Breakable Weapons

"Also, you have one second to name any game in which weapon degradation has been a good idea. Time's up. That's what I thought. There's something very wrong about a katana that shatters after five or six hits, one that ostensibly isn't made out of glass or chocolate."

—Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Zero Punctuation: Silent Hill Origins

An inexplicably common occurrence in videogames is that weapons have only so many times they can be used before they cease to function. The game usually gives you some sign as to how many uses you have left (usually called "Durability"), but when you run out, the weapon breaks.

That's right, breaks. Apparently, nobody in the game world has ever heard of maintaining their weapons. Granted, after enough time even the sharpest sword will dull, but it would seem the weapons of the video game world are secretly made of metal-coated balsa wood.

In most cases, the weapon will work at full strength until it's broken, as opposed to getting duller and less effective over time.

If you're lucky, there will be ways to repair or reinforce your equipment before the durability expires. If not, you had better have a spare on hand, or be good with your bare fists.

On many occasions, this trope comes up to keep the game focused on the style of combat the developers intended; it's quite common, for example, for weapons to break in a Beat'Em Up so that the player must focus on barehanded combat. Another reason, often used in MMORPGs, is to act as a Money Sink forcing players to spend some of their money on repairs, especially for that Infinity+1 Sword. Or it could be just a nod towards realism, though in most games the speed of degradation is preposterously high.

Occasionally, the Infinity+1 Sword has infinite uses, often because a boss would be impossible to defeat without that weapon. If the designers feel like making things really difficult, it will have exactly one use (and promptly become Too Awesome to Use).

Compare with Throw-Away Guns; guns that cannot be reloaded are one way of implementing this trope.

Of course, if a game doesn't feature Breakable Weapons, it probably has Unbreakable Weapons.

If you can break weapons before even getting them, it falls under Destroyable Items.

Examples of Breakable Weapons include:

