Durability and Equipment Health

When in a battle, armor and shields have a hidden health value. When a piece of armor's health drops to zero it breaks and no longer provides any stat bonuses until it is repaired or the battle ends. The maximum health of a shield or piece of armor is governed by the items maximum durability.

Equipment Health
Shields and armor pieces each start with an amount of health dependent on their maximum durability. Worn armor loses health whenever the player takes damage, especially from a boss's smash attacks. Shields also loses health from non-perfect Guards, blocking with Heavy Stander, and using Counterattack.

When a piece of armor's health drops to zero it breaks and does not offer any defense. Broken shields no longer provide stats, no longer prevent all damage with guard, and cannot be used to preform Heavy Stander or Counterattack.

Damaged or broken equipment can be repaired in battle using a Armor Temporary Repair Kit, the anvil of a Campfire, or over time from the Armor Restoration buff recieved from sitting next to a campfire.

Equipment health is never shown numerically, but is instead shown in color coded picture form in the upper right hand corner of the screen when: Fully repaired armor and shields, as well as those that are not badly damaged show up as white in this image. Equipment turns yellow when damage and when broken it turns red.
 * The [Alt] key is pressed
 * Armor is repaired with a repair kit or the anvil next to a campfire
 * A piece of armor breaks

The Stone Skin skill makes up for some of the defense lost in the event that a piece of armor breaks.
 * Note:

Durability
Durability repressents wear on an item as it is used. Accessories, armor, shields, and weapons have durability, which is shown in their tooltips. Each piece of equipment has a cap on how high the durability value can be, referred to as maximum durability, and it is possible to increase this value via Enhancing.

Every area you enter in a battle, including the first area, decreases the durability of all of the equipment the player is wearing by a small amount. If the durability of an item is allowed to drop to 0, that piece of equipment becomes unusable until repaired. This can even happen in the middle of a battle, at which point the item is removed and all benefits from it are lost until it is repaired and then re-equipped.

Durability can only be repaired in town by Ferghus, or by the Royal Army Recruit at the Docks in Rocheste, for a small fee. Repair cost are based on the amount of durability that needs to be repaired, the value of the item, the Enhancement level of the item, and any Enchantments that are on the item.

Maximum Durability increases with successful enhancements, and decreases with failures. Lower Maximum Durability will cause a piece of equipment to break faster in battle, and if it drops to 0, the equipment will be unusable until increased above 0 again. For armor and shields increasing maximum durability also increases the items maximum equipment health in battle.


 * Note:
 * Durability is not repaired when a piece of equipment is enhanced. This means it is less expensive to repair before enhancing than after, because the item's maximum durability and enhancement level are made higher, while the current durability is left the same, meaning there is more durability that needs to be repaired and it cost more for each point. However, if a piece of equipment is fully repaired before enhancing, it remains so afterwards.
 * Many Equipment Skills claim to increase the durability of their respective items however this feature does not currently work.
 * A piece of equipment must be fully repaired before it is can be placed on the Marketplace.

Restoring maximum durability (EU Server Only)
Besides repairing items in order to return their durability to their maximum, Ferghus can also restore the maximum durability. In order to do this, one can choose 'Repair durability' instead of 'repair'. Then, one must provide the item whose maximum durability should be restored (after it is lost e.g. due to failed enchantments), another item of the same type, and a sum of gold depending on the item. This can increase the durability by 10 points, but it cannot raise the durability above 100.

Trivia

 * Ferghus's repair service used to be called restore instead of repair.
 * In the Lost Artifact update the item system was revamped.
 * Before the update Durability was called Condition.
 * There also used to be another stat for equipment called deterioration. Each time you repaired an items condition its deterioration increased an amount equal to the cost of the repair. As deterioration went up the cost of subsequent repairs became more expensive. Deterioration was reset to zero when an item was successfully enhanced.

Official Survival Guide
Condition and Deterioration