Barriers
The biggest pain in the Cerberus army, these units have cloak, some tiny gun that packs a punch and the ability to one-off you with their swords. Make sure your Asari uses stasis on them immediately and let your heavies pick them off accordingly.

Atlas
Health=Armor, enforced with Shields
Fire on their canopy to deal loads of damage. Other than that, stand your ground when you're against them, and if there are multiples, it's time to bring out your Cobra ML.

B3 Versus Reapers:

Strategy: What are you doing? I told you to play against the other armies instead!

Units:

Husk
Health=Regular
Easily killable by just about anything, make sure you take out Husks before they end up in your face, leaving you a sitting duck for other more dangerous Reaper units

Cannibal
Health=Regular
Annoying grunt unit with rapid fire weapon and grenade spam. Put these Batarian mutants out of their misery with a well placed shot between their four eyes.

Marauder
Health=Regular, enforced with Shields
With the ability to revive dead units, make sure you take out Marauders out when you can. Similar strategy as Centurions, Energy Drain/Overlord/Stasis does wonders against them.

Ravager
Health=Armor
With their 3-shot kill combo, make sure you stay in cover against these suckers. The giant circle/mouth is their weakspot, so make sure your sniper fires on that. They leave a puddle of poison, so don't run through that either. It's best to take down Ravagers before they pin you in position, allowing Banshees or Brutes to move in for the kill.

Swarmer
Health=Regular
These come out of the Ravager looking for food. Support cast should take them out, ideally with Stasis or their small arm weapons.

Brute
Health=Armor
Ideally your sniper should be able to take down the Brute in a handful of shots. Just stay behind cover and make sure you aren't in their charging lane or else you'll be down to one bar health.

Banshee
Health=Armor, enforced with Barriers
Run away. Adepts can tear their barriers apart, leaving the Banshee easily killable from any of your heavies. Problem is on Gold is that once Banshees start showing up they don't stop showing up. So make sure the team is on the move at all times.

B4 Objectives Strategy:

Your team will be faced with three objectives over the 10 waves, spaced out at Wave 3, 6 and 10.

I: Hacking (4 Locations) – This is the easiest and fastest objective to complete, and hopefully the most numerous one you have in your maps. Whether or not you move as a team or as individuals does not really matter with this objective, but if you are moving as a team, make sure it’s the heavies who are not uploading. If you are against Geth, it's best for your Quarians to be sabotaging rather than hacking. If you are moving as individuals, then it’s a best bet to allow your infiltrators to cloak, and then upload the data.

II: Hacking (1 Location) – This requires your team to be within a certain area for an allotted amount of time. The more people you have in the area, the quicker the upload will be. The areas will generally not be the area you are already in, so your whole team will have to move. You can generally finish this in thirty seconds/a minute, however you will be swarmed by enemies like crazy. If you are against Geth, it's best for your Quarians to be keen to Sabotage. If you are against Cerberus, make sure you stay away from potential death dealers (Atlas/Banshee). If you are against the Reapers, good luck. If the situation calls for it, you may have to use Cobra Missile Launchers to get out of their alive. Once the upload is done, move back to the suggested location.

III: Priority Targets (x4) – This is generally a big pain on Gold difficulty. While some maps tend to make the priority targets simply weaker grunts, but sometimes it’s all Primes/Atlas/Banshees, and those don’t exactly go down very fast. The best option is to move as a team and take down the targets together. However after killing one target, you are then rushed or blocked by other enemies from your next target -> then the best solution is for Infiltrator to cloak. They can then move out and take out the target with whatever means necessary (Missile Launcher, etc) .

IV: Wave 11/Extraction – It’s not the best idea to always rush to the landing zone once your timer starts. It’s actually best to be spread out as much as possible on the map so that enemy spawns are erratic. Only once the timer hits 30 seconds remaining, should the entire team be rushing to the landing zone. This wave is the time you should be dishing out as many Missile Launchers as you see fit. You will still complete the map regardless if you have a Partial or Complete extraction, however if your team fails on Wave 11, you won’t get credit for the map for Unwavering.

Individual Map Strategies:

C1 Firebase Giant (Tuchanka)

Notes: This is by far the easiest map to complete on Gold, and probably the one you want to test out first to see if your team can pull the achievement off. Due to it's large area and large rooms, you'll have alot of space to work with. Obviously with that said, the best option in weaponry is Sniper Rifles. From the map below, you can see that the upstairs room gives the best vision for your team, and the best survivability chance.



