Mass Effect 3 Citadel: Volus Ambassador Guide—Choices, Combat, Rewards

The Citadel: Volus Ambassador side job in Mass Effect 3 is a smaller mission with big knock-on effects for your war asset totals. This walkthrough breaks down how to access it, where to go on the Citadel, what to watch for during combat, and which dialogue options steer the outcomes.

Quick facts

• Mission Rewards: 210 XP and 5,000 credits
• War Assets impact: Volus Bombing Fleet at 75 TMS, with additional TMS adjustments depending on choices
• Prerequisite: Complete “Priority: The Citadel 2”
• Where to start: Your Private Terminal on the Normandy, then the Spectre Office using the Spectre Terminal
• Key area for the tracking device: Office Suites in the Citadel Embassies
• Ambassador rescue locations to check: Apartment Room 80 or Room 94 in the Presidium Commons

Checklists

This guide section focuses specifically on the Citadel: Volus Ambassador side mission. It covers item locations, how to handle each combat encounter you run into, and how to pick the right options for your run.

If you’re looking for something specific, the checklist points you to the mission stats, terminal steps, travel route, office investigation, the rescue portion, and the follow-up meeting with Zaeed.

Mission Stats

Video Guide

Mission Rewards

• Mission Experience: 210 XP
• Mission Credits: 5,000 credits
• War Assets: You can only avoid the TMS reduction affecting the Turian Sixth Fleet by using actions tied to Mass Effect 2 results.

• Volus Bombing Fleet (75 TMS)
• -10 TMS to Turian Sixth Fleet
• Zaeed Massani (25 TMS)

Check Your Private Terminal

• Prerequisite: Complete “Priority: The Citadel 2”

Once you finish “Priority: Citadel 2,” head to your Private Terminal aboard the Normandy. You’ll find a message from Primarch Victus titled “Durlesh Mole,” which lays out the side mission and effectively unlocks it.

Victus makes a serious accusation: Cerberus ambushed a cruiser packed with high-ranking Turian Hierarchy officials. The cruiser escaped, but the only non-Turian who knew where it was went by the name Din Korlack—someone Mass Effect 1 players may remember as a stuck-up Volus Ambassador in the Presidium Embassies.

Victus passes along Korlack’s last known position to the Spectre Office on the Citadel, setting you up for the next step.

Travel to Widow

• Location: Serpent Nebula – Widow – Citadel – Citadel Embassies

After “Priority: The Citadel 2” finishes, the Citadel refreshes with brand-new side content, including this one. The Citadel remains the galaxy’s central hub and will always be labeled in the western portion of the Milky Way map.

Go to the Spectre Terminal

Primarch Victus forwarded the details of Din’s last-known location to the Spectre Office. Make your way there, then use the Spectre Terminal to kick off the investigation.

The information you receive isn’t very precise. Din’s exact current whereabouts are unknown, and he isn’t showing up in public areas—but his last sighting places him in the Office Suites within the Citadel Embassies.

You don’t need special authorization to read the message and proceed.

Investigate the Office Suite

With the Spectre Terminal step done, travel to the Office Suites at the eastern edge of the Embassies. There you’ll find a Turian Embassy Guard waiting, and you’ll need to speak with him twice to gain entry.

Inside, Shepard gets access to three recorded messages left by Din. It looks like Din’s confidence in Cerberus has been shaken after their coup attempt, though the Turians haven’t caught up to that change yet—so they’ve placed a bounty on his head. In the third recording, Din explains that he hid a tracking device in this same office, before bounty hunters eventually catch him.

Now you need to find the device. Stand at the laptop, pivot so you face into the room, then walk to the opposite corner. On the counter is a Bug; interact with it to locate the actual bug under the cabinet.

Shepard contacts Din Korlack directly and asks for his location. Even though Din doesn’t give a clean answer, you can still deduce that he’s in the Apartments in the Presidium Commons.

Rescue the Ambassador

From the elevator, turn right and continue down the long hallway, then turn right again to enter the Apartments area. You’ll have to check either Room 80 or Room 94 at opposite ends of the complex.

It doesn’t matter which room you choose first: the initial door you pick will always be the wrong one, forcing you to head back and try the other door on the opposite side.

WARNING

This section is buggy in the original 2012 release, in two ways:

• If you take too long moving between the two doors you need to test, the second door won’t open.
• If you step away from the first door before the next chunk of dialogue finishes, the game can glitch while it streams nearby parts of the level—and again, the second door won’t open.

In either case, you’ll need to go back to an earlier save and try again.

Once you enter the second room, you’ll run into Din Korlack and the bounty hunters. The encounter can play out in one of three ways, depending on what happened with Zaeed earlier in your playthrough.

• If Zaeed survived Mass Effect 2 and you secured his Loyalty in “Zaeed: The Price of Revenge,” he’s there and has already handled the other two bounty hunters.
• If Zaeed survived Mass Effect 2 but you didn’t secure his Loyalty in “Zaeed: The Price of Revenge,” he deals with the other bounty hunters but dies in the process.
• If Zaeed died in Mass Effect 2, or if he was never recruited, Shepard fights and kills the bounty hunters without Zaeed’s help.

Note that in Mass Effect 2, you can complete Zaeed’s Loyalty mission without him actually becoming Loyal. This occurs when you take the Paragon route, but you don’t have enough Charm points to choose “You brought this on yourself.” Instead, you’ll have to select “You owe me big for this” or “Come on, Zaeed. Let’s go.”

Regardless of which battle variation you get, you can still earn Morality Points after Din says you saved him and almost died due to the confusion.

• Choose “Are you injured?” for +2 Paragon Points.
• Choose “You could’ve avoided this” for +2 Renegade Points.

Din is reluctant to hand over the name of the Turian colony Cerberus is targeting, since doing so would reveal that he betrayed them. Instead, he offers Shepard the Volus Bombing Fleet—and the payoff is genuinely larger in TMS value than the Turian colony’s loss.

From there, you decide how to handle the situation:

• If Zaeed is alive, you can choose the Charm option “You’re better than this” to gain the Volus Bombing Fleet worth 75 TMS, while also preventing the Turian colony from losing TMS, for +15 Paragon Points.
• If Zaeed is alive, you can choose the Intimidate option “Beat him, Zaeed” to gain the Volus Bombing Fleet worth 75 TMS and prevent the Turian colony from losing TMS, for +15 Renegade Points.
• Choose “I want the Colony safe” to protect the Turian colony with no TMS changes and +5 Paragon Points.
• Choose “I’ll take the bombers” to gain the Volus Bombing fleet worth 75 TMS and +5 Renegade Points, but at the cost of the Turian Third Fleet taking a -10 TMS hit.

Meet With Zaeed

If Zaeed survived this side mission, the job isn’t finished yet. Go to the Docks: Holding Area, then head to Cargo Hold: C, marked with a 7 on the map screen.

At the back of the cargo hold, talk to Zaeed to add him as a War Asset worth 25 TMS.

Looking for more help with Mass Effect 3? The guide also points you toward pages covering Legendary Edition changes, how-to walkthroughs, key decision outcomes, romance coverage, the full walkthrough, and side missions.

Up Next: Citadel: Wounded Batarian

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