• In GURPS guns will jam on a bad roll and this becomes more likely if the weapon is not cleaned regularly or is poor quality.
  • Shooting without pausing can cause the same problems but heavier barrels warp more slowly and cooling systems allow for basically unlimited fire so long as they work.
  • Melee weapons can break when struck with optional rules.
• Fire Emblem has had this trope since the beginning, and broken weapons usually cannot be repaired. This is the case for every unit, even ones without physical weapons (such as healers and mages). Even the legendary weapons have limited durability (except in Path of Radiance). Certain games have repairable weapons (that when broken gain a statset and a name of "Broken Sword"), but most of the time if a weapon breaks it's gone. One interesting piece is that weapons have always had a fixed number of uses (A "Steel Sword" will always break after exactly 35 hits), rather than random rolls or a a "durability" stats that goes down at an unknown rate, and that Fire Emblem generally has limited money, making money management another factor of the game's strategy. As a general rule, cheaper weapons and staves have more uses, and are still quite effective in the right hands, so it's strategic to have run-of-the-mill equipment as a back-up for fights\heals that don't need the good stuff.
  • Spell books are also afflicted. Even worse, if you miss with a spell or staff, it still loses durability. Weapons don't.
  • In Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, there's a skill called Corruption that can wear down opponents' equipped weapons.
  • The one exception comes in the form of weapons that are a part of one's body, like beaks or claws. A dragon's breath also counts...usually.
  • FE 1, 3 and 5-12 each have a staff that can be used to repair other weapons. Of course, it has only so many uses itself, and yes, there is only one per game and it can't repair itself. Except FE8, which has two if you get the last secret character.
  • In Radiant Dawn A Goddess blesses all your character's currently equipped weapons, making them unbreakable like the Ragnell and Alondite.
  • In Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War, you can repair pretty much any and all weapons, including broken ones, simply by visiting the castle town shops and paying a corresponding fee (up to 1000 gold per use on legendary weapons). Which is rather more less convenient than it sounds when you realize that each unit has its own bag of cash that can only be transferred to another unit under very limited circumstances and healers tend to have trouble acquiring money.
  • Particularly ironic in that if a legendary weapon isn't one of the Unbreakable Weapons, it's a lot more brittle than a run of the mill Iron Sword.
  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon has an item that when held in one's inventory nullifies weapon degradation. Also, one can buy character specific weapons like the Rapier and Wing Spear from some shops. Also, two used weapons of the same type can be combined into a single, more durable weapon between battles. There's also a single repair item, and Falchion itself, once you get it, is indestructible.
  • In FE7, Lyn's Legendary Weapon, the Mani Katti, has its uses restored between the two times when you get to use her, or a new Mani Katti will be given to Lyn altogether if you manage to break it in the first part. Arguably an example showing that even broken weapons can still be fixed (either that or Lyn just reproduced the Mani Katti somehow)...
    • Since the game's main story, which is part of the prequel canon for Fire Emblem 6, starts with Eliwood in Chapter 11, and it's been some time between Lyn's 10th chapter and Eliwood's 11th chapter, it's assumed that it didn't literally break in Lyn's little story mode, even if the player did so while playing through that section.
  • One could go so far as to say this series is renowned for this trope along with Permanent character deaths and a very large cast.
• Shadow the Hedgehog has a few melee weapons such as street signs, black swords and an unlockable katana but all of them are fairly useless due to them breaking after about 8 hits. Strangely picking up the same weapon you're holding gives you more hits with it, like ammo.
• The Game Boy SaGa titles (released in North America as "Final Fantasy Legend" games) had this too, for all performable actions: shields, spellbooks, weapons, etc. The only one that did not have this was SaGa 3 which played like a traditional Final Fantasy game.
  • In the Remake the weapons have durability also, but the Mystic Swords can be recharged
  • Unlimited SaGa has breakable weapons as well, but you can repair them in one type of shop.
    • In the remake of Romancing SaGa the weapons durability only dropped if you used weapon techniques in which you were far too underleveled to use, you could increase it's durability by tempering it, but then you can only use another material or the same material to repair it in addition to the initial fee. You could even reduce the durability to increase attack power.
      • Actually Weapon Durability plays a large role in leveling up a weapon, you first need to find harmonic material (Will be red text when you choose to smith it to a weapon) then you have to use techs. The more powerful attacks and weapon durability cost, levels it up faster, or you could use Blunt Strike many times in battle (Blunt Strike does no damage and has a chance to inflict Paralysis) and the same thing will happen.