Strategy: Players 1, 2 and 3 should be equipped with long range weaponry, and at least one of them should be a suport so that the main force straight ahead of you can get sabotaged/stasised. Player 4’s role in this is to be the lookout, to make sure that your team is not flanked at all. Generally, Player 4 should be camping the top ladder. My biggest grief with this strategy is that your lookout/support really has to make sure no enemies are coming to flank your team. Regardless, the amount of time it takes from where the enemies spawn to where your team is located should give you enough time to blast them to bits.

C2 Firebase White (Noveria)

Notes: While its size may seem quite small, the downstairs room gives you the best option to complete this. You have a lot of different exit strategies in the room, and enough ammo crates to complement your fire power. However being small in its entirety, you should make sure your team is ready to move in case the situation gets hairy. Your support should be on a sabotage/stasis first, shoot later mentality. You might be thinking "Oh, well in Bronze and Silver my team likes to stay at the top and we did just fine". Well, if you actually manage to execute that in Gold, I commend you. There's no cover in the top area and it's so easy to get flanked. I highly recommend staying at the bottom area as it blankets the enemy.



Strategy: Two players (#1,2) should keep a lookout for possible enemies from upstairs, while two players (#3,4) should be on the lookout for enemies outside. Players 1 and 2 should be in cover, and 3 if needed, and ready to grab enemies like crazy. Player 4 should have some sort of long ranged weapon, and lessen the load of enemies that are entering the room.

C3 Firebase Reactor (Cyone)

Notes: When I first started ME3 multiplayer, I thought that Reactor would be the toughest to go through on Gold simply because of its chunkiness and the fact that it’s also one of the smaller maps. After completing it, I think my consensus was correct, however it’s really not that bad. If you stay in the suggested area on the map below, the choke points in which the Geth go through just make your life much easier.

Strategy: Similar to Giant, have three players looking straight down the corridor, while one player is on the lookout for possible flankers.

C4 Firebase Dagger (Ontarom)

Notes: Dagger's long hallway provides good vision across the entire map and an easy time if your team is decked out with long range weaponry. The key is to watch your flanks and have good communication.

Strategy:

C5 Firebase Glacier (Sanctum)

Notes: Glacier is a hellhole, a map that asks your team to utilize grabs and to constantly be on the move. While it's generally a good idea to stay at the top of the map in the beginning of each wave, be ready to move in groups of two to sweep/survive.

Strategy:

C6 Firebase Ghost (Benning)

Notes: Ghost is a large map, but rather messy. Due to the fact that it's so wide open, your team will be transitioning from cover to cover depending on where the enemies spawn, which can be erratic at times.

Strategy: Ghost's landing zone is a complete flustercuck on Gold. Just move around the map and only come back to it when the timer is < :30.

You can change the difficulty to insanity before the mission ends. So play through on narrative, and when the mission is going to end, switch to insanity. I tested this, and it works.

You can change the difficulty to insanity before the mission ends. So play through on narrative, and when the mission is going to end, switch to insanity. I tested this, and it works.

This is not a true guide per se, but rather an assessment of the MP vs. campaign strategy for this achievement. (It assumes a second play thru with upper 50 / 60 level character).
The pros of the campaign method far outweigh the MP on gold for the following reasons:
1) In SP you are using a team of 50-60 level characters vs. 20 level characters in MP, thus giving you a wider array of powers & greater ability to complement your primary character's power (regardless of what class you are using).
2) You can stop combat with the wheel, making it easier to assess your situation and strategize your next move.
3) It is much easier to conduct concurrent strikes on the same target when you are in direct control of the entire team. This allows you to maximize the biotic power combos (especially the ones that do 2x damage).
4) Most of the N7 missions are short and on some objective based missions you can bypass combat by stealth or speed (the ringing of the bells for the thresher maw for example) and trigger the cutscene.
5) Most (not all) campaign areas offer a greater room for maneuver than the MP maps, allowing you to attack from range and preventing you from being swarmed.
6) greater medigel capacity
7) easier to level up weapons of choice to level 10.
For these reasons, if you are already doing an insanity run, just go ahead and tackle the extra side missions for this ach. Even if you are just an average player (like me), the campaign route is easier than the MP. I'm not saying you will never die or experience frustration, but as long as you have a good understanding of the combat of this game, and fight defensively to attrit enemy forces, it is not bad at all. The MP does theoretically offer a shorter timeframe required to earn this ach, but practically it will probably take longer unless you have a team that is VERY good. The only true benefit of the MP is that it gives you the opportunity to share the pain of defeat with others.

