Should you kill or knock out the colonists in Zhu’s Hope on Feros in Mass Effect Legendary Edition?

After removing the Geth from the ExoGeni building on Feros, Shepard makes their way back to Zhu’s Hope. But before they arrive, Lizbeth reunites with her mom and the rest of the ExoGeni employees. They reveal to you they’ve had a creature called the Thorian underneath them for quite some time, controlling them, and now that you’re on your way to it, the colonists will protect it at all costs. The employees provide you a chance to knock them out using a gas grenade, or you can use your melee attack, or you can outright kill them.

Should you knock out the colonists?

If you’re looking to play through on a Paragon Shepard, you want to make sure to knock out the colonists. You can equip the Anti-Thorian Gas to your grenade by going into your Equipment, going to the Grenade Launcher menu, and added the grenade upgrade. It will be a level one upgrade. Before entering Zhu’s Hope, you want to make sure to tell your squadmates to incapacitate the colonists and avoid using lethal force. If you don’t, your squadmates will fire on them as if they were standard enemies.

You can toss this at the enemies and time the explosions to knock them out. When it explodes next to a colonist, they’ll fall to the ground, and they won’t cause you any trouble as you make your way into the Thorian’s lair.

When you run out of grenades, the alternative option is to rush them and hit them with your melee attack. There’s a higher chance of you losing your shields and taking damage.

Should you kill the colonists?

If you’re looking to play as a Renegade Shepard, this is the better option. You can choose to eliminate every Zhu’s Hope colonist to gain the most Renegade points, which means choosing to ignore the gas option on your grenade and shooting them as if they were traditional enemies. This is a quicker method.

What are the consequences?

If you save the colonists and choose not to kill them by going down the Paragon route, Zhu’s Hope comes up in Mass Effect 2 and 3. In Mass Effect 2, a colonist, or the Asari who Thorian was using, appears on a world, and you can speak with them to learn how things are going and if the colony is progressing.

In Mass Effect 3, if you kept Zhu’s Hope alive, you’ll receive 30 points for Zhu’s Hope contribution to your War Assets against the Reapers. Although 30 points are not the largest jump in the grand scheme of things, every little bit helps.