• In Minecraft all the tools are breakable, the durability varying from fragile (wood, gold) to extremely resistant (diamond). However you can repair tools by combining two damaged ones, or you can just make new ones.
• The weapons in Yakuza are breakable, as per its focus on hand-to-hand combat.
• Weapons in Dead Rising tend not to last very long, largely because one of the game's main features is the fact you're in a shopping mall stuff full of potential weapons, so the breakages encourage you to grab something new on a regular basis.
  • Dead Rising also has a unique power-up system based around this trope. Instead of repairing the durability of these ubiquitous and disposable weapons, the player can collect books that multiply the durability whatever weapon is discussed in the book (e.g., a book about construction increases the durability of 2x4s, ladders, etc.). These books can be kept indefinitely at the tradeoff of taking up inventory space that could be used for weapons. If one has multiple books in one's inventory, the effect of the books is multiplied for whatever weapons are affected by both books; one of the game's best weapons, the small chainsaw, is affected by three of these easily found books, effectively making it the Disc One Nuke.
• Dark Cloud and its sequel feature Breakable Weapons, and "Repair Powder" to restore the weapons' HP.
  • In the first game, any weapon that dropped to zero HP broke and disappeared forever, save for each character's default, starting weapon (and one Sword of Plot Advancement, which itself became breakable afterwards). Even if you spent forty hours building up and evolving your weapons to forge the Infinity+1 Sword, if it hit zero HP, it's gone. Forever. The only way to get it back is to reload your previous save file, assuming you haven't thrown your PS2 out the window yet.
    • Setting Auto Repair Power into one of the primary three slots (in the HUD) prevents many broken weapons for players who swing melee weapons too fast against enemies. It's the weapon-based equivalent of a bottled fairy in The Legend of Zelda.
  • In the second game, broken weapons simply became unusable but otherwise remained in your inventory (And the Fandom Rejoiced) until you took time to repair them. "Repair Powder" was a bit easier to find more of, as well.
    • You could also hold a stack of 20 repair powders also, so that made things a lot easier.
• In the last two Prince of Persia games, the Prince's sword is unbreakable, but enemy swords—once picked up by the Prince for two-weapon fighting—break after about thirty seconds' worth of use. This is particularly silly considering the first unbreakable weapon the Prince picks up after the shipwreck in Warrior Within is a stick. In The Two Thrones, the unbreakable permanent weapon is the Dagger of Time, a near-godly artifact, so it's plausible. Also, the rapid wear of the bladed weapons can be handwaved by the enemies being made of magic sand.
  • And the second unbreakable weapon he gets is a sword he takes from an enemy—the same way he gets his breakable weapons later.
• In the original Soul Edge/Soul Blade Fighting Game, it was possible to break a character's weapon if it had to block too much damage, or if you used a certain special move. This mechanic never appeared in any subsequent game, although a similar guard-abusing deterrent appeared in Soul Calibur IV in the form of Clothing Damage rather than weapon damage.
• In System Shock 2, every gun you find eventually degrades to the point where it breaks and becomes useless, requiring the player to invest in disposable tools and the skills of unjamming and repairing broken weapons. Unfortunately, the rate is cranked up much too high, making weapon maintenance an immediate high priority. The official patch adds a simple way to slow down weapon degrading or disable it altogether. Only melee weapons don't fall apart like cheap furniture after a few uses. Patch notes explained how to hack the config files and thereby reduce or remove weapon wear altogether (as well as a few other annoyances).
• In the Diablo series and World of Warcraft, an item keeps all its characteristics intact until it reaches zero durability, at which point it instantly becomes useless (handwaved in the WoW manual), but can still be repaired. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction added three special cases: Ethereal items, which are more powerful than regular items but have lower durability and cannot be repaired, the Indestructible attribute found on some unique and set items as well as regular magical items with the "of ages" suffix and finally the Zod rune (but good luck finding it). In the first Diablo, using the repair skill at lower levels would fix the weapon, but lower its maximum durability number, meaning it would need fixing again sooner.
  • In Diablo 1, items reduced to Zero Durability are destroyed, making low durability items like the Thinking Cap very tedious to use. However, there were shrines in the game that raised maximum durability, and making use of the Thinking Cap item (which had 1 durability: You could probably break it by sneezing.) to start with, almost required exploiting these shrines.
  • In WoW, durability degradation applies more slowly to Player versus Player combat, which also doesn't use the death durability penalty.
