Intro

There's a ton of campfire recipes but so little reason to use them. Stimpaks are abundant with zero side-effects, while Healing Powder is a pain to make and reduces Perception. You could tan gecko hides to sell for some extra caps, or you could sell off armor and weapons from abundant human enemies for a ton of extra caps.

The in-game mismatch between how many campfire recipes there are and how little need there is for them ultimately led to this mod, through a few iterations of a self-imposed rule set. The most recent iteration of that rule set was economic, to prevent getting too rich too quickly. This mod rebalances the in-game economy around that change.

Prices make sense now.

A bottle of Wasteland Tequila made from an Empty Whiskey Bottle, a thing of Purified Water, and a Nevada Agave Fruit should not sell for the same price as a thing of Purified Water on its own, but in the base game both have a value of 20. For that matter, a bottle of vodka or a dose of chems really shouldn't have the same price point as water, but they do: 20 caps.

To make a long story short, this mod rebalances prices for ingredients and crafted goods to make sure crafting is usually realistically profitable. Ruby's Casserole has also been adjusted purely for balance, since Radscorpion Poison Glands can be exchanged for them one-to-one or even four-to-five.


Methodology

I laid out a spreadsheet of

• recipes in the base game and DLCs,
• their ingredients,
• their products,
• the values of all those items,
• the computed profit from crafting a given recipe and selling the output rather than selling the ingredients directly,
• the new values I would give to those items (most of which remained the same), and
• the computed post-crafting profit based on those proposed new values.
  

This enabled me to adjust prices and see the consequences (sometimes on multiple recipes) in real time.

The spreadsheet file is available for download, if anyone want to play around with the concept on their own.

Some gut feelings were involved when choosing how profitable a given recipe should be or how much to change a given item's price. What I was going for in every case except one (Ruby's casserole) was to make the game world make sense (as in The Shandification of Fallout). The choice of 12 caps for the casseroles was mostly to ensure that it would not be profitable to mindlessly exchange Radscorpion Poison Glands for casseroles.

The reasoning, if any, behind a given change is provided below, in the Modifications section.

Modifications
The items and their price changes are grouped according to the themes that inspired me to alter that item's price.

Poisons
A modest profit should be available from crafting poisons, but there can't possibly be a huge market for poisons for melee weapons, even in this post-apocalypse; so, they shouldn't be highly profitable.

The values of the variants of Cloud Kiss are set so their crafting profit is the square root of the total damage they cause to an enemy over time.

Increase value of Bleak Venom .............. from   0 to  40
Decrease value of Cloud Kiss (weak) ........ from  25 to  22
Decrease value of Cloud Kiss (potent) ...... from  75 to  46
Decrease value of Cloud Kiss (lethal) ...... from 150 to  63
Decrease value of Dark Datura .............. from  50 to  30
Increase value of Mother Darkness .......... from   0 to  45
Increase value of Silver Sting ............. from   0 to  20
Increase value of Tremble .................. from   0 to  45


Poison Ingredients
These poison glands are abundant and should sell for less than they do in the base game. Plus, lowering their values makes it easier to ensure poisons made from them are profitable without making poisons sell for stupidly high amounts. Cazador poison glands remain at their vanilla price, because they're worth it.

Decrease value of Bark Scorpion Poison Gland from  35 to  10 # Common and easy to farm.
Decrease value of Radscorpion Poison Gland . from  25 to  15 # More common, but harder to farm.


Anti-Poison Items
Antivenoms and the like should be profitable, but people in the world can't really be getting poisoned on a regular basis; so, there shouldn't be much demand. A merchant selling these to someone who's currently poisoned could make a killing (no pun intended), but a sale from the Courier to Cliff Briscoe in the Dino Bite gift shop doesn't approach that level of exploitable urgency; the profit should be modest.

Decrease value of Antivenom ................ from  25 to  20
Decrease value of Datura Antivenom ......... from  50 to  25
Decrease value of Snakebite Tourniquet ..... from  20 to  15


Auto-injectors
Add the value of a Sensor Module to the values of the auto-injecting versions of Stimpaks and Super Stimpaks from Lonesome Road. Crafting them adds value, but objectively there isn't much demand if any for them in the Mojave.

Increase value of Auto-Inject Stimpak ...... from  75 to 105
Increase value of Auto-Inject Super Stimpak  from 150 to 180


Mushroom Cloud
A kabob of gum drops, coyote-snake eggs, and breakfast cereal just shouldn't go for 50 caps. The +AP effect is cool but not enough.

I'm not totally happy with these values. Nightstalker Eggs should be worth the caps, just because Nightstalkers are a pain to deal with and this is still a game, but making Mushroom Cloud a very lossy craftable doesn't feel good to me either.

Decrease value of Mushroom Cloud ........... from  50 to  40 # Should be even lower, but I wanted it profitable
Decrease value of Nightstalker Egg ......... from  45 to  30 # Adjust Mushroom Cloud's profit


Cave Fungus (and Mutated)
Cave Fungus and Mutated Cave Fungus cost way too much given how little use there is for either of them on their own and given how esoteric the things crafted with them are.

