I completed my first play-through yesterday, and I managed to find some neat looking stuff for my V, mostly by visiting clothing shops often, and sometimes safe-scumming (before you enter the shop, store, then look at the inventory, if it sucks, load again.) The other part of the "strategy" was crafting Armadillo mods. When you craft them, they will be at your level. I think you need good crafting skill to also get Epic mods, but I think it doesn't actually matter much (and getting good at crafting require spending a lot on Technical Ability and crafting a lot of crap. I think the crafting system is crtainly not the game's strong points...)