This is not a true guide per se, but rather an assessment of the MP vs. campaign strategy for this achievement. (It assumes a second play thru with upper 50 / 60 level character).
The pros of the campaign method far outweigh the MP on gold for the following reasons:
1) In SP you are using a team of 50-60 level characters vs. 20 level characters in MP, thus giving you a wider array of powers & greater ability to complement your primary character's power (regardless of what class you are using).
2) You can stop combat with the wheel, making it easier to assess your situation and strategize your next move.
3) It is much easier to conduct concurrent strikes on the same target when you are in direct control of the entire team. This allows you to maximize the biotic power combos (especially the ones that do 2x damage).
4) Most of the N7 missions are short and on some objective based missions you can bypass combat by stealth or speed (the ringing of the bells for the thresher maw for example) and trigger the cutscene.
5) Most (not all) campaign areas offer a greater room for maneuver than the MP maps, allowing you to attack from range and preventing you from being swarmed.
6) greater medigel capacity
7) easier to level up weapons of choice to level 10.
For these reasons, if you are already doing an insanity run, just go ahead and tackle the extra side missions for this ach. Even if you are just an average player (like me), the campaign route is easier than the MP. I'm not saying you will never die or experience frustration, but as long as you have a good understanding of the combat of this game, and fight defensively to attrit enemy forces, it is not bad at all. The MP does theoretically offer a shorter timeframe required to earn this ach, but practically it will probably take longer unless you have a team that is VERY good. The only true benefit of the MP is that it gives you the opportunity to share the pain of defeat with others.

This solution is for beating all maps on gold in multiplayer. Don't be intimidated. Gold is actually quite easy with the right setup and team. Play against geth and make sure all of your teammates are at least level 18. Use light weapons so your recharge speeds are 190% or higher. This is the team you should use:

Human vanguard - Build the skills around using nova and biotic charge. For biotic charge, make sure you pick the spec that makes you recover 100% barrier and with nova you want damage. Don't put any points into shockwave.

Turian sentinal - Tech armor and overload is all you need here. On overload you'll want both chain overloads and on tech armor you want damage reduction.

Quarian infiltrater - Sabotage and cloaking is what you want here. Spec the cloak so you can use an ability and stay cloaked and increase the duration as much as possible. Sabotage you need the skill that makes your hacked guys do 100% more damage.

For your fourth teammate, just use another one of the previous three mentioned classes. On all classes, you want to increase health and shields as much as possible as well.

The main important strategy is stay together! I cannot emphasize that enough. If you don't stay together on gold, you will fail. Vanguards play the role of your main attacker. Biotic charge then nova over and over and over. Since biotic charge recovers your barrier to 100% and nova drains your barrier, this combination allows you to constantly attack. Turians play support by using overload to stun the geth while somewhat tanking damage with damage reduction. Quarians are your main medic and support. If people go down, the quarians go cloaked and revive them. Constantly use sabotage to hack the geth and make the fight each other. Be warned though, using sabotage on the same geth 3-4 times will make that geth immune to sabotage. Save all rockets for wave 8-11 or dire situations such as multiple teammates going down. Typically you want to use rockets on big groups that include two geth primes. While fighting two geth primes without rockets, focus all attacks on one of the primes and sabotage the other. On the extraction wave if you are out of rockets, run around the map in a group and return to the extraction around 20-30 seconds.

Another suggestion I have is let your vanguard host. Occasionally when off host, vanguards can go down while charging, causing them to glitch under the map. It doesn't happen on host, so to be safe, let your vanguard host.

With this setup and strategy, you should have no problem defeating geth on gold on all maps. Good luck and have fun! And remember, stay together!

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=36...

Unwavering Achievement Guide for Single Player Campaign
There a total of 27 Missions that you MUST complete on Insanity and they are time sensitive.

The game is Split up into 3 Acts
Act 1: Palaven, Sur'Kesh, and Tuchanka
Act 2: The Citadel, Geth Dreadnought, Rannoch, Thessia, and Horizon
Act 3: Cerberus Headquarters and Earth

Each act contains several parts. It's during these parts that missions are unlocked and locked.

Priority Missions
These Missions are not time sensitive as they are the story missions.

