Mass Effect: Andromeda guide: Contagion Heleus mission walkthrough

Shortly after you visit Kadara for the first time (during the “Hunting the Archon” priority ops mission), you’ll get an email from Captain Dunn of the Hyperion. She won’t give you any details — only saying that it’s a “sensitive matter.” Acknowledging this email will add the “Contagion” Heleus assignment to your journal.

This is another galaxy-spanning, multi-step side mission that will take you at least 45 minutes from start to finish. You’ll be rewarded with some AVP points at the end, regardless of your final choice. (We got 73 AVP points for the more … pragmatic ending — you’ll see — which doesn’t feel like a lot late in the game. So, weigh your time versus the payoff before you journey down this particular rabbit hole.)

Grid View

• Meet with Dunn on Hyperion’s habitation deck. After you acknowledge the email, just select the mission and follow your HUD marker. Spoiler: Something’s not going well and it’s up to you to fix it.
• Speak with Harry in the cryo bay. Follow your HUD to Harry. He’ll fill you in on the details.
• Speak with an immigration officer in the docking area. This step is infuriating. Your HUD will lead you to the Nexus’ docking bay, but then the marker disappears from your HUD, so you’re left on your own to find this elusive immigration officer. She’s in the far left corner of the docking bay when you enter from the tram. There’s a map in the gallery above.

Grid View

• Search for Ruth Bekker’s previous location. This is another poorly-explained chunk of this mission. Your job is to use your scanner to follow past-Ruth on her trip around the Nexus. We’ll list all of the locations in the next few bullet points.
• The kiosk immediately to the left of the immigration officer.
• Follow the wall on the right side of the docking bay back toward the tram. There’s another location about halfway back.
• Head back toward the general and Nomad merchants — the next past-Ruth will be walking.
• Turn to your left to find her at the tram controls. If you read your scanner, you’ll see that her access was denied, so she couldn’t have gone anywhere else.
• The next one is walking right-to-left across the front of the armor and weapons merchants’ counter.
• Walk forward into hydroponics and take the door on your right into the Vortex bar.
• Gather information at the Vortex in the Nexus Commons. There’s one more past-Ruth to scan, then you have to start asking around. You can talk to several people, but your only real goal is the salarian on the right side of the bar.

Grid View

• Speak with Teron in Nexus Ops. Teron will, no joke, tell you she probably went to the docking bay.
• Investigate the docking bay. Follow your HUD marker to the guy sitting on the bench back near the immigration officer. He’ll tell you how to track her.
• Investigate the stolen shuttle’s trail. The next several steps involve using the Tempest’s galaxy map to find the next breadcrump in Ruth’s trail, traveling there, scanning for an anomaly, launching a probe, traveling to the anomaly and scanning it. You do this four times — through Tecunis, Zaubray, Anasa and Solminae. This last one will point you to Kadara.

Grid View

• Find the shuttle on Kadara. Just drive to the location marked. (Depending on how much you’ve explored Kadara, there’s a good chance you’re going to get at least two additional side mission prompts as you drive.)
• Investigate the crash site.
• Track Ruth Bekker. Follow the HUD markers to the two sets of tracks.
• Investigate the building. You’ll have a bit of a shootout here. The roekaar will come at you in two waves. But there aren’t any real surprises — they’re just rank-and-file roekaar.
• Defeat the roekaar.
• Unlock the door. The console to unlock the door is on the bottom floor of the building. The locked door is on the top floor.
• Confront the Roekaar leader. You’ve got a choice to make here at the end — one lets the roekaar walk away with the dangerous bioweapon and one ends in a(nother) shootout with the roekaar. Ruth is going back into stasis either way, the only question is whether or not she’s alive when it happens. (We chose the let-her-die-and-firefight option because we’ve seen enough zombie movies to know how these things turn out.)