Description

It's no secret that the price of purchased items in ME3 is wildly unbalanced. Not only are weapons purchased at Spectre Requisitions ludicrously overpriced, but the cost of upgrading every weapon to rank V vastly exceeds the 1,175,000 credits obtainable in a single playthrough (unless you spend hours grinding up more at the Silversun Casino or Armax Arena, I guess). Upgrading everything to rank X takes more than five playthroughs combined of scrounging every last credit available in the game.

I don't know about you, but I don't got time for that. So, I made Vendor Pricing Overhaul (VPO).

VPO is nothing less than a complete retuning of every item purchase in the game, starting with a few common-sense changes:

• The cost of upgrading weapons has been reduced by 75%.
• The cost of respeccing Shepard and squadmates has been reduced by 75%, though it does still increase with repeated use.
  

Weapon purchase prices have also been adjusted to better reflect their relative value. Weapons have been binned into tiers, with prices set to match:

• Weapons that are vanishingly rare in-universe and overpowered in-game (presently just the Particle Rifle and M-11 Suppressor) cost the base game equivalent of 30,000 credits.
• Best-in-class weapons (presently the Cerberus Harrier, Black Widow, and N7 Typhoon) cost the base game equivalent of 25,000 credits.
• Rare or disproportionately effective primary weapons (e.g. M-98 Widow, M-76 Revenant, Collector Rifle, N7 Piranha) cost the base game equivalent of 15,000 credits.
• Rare or disproportionately effective secondary weapons (e.g. M-358 Talon, N7 Hurricane) and middling primary weapons (e.g. Acolyte, Reegar Carbine) cost the base game equivalent of 10,000 credits.
• Common or underpowered weapons (e.g. Disciple, M-13 Raptor, M-9 Tempest) cost the base game equivalent of 7,000 credits.
• Early-game weapons (e.g. M-15 Vindicator, M-97 Viper, M-27 Scimitar) cost the base game equivalent of 4,000 credits.
  

Finally, the cost of all items has been reduced by a little over 20%, such that a player who picks up every credit, weapon, and armor in the game will have enough credits to purchase and upgrade everything, with about 50,000 credits left over. The idea here was to allow for some wiggle room for refueling the Normandy or purchasing weapons/mission items you might have missed. Alternatively, you could use your bonus funding to purchase certain favorite weapons and armor early, as another key feature of VPO is the ability to purchase all weapons and armor from the start of the game (after completing Priority: Menae, so you can access the Citadel Commons and the vendors stationed there). This includes items that show up on vendors in the base game after completing the missions where they can be picked up, as well as certain weapons that can only be acquired via mission completion (at present, the M-358 Talon, the Particle Rifle, and the M-11 Suppressor).

A few additional features:

• The 10% markup from purchasing items through the Normandy procurement interface has been removed. Yeah, it's more realistic that Shepard has to pay for shipping, but it was a nightmare to consider for balancing this mod, and frankly I don't enjoy feeling pressured to run back to the Citadel whenever I want to buy something.
• If you've installed Unrestricted Weapon Upgrades, installing VPO will automatically reduce item prices further, such that collecting every item and credit will allow you to buy and upgrade everything to rank X in a single playthrough, again with about 50,000 "wiggle room" credits.
• If you've installed Leviathan-Be-Gone, installing VPO will automatically reduce item prices a little more to reflect the need to purchase more of Leviathan's weapon mods, as you can no longer pick them up by playing the questline.
  

Installation and Removal

Import and install through ME3Tweaks Mod Manager. To uninstall, quit the game, and use ME3Tweaks Mod Manger to remove ADR:

• With LE3 selected in the installation dropdown, click on Manage Target.
• Click on the Delete button next to Vendor Pricing Overhaul.
• Close the window, and try to cope with the prospect of a life without VPO.
  

Compatibility

VPO is a (quite extensive) collection of Coalesced_INT.bin edits packaged into a DLC mod, and thus is likely to be compatible with
anything that doesn't alter vendor prices.

VPO is not compatible with the Spectre Expansion Mod and Expanded Galaxy Mod. Both of these add tons of new purchaseables and credit sources to the game, and I don't have the time or energy to hunt them all down (especially given both are still under active development). When SEM/EGM's incredibly talented devs consider their mods finished, and/or find the time to document how their mods change the credit economy in detail, I might consider making a separate SEM/EGM-compatible version of Vendor Pricing Overhaul. Until that time, though, I don't recommend using VPO with SEM/EGM installed.

VPO is out-of-the-box compatible with DropTheSquid's excellent Bonus Bonus Powers, via an automatic patch (which removes respec costs and duplicate bonus powers on BBP's altered power menu). Install BBP first, followed by VPO. 

VPO hides the "10% Markup" text on the Normandy's procurement interface to reflect its disabling of this markup mechanic. While the markup mechanic is disabled in all languages, this text is only hidden in English at present.