About this mod
Grants galaxy-wide access to the purchase and salvage of weapons and gear from various shady or private manufacturers.
- Permissions and credits
- Donations
It grants galaxy-wide access to the purchase and salvage of weapons and armor from Batarian State Arms, Cerberus Skunkworks, Hahne-Kedar Shadow Works, and Jormangund Technology, as well as some additional weapon/ammo/armor mods.
These items were apparently meant to be released as small DLCs, and were (mostly) fully implemented in the game. Not just their stats and properties, but also the means to obtain them: they were already present in the loot tables, but locked behind specific conditionals. With a few exceptions detailed below, this mod does not change the loot tables, but simply unlocks those conditionals.
The effects of this mod can be turned off in game by purchasing an item "Revoke Black Market License", also in the Normandy requisition store. So in case you want to go back to vanilla loot, you should be able to do so without uninstalling the mod. Both the license and the revoke item have a large chance to appear in store each time the inventory is refreshed.
Which items are concerned?
- Batarian State Arms: weapons and human armors.
- Hahne-Kedar Shadow Works: weapons and human armors.
- Cerberus Skunkworks: weapons and human armors.
- Jormangund Technology: weapons and human armors.
- Weapon mod: Hyper Rail.
- Ammo mod: Harpoon Rounds.
- Armor mods: Pressurized Seals and Hazard Seals.
Other items sometimes considered as cut content and/or available via console commands (the "X" ammo mods, the alien versions of these armors, etc) are not included in the game's loot tables. So they will not be available with the Black Market License.
How to obtain these items in game?
This was already implemented in the game and I didn't change it:
- In the Normandy requisition store.
- Possibly in some other stores, I haven't checked everything.
- By killing certain types of enemies.
- From certain types of containers.
The weapon/armor/ammo mods tend to be more common (included in more loot pools) than the weapons and armors themselves.
Note that all the items appear to be level locked: some of these items can only be obtained at rank IV or higher (from level ~18), others only at rank VII or higher (from level ~36).
The two things that I did modify:
- I gave Cerberus goons a significant chance to drop Cerberus gear on death. Actually this was already implemented, but only for Cerberus Boss and SubBoss types, while most/all of the Cerberus enemies encountered are Elite. They do already drop quite a lot of gear in vanilla (but only Armax and Ariake); with the Black Market license some of these drops will be from Cerberus Skunkworks instead. But there is a random element of course.
- I gave Batarian goons in Bring Down the Sky a chance to drop weapons and armor from Batarian State Arms.
What are the properties of these items?
I did not change any of the stats of these items. They may not have been made fully ready for release. For example, all armors use the same visual model, no matter if they are light, medium, or heavy. The stats may not be perfectly balanced either, so use at your own discretion.
The stats can be found on the fandom wiki.
Interestingly, the weapons and armors from three of these four manufacturers have special properties that are strongly hinted at in the manufacturers descriptions, but most of these special effects are not repertoried on the wiki.
Batarian State Arms (wiki link).
- All weapons inflict +50% toxic damage, and 5 damage/sec on enemies (similar to the Chemical/Polonium Rounds).
- Both armor sets protect against environmental hazards, and give health regen (1/sec, like the Phoenix armor).
Hahne-Kedar Shadow Works (wiki link).
- No special effects that I can see.
Cerberus Skunkworks (wiki link).
- All weapons have 25% Shield Bypass.
- Both armor sets protect against environmental hazards, and have very high Tech/Biotic protection (but this is on the card)
Jormangund Technology (wiki link).
- All weapons reduce enemy damage resistance by 10% / ignore 10% of enemy damage resistance, like the Harpoon rounds.
- Both armor sets protect against environmental hazards, and have very large Shields (but this is on the card).
COMPATIBILITY
- Afaik, there shouldn't be any compatibility issues with other mods.
- Note that ME1 Recalibrated dumps the whole set of Cerberus gear when completing the Cerberus mission. This feature is highly redundant with my mod, since Cerberus gear will already be obtained more naturally by killing Cerberus enemies. By default, this feature from ME1 Recalibrated is therefore removed by my mod. Just to be clear (since I couldn't get permission for a proper compatibility patch), my mod DOES NOT USE ANYTHING from ME1 Recalibrated, it simply overwrites one file to remove a redundant feature. If you really want to double dip in Cerberus cheese, you can uncheck the corresponding box when installing my mod. Either way, you will still get more Cerberus gear in the Normandy store, because my mod unlocks what was already implemented for that store, and ME1 Recalibrated will still add on top of it.
Technical info for modders: here.
INSTALLATION
Install with ME3 Tweaks Mod Manager.
- Drag and drop the compressed (.7z) mod file into the Mod manager window, and import the mod.
- Select the mod in the Mod Manager library, and click Apply Mod.
- Just make sure to install before ALOT, MEUTIM and other texture mods.
This mod gets installed partly as a custom DLC, and partly by replacing one of the original base game files (PlotManager.u). This is all done automatically by Mod Manager.
CREDITS
This was all written by me.
Special thanks to Mgamerz, SirCxyrtyx, and anyone who contributed to ME3Tweaks Mod Manager and ME3Explorer.