Durability

Durability is an item property found on every weapon, shield, piece of armor, imbued and replica item and some of the special artifacts like the Mana Phasing Orb talisman. It denotes how close the item is to breaking or how in need it is of requiring repair. It is comprised of two parts: the current durability, and the maximum durability, both of which are values in the range of 0-255. If both of these values are allowed to reach 0 on an item, the item is destroyed.

Current Durability

The Durability property on an item is displayed as two numbers divided by a forward slash. The number before the slash denotes the Current Durability.

  • Example: An item has the property "Durability 50 / 100" on it. The Current Durability of the item is 50.

Decreasing Current Durability

The Current Durability on an item is decreased through hitting monsters, animals, or other players, as in the case of weapons, or through being hit by monsters, animals, or other players, as in the case of armor and shields. When hitting or being hit by Slimes or Acid Elementals, an item's Current Durability is lowered at an increased rate. The lowest Current Durability that an item may have is 0.

Increasing Current Durability

Durability on an item is increased by directly repairing it via Blacksmithy, Bowcraft/Fletching, Carpentry, Masonry, Glassblowing, Tailoring or Tinkering, depending on the type of item you are trying to repair, or by using a Repair Contract that corresponds to one of the aforementioned skills.

The Current Durability on an item may also be increased during combat through the Self Repair property. The highest Current Durability that an item may have is 255.

Maximum Durability

The Durability property on an item is displayed as two numbers divided by a forward slash. The number after the slash denotes the Maximum Durability. The maximum for most of the crafted items ranges from 36 to 48 while other items introduced with the Ultima Online: Age of Shadows or later expansions have other specific values.

  • Example: An item has the property "Durability 50 / 100" on it. The Maximum Durability of the item is 100.

Decreasing Maximum Durability

The Maximum Durability on an item is decreased through two methods:

  1. When the Current Durability of an item reaches 0 and the item continues to be used without repair, the next time the item's Current Durability would be decreased by 1, its Maximum Durability is decreased by one instead.
    • Example: An item has the property "Durability 0 / 100" on it. The next time the item takes damage, the property changes to "Durability 0 / 99".
  2. There is a chance while repairing an item that its Maximum Durability will be decreased by 1 point. According to Five on Friday - November 16, 2007:
Chance\;to\;lose\;Durability = (40+Max\;Durability-Current\;Durability) - \frac{repairSkill}{100}
where repair skill is Test Center-style, i.e. GM = 1000, not 100.0.

The lowest Maximum Durability that an item may have is 0. When the Maximum Durability reaches this value, the item is destroyed.

  • Example: An item has the property "Durability 0 / 1" on it. The next time the item takes damage, it will be destroyed.

Increasing Maximum Durability

The Maximum Durability on an item can be increased in increments of 10 by applying Powder of Fortifying to it. The highest Maximum Durability that an item may have is 255.

Items With Durability Higher Than 255

There are some items with both Current and Maximimum Durabilities higher than 255. They fall into two categories:

  1. Items created by Event Moderators, which were hardcoded to have a Durability higher than 255.
  2. Items created by various bugs, of duping nature or otherwise.

These items can be repaired up to their Maximum Durability, but it is assumed that Powder of Fortifying cannot be applied to them to push their Maximum Durability any higher. Future updates to this section will hope to elucidate this information further.

Legacy Durability Property

Old magic weapons, armor, and shields that when targeted by the Item Identification skill displayed the titles of Durable, Substantial, Massive, Fortified, or Indestructible gained an additional property in the new item property system introduced with Ultima Online: Age of Shadows. The aforementioned titles were converted to a single property that read simply "Durability" with a value of 10-100% which increased the durability of the item by that percentage when it was calculated in the conversion to the new item property system.

  • Note: This property should not be confused with the actual Durability property on an item, as that can always be found as the last property on an item, whereas this old Durability property is usually one of the first.

A great number of these legacy items still exist, but this old Durability property was rendered useless by Powder of Fortifying. The original intent of the old Durability property was to extend the life of an item by increasing its Maximum Durability, thus increasing the number of times that it could be repaired before breaking permanently and being destroyed. Powder of Fortifying can increase the Durability of an item beyond that of this old Durability property and can be applied as many times as desired, which effectively extends the life of an item indefinitely.

It has been theorized that items have always used the format of "Durability XX/XX" with the durability titles increasing this by a certain percentage, but only in the code, and that the AoS item property conversion only made the change of making this data display on items.

Imbuing

The following resources are required to imbue the highest intensity of Durability (100%):

See Also