There's a lot of stuff to do in Mass Effect: Andromeda and mixed in are plenty of nods back to the original trilogy. One of them is the N7 armor that you can unlock and craft in the game.
It's pretty easy to do and doesn't require any tough missions or super rare materials. You can also do it early and it makes for a great armor to wear while you're working on unlocking those god-tier items. Here's how to look like Commander Shepard, at least while your helmet is on.
Warning: Spoilers ahead
You'll need to find a research station. There are two that are easy to find if they're something you haven't come across just yet. The easiest one to find is on your ship, the Tempest. But you also get steered right to one if you play the campaign on the first planetary outpost you'll likely come across on Eos during the "A Better Beginning" mission.
After you power up the generators and lay waste to the first batch of kett, you'll be able to search the buildings of the deserted colony and one of the points of interest on your compass is a research station and some resources to use with it. When you first find it, you probably won't have the resources to unlock and craft the armor, so remember where it is because you'll be going back to Eos for some side missions shortly. But you can still look at the N7 armor and see what you'll need to craft it — best of all, everything can be bought from the Nexus.
- Approach the research station and choose research
- Make sure you're looking at Milky Way Technology
- Choose the Armor folder
Scroll through the choices and you'll find four pieces of N7 armor: chest, legs, arms and helmet. You'll have to unlock the blueprints for each piece with research points, the chest needs 100 points and the other pieces need 50 each. You should have around 150 to 200 points just from playing through the first missions, and the rest are pretty easy to get right on Eos. Just hit all the buildings and scan everything you can find and be sure to scan the corpses from your encounter with the kett.
After you've unlocked the blueprints you can build each piece by choosing the development screen from a research station. You only need common materials and I bought everything I needed on the Nexus or the Tempest from the vendor. If you can't find the platinum, you can either save and restart until it's there or go to the planets and deploy some mining probes. Don't worry, it's not too hard to find, and everything else is super common and always in stock.
After you get all the pieces built, head to your cabin on the Tempest and visit your wardrobe. Here's where you can choose the colors to finish that OG Cmdr Shepard look. The colors you want to choose:
- Color One: Grey
- Color Two: Black
- Color Three: Black
- Pattern Select: 1.00
- Pattern Color: Red
While this isn't the best armor in the game, it's one of the coolest just because of the nostalgia factor. You might as well look good while you're playing!