1. Prologue: Earth
2. Mars
3. Palaven
4. Sur'Kesh
5. Tuchanka
6. The Citadel (Different from the first)
7. Geth Dreadnought
8. Rannoch
9. Thessia
10. Horizon
11. Cerberus Headquaters
12. Earth

N7 Missions
These Missions are time sensitive, As long as they are completed before you do Cerberus Headquarters.

1. Cerberus Lab (available after Palaven)
2. Cerberus Attack (available after Tuchanka)
3. Cerberus Abductions (available after Tuchanka)
4. Cerberus Fighter Base (available after the second Priority Citadel Mission)
5. Fuel Reactors (available after Rannoch)
6. Communication Hub (available after Thessia)

Side Missions
These Missions are very time sensitive. They are unlocked during different parts of each act. They will lock after parts further in the story in parts of act 2. Doing Cerberus Headquarters will lock any remaining missions.

1. Grissom Academy: Emergency Evacuation (Locks after the Second Priority Citadel)
2. Tuchanka: Turian Platoon (locks after Priority: Thessia)
3. Tuchanka: Bomb (Unlocks after Tuchanka: Turian Platoon) (locks after Second Priority Citadel)
4. Attican Traverse: The Rachni (unlocks after Priority Sur'Kesh) (locks after Priority Second Citadel)
5. Kallini: Ardat-Yakshi Monastery (locks after Priority: Cerberus Headquaters)
6. Arrae: Ex-Cerberus Scientists (locks after Priority: Cerberus Headquarters)
7. Rannoch: Admiral Koris (locks after Priority Rannoch)
8. Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadron (Locks after Priority Rannoch)

Before you Cerberus Headquarters you should have 24/27

The Achievement will pop when you select the ending because this is the last mission even thought it does not appear in the mission log.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=36...

Unwavering Achievement Guide for Single Player Campaign
There a total of 27 Missions that you MUST complete on Insanity and they are time sensitive.

The game is Split up into 3 Acts
Act 1: Palaven, Sur'Kesh, and Tuchanka
Act 2: The Citadel, Geth Dreadnought, Rannoch, Thessia, and Horizon
Act 3: Cerberus Headquarters and Earth

Each act contains several parts. It's during these parts that missions are unlocked and locked.

Priority Missions
These Missions are not time sensitive as they are the story missions.

1. Prologue: Earth
2. Mars
3. Palaven
4. Sur'Kesh
5. Tuchanka
6. The Citadel (Different from the first)
7. Geth Dreadnought
8. Rannoch
9. Thessia
10. Horizon
11. Cerberus Headquaters
12. Earth

N7 Missions
These Missions are time sensitive, As long as they are completed before you do Cerberus Headquarters.

1. Cerberus Lab (available after Palaven)
2. Cerberus Attack (available after Tuchanka)
3. Cerberus Abductions (available after Tuchanka)
4. Cerberus Fighter Base (available after the second Priority Citadel Mission)
5. Fuel Reactors (available after Rannoch)
6. Communication Hub (available after Thessia)

Side Missions
These Missions are very time sensitive. They are unlocked during different parts of each act. They will lock after parts further in the story in parts of act 2. Doing Cerberus Headquarters will lock any remaining missions.

1. Grissom Academy: Emergency Evacuation (Locks after the Second Priority Citadel)
2. Tuchanka: Turian Platoon (locks after Priority: Thessia)
3. Tuchanka: Bomb (Unlocks after Tuchanka: Turian Platoon) (locks after Second Priority Citadel)
4. Attican Traverse: The Rachni (unlocks after Priority Sur'Kesh) (locks after Priority Second Citadel)
5. Kallini: Ardat-Yakshi Monastery (locks after Priority: Cerberus Headquaters)
6. Arrae: Ex-Cerberus Scientists (locks after Priority: Cerberus Headquarters)
7. Rannoch: Admiral Koris (locks after Priority Rannoch)
8. Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadron (Locks after Priority Rannoch)

Before you Cerberus Headquarters you should have 24/27

The Achievement will pop when you select the ending because this is the last mission even thought it does not appear in the mission log.

If you are playing with the EC DLC then pay attention to Citadel Finale.
In order to get the achievement you must make an explicit choice among the three endings and then avoid the "Refusal ending" ( the new final that comes with EC DLC). In fact if don't make an explicit choice, the new ending is triggered and neither the Unwaverig and the Insanity achievement can be acquired.
Obviously you can just play again the Citadel Finale and then solve the problem.