Blood Sausage and Salient Green are included in this section because they are ingredients in recipes that involve Mutated Cave Fungus.

Decrease value of Battle Brew .............. from 150 to  65
Decrease value of Black Blood Sausage ...... from 350 to 120
Decrease value of Blood Sausage ............ from 175 to  70
Decrease value of Blood Shield ............. from  50 to  25
Decrease value of Cave Fungus .............. from  50 to  15 # Rare, few uses. Limited market
Increase value of Healing Poultice ......... from  20 to  23
Decrease value of Mutant Cave Fungus ....... from  50 to  20 # Rarer, fewer uses, but has novelty value
Decrease value of Nightstalker Squeezin's .. from 100 to  60
Decrease value of Salient Green ............ from  50 to  10
Decrease value of Thick Red Paste .......... from 250 to 200


Datura

Decrease value of Daturana ................. from  30 to  25
Decrease value of Sacred Datura Root ....... from  10 to   3


Nuka-Crafting

Increase value of Ice Cold Nuka-Cola ....... from  20 to  30 # 3-to-2 crafting ratio now breaks even
Increase value of Nuka-Cola Quartz ......... from  40 to  60 # 3-to-1 crafting ratio now breaks even
Increase value of Nuka-Grenade ............. from  50 to  95


Tanned Hides

Increase value of Gecko-Backed Leather Armor from 500 to 650
Decrease value of Tanned Fire Gecko Hide ... from 125 to  75
Decrease value of Tanned Gecko Hide ........ from  50 to  35
Decrease value of Tanned Golden Gecko Hide . from 250 to 150
Decrease value of Tanned Green Gecko Hide .. from 300 to 200


Wasteland Omelet
Given the risk and effort in gathering the ingredients, this really should be profitable.

Decrease value of Deathclaw Egg ............ from 400 to 165 # Limited market
Increase value of Wasteland Omelet ......... from 100 to 200


Wasteland Tequila
It should be profitable to craft and sell Wasteland Tequila, compared to just selling off the ingredients. It's one more type of booze, it provides +DT and poison resistance, and it just fits FNV's Spaghetti Western sort of ethos too well to just leave it out in the rain.

Increase value of Large Wasteland Tequila .. from  20 to  40 # Twice the ingredients, twice the price.
Decrease value of Large Whiskey Bottle ..... from   5 to   2 # Twice the bottle, twice the price.
Decrease value of Purified Water ........... from  20 to  15 # A dose of chems should cost more than water.


Fancy Chems
They should cost more than basic drugs. None of them are actually profitable at these prices, but the drug economy in New Vegas never made much sense anyway; so, I give up.

Increase value of Party Time Mentats ....... from  20 to  30
Increase value of Rocket ................... from  20 to  30
Increase value of Rushing Water ............ from  20 to  25 # Plus 10 for fancy chems, minus 5 due to Purified Water
Increase value of Slasher .................. from  20 to  30


Raw Steaks
Of the five meat-steak pairs in the base game, only the price scheme for one makes sense: Gecko meat and steak, with values of 4 and 5 respectively. The other pairs (Bighorner, Brahmin, Coyote, and Dog) use the same value for both the meat and the cooked steak: 5, 5, 4, and 4 respectively. A cooked steak should sell at a higher price than the raw meat.

Decrease value of Bighorner Meat ........... from   5 to   4
Decrease value of Brahmin Meat ............. from   5 to   4
Increase value of Coyote Meat .............. from   4 to   3
Increase value of Dog Meat ................. from   4 to   3


Weapons

Decrease value of Bottlecap Mine ........... from 150 to  75
Increase value of Fat Mine ................. from 275 to 295
Decrease value of Time Bomb ................ from 750 to 185
Decrease value of Time Bomb, High Yield .... from 750 to 240


Miscellaneous Simple Tweaks
These are each one-off changes that have zero or near-zero interaction with other changes, whether thematically or mechanically.

The last of these actually turns a profitable crafting recipe into a lossy one: Weapon Binding Ritual. It just didn't make sense for that to be profitable; it's too esoteric to be very useful to most people, and I get the impression that you use it by tying off your arm, cutting yourself, stuffing Healing Powder into the wound, and then pouring Wonderglue on yourself to stop the bleeding, which can't be very popular.

Increase value of Atomic Cocktail .......... from  25 to  30
Increase value of Black Coffee ............. from   5 to   9
Increase value of Bloatfly Slider .......... from   4 to   7
Increase value of Brahmin Wellington ....... from   5 to  30 # It's fancy. It should cost plenty.
Increase value of Caravan Lunch ............ from   5 to  20
Increase value of Desert Salad ............. from   5 to  20
Increase value of Gecko Kabob .............. from   4 to   9
Increase value of Grilled Mantis ........... from   8 to  18
Increase value of Ruby's Casserole ......... from   5 to  12 # Balance gland value against 4-glands-5-pies bug
Increase value of Trail Mix ................ from   5 to  30
Decrease value of Weapon Binding Ritual .... from  50 to  30 # Limited market