  • Throwing weapons in WoW used to be ammunition (like arrows for bows, except that the ammo is both), but a patch changed it so that throwing weapons had durability, which was reduced by one point every time it was thrown and could be repaired like a normal weapon. This was especially helpful for hard to come by throwing weapons.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time featured the Giant's Knife, a powerful sword which broke after only a few swings—though the hilt interestingly retained its great strength even when broken, taking only a considerable decrease in range. Majora's Mask featured the Razor Sword, an upgrade to Link's usual weapon which blunted back down to its original form after a hundred swings. Both games featured a Sidequest to render these upgraded forms permanent.
  • A variation also appears in Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, where wooden shields are destroyed if set on fire. As an added bonus, the Ordon Shield in Twilight Princess is Lost Forever. You can buy an infinite number of replacement Wooden Shields, which work just as well, but they don't have the same coat of arms as the Ordon Shield has. In addition, Ocarina of Time's Deku Sticks could be used to hit enemies with, but the stick would break on impact…rather reasonable.
    • Incidentally, there's a glitch in the game that involves using a Deku Stick in a jumping attack from a ledge which nets you a shorter, but unbreakable stick that you can swing around until you pull out another item. Useful in the early game when the sticks do considerably more damage than the tiny Kokiri Sword.
  • Skyward Sword gives us breakable shields with their own health meters lowered by improperly deflected attacks (and for the wood shield, being set on fire). A damage shield can be repaired by Gondo or using a special potion that's poured on the shield, and the Divine Shield fixes itself over time, but a broken shield is gone entirely. Gondo can also upgrade your shields to make them more durable. The Hylian Shield you can only win in a Boss Rush is indestructible. The sword isn't easily destroyed, being of divine origin, but the shields can be destroyed if subject to too much abuse. This forces the player to time their shield bashes well so as to keep the shield meter up. Ghirahim's BFS in the final fight against him is also breakable when attacked in the same spot several times from the right angle. Better do it quick though, or he'll just magically repair it.
  • All weapons (including bows) and shields in Breath of the Wild break after a limited number of uses, although it is sometimes possible to avoid using them by instead attacking with Remote Bombs, or by swinging metal objects around with Magnesis. The Master Sword also recovers after a while.
• Puzzle Pirates, a pirate-based MMORPG for the PC, features this trope. Everything you can obtain (with the exception of currency, trinkets, ships, pets and some promotional items) wears out over time and turns into dust.
  • Except for clothes, which turn into unattractive "rags". You can still wear them—no nudity allowed, even the cartoon variety—but they don't look good.
• Weapons (and armor) in The Elder Scrolls games are worn down by use, but can be repaired, using repair hammers that are, themselves, destructible through use. If a character has completely mastered the repair skill, then repair hammers become unbreakable. Also, damaged weapons and armors degrade, doing less damage or have less protection.
  • In Daggerfall, only weapons wore with use, to be repaired at a shop, while your armor remained spotless. Enchanted items that wore with "Use" could not be repaired without tweaking the game's *.cfg file. Starting with Morrowind, magic drain/recharge and physical wear/repair were isolated from each other as item properties.
• In most Wrestling Games, all weapons, from broomsticks to steel chairs to sledgehammers, break after you hit somebody with them three times. This convention started with games like WWF Wrestlefest and Saturday Night Slam Masters, and continues to be used today.
• Webcomic example: In Homestuck, various gaming abstractions are a part of real life, including Weapon of Choice, called a STRIFE SPECIBUS. If something happens to an item in the specibus while a character is wielding it that significantly alters it, the STRIFE SPECIBUS changes so that that character can only use it in that form unless the item is repaired. Specific examples include:
  • When John fights his first imp in the medium, he accidentally destroys the sledgehammer he'd been using, turning his HAMMERKIND ABSTRATUS into a HANDLEKIND ABSTRATUS until he repaired it post-fight.
  • Dave's battle with his brother shattered his cheap piece of shit trusty katana, since then, he's been permanently stuck with the 1/2 BLADEKIND ABSTRATUS, although one weapon, Caledscratch, uses time-travelling powers to revert itself to pre-broken state at times.
  • Equius is too STRONG to wield a bow, even though he desperately wants to, he has both a BOWKIND ABSTRATUS (for the off-chance he actually successfully fires an arrow) and 1/2BOWKIND ABSTRATUS (so he can wield the ones that break), though he usually sticks to his FISTKIND ABSTRATUS.
• SaGa Frontier 2 has this. Each weapon is good for so many hits (except for rare/special weapons) and you must repair them at certain shops to continue reusing them. This is because the game universe allows people to use magic...as long as they're using "natural" weapons. As a result, the weapons are made of things like wood and stone. In fact, one main character is unable to use magic at all, and as a result discovers the incredible offensive properties of iron, which does not allow magic use, but absolutely destroys an army armed with natural weapons and magic.
• In Jade Empire, your character's personal weapons are Unbreakable Weapons, but you can also pick up legs from broken tables and other improvised weapons, which break after a certain number of uses.
• In Jagged Alliance 2, guns, armor, tools, and even glowsticks degrade. This is realistic, to a certain point, as guns will jam or misfire when degraded, and armor will not be as protective. However, it is incredibly aggravating to loot opponents' bodies and find guns that they have apparently left in a stagnant pool of hydrochloric acid for a month, which still fire perfectly for them!
  • Another thing which realistically damages weapons is explosions; be careful when using grenades or barrels to kill elite mooks, because it might damage their often-better equipment.
• In The Warriors, the focus is on bare-fisted combat—any item you pick up will break after a few hits. This includes wrenches, knives, and bricks. If the weapon was taken from a fallen enemy, expect it to be good for exactly one swing before it disintegrates in your hand.
• The PS2-version of The Punisher has a similar system. Focused on gunplay, any melee weapon you collect can be used to kill a single mook, often literally shattering into pieces in the process. Including pipe-wrenches and metallic baseball-bats.
• Weapons in God Hand are good for about ten swings before they just fall out of your hands and vanish. Gameplay-wise this appears to be justified considering how much damage they can deal, and not having them break instantly would unbalance the game's Nintendo Hard nature.
• The player can pick up numerous melee weapons in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. They break after a few swings, but are more damaging than the default weapons which is quite a feat considering the base weapons include Thor's Mjolnir, Wolverine's adamantium claws, and Cap's unbreakable shield.
• Many of the games in the Ultima series had a glass sword which could kill almost any enemy in one shot, but would break afterwards.
• In Summon Night: Swordcraft Story you have weapons with their own meter in battle that measure how much you can use it (attacking and blocking) that resets in every battle. If it runs out it breaks and you have to use another type of weapon, and if you don't have any left, a forging hammer. The same goes for human opponents in duels where you can only use one weapon and if either's weapons break, they lose.
• In Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2 this is slightly changed. The meter no longer becomes full after each battle but can be repaired after breaking and restored before breaking by items.
• In Riviera: The Promised Land, almost all weapons are breakable except for angelic Diviners, which can only be used to any effect by their owners. Sometimes, the player will get weapons that are much more powerful than what they already have, but with only one or five uses. Many of these come back at a later, more reasonable time in the game with 30-40 uses.
  • Knights in the Nightmare, the final game in the Dept. Heaven series (of which Riviera is the first), has a similar system. You don't get a default unbreakable weapon, but Maria, the main character, can use any weapon effectively to make up for it.
• Seen in the CRPG The Magic Candle, with a couple of twists. One is that you can erase your weapons' accumulated "wear and tear" by having someone work on them during a rest period. (You quickly get into the habit of doing this.) The other is that a broken weapon can still be fixed, it just takes a lot longer. One perk of Brennix, the game's Infinity+1 Sword, is that it never needs fixing.
• Most of the weapons in Valkyrie Profile are unbreakable, though human weaponry, slayer weapons and many staves that allow Great Magic use have a random chance of breaking after each use.
  • The game's sequel was a bit nicer, having all weapons unbreakable unless a certain Sealstone was used, which also boosts their attack power by 300%. Odd, somehow in the time between the beginning of the two games, the ability for Normals to make unbreakables was lost.
    • Covenant of the Plume does away with this entirely, though it makes sense - it's only humans using human weapons, and many of them are soldiers or mercenaries who would know how to maintain their weapons between battles.
• Like the modern-day Prince of Persia, Prince Ali of Beyond Oasis (The Story of Thor in Europe) carried an arsenal of breakable weaponry. Only his knife (which he was best with anyway) stayed around... unless you could find the top-secret "Infinite" items! Oddly, for a number of years the only infinite item anyone knew anything about was the best one.
  • However it is justified with the Crossbows and the bombs since they are ammo based weapons anyway.
  • An Early on Infinity+1 Sword would be the Fire Crossbow which you win in a Minigame
• Board Game Example: With a few exceptions, all weapons in Duel Of Ages are lost the moment you successfully kill an opponent with them. They can miss any number of times, be used to repeatedly drop enemy units to near death, and kill every pet or sentinel sent after you, but the moment you kill another character with it, it's gone.
• Super Smash Bros. has multiple weapons that can be picked up that eventually cease to function. Some won't work anymore, but can still be thrown, while others simply vanish after some time or a certain number of uses. The hammer occasionally loses its head when you use it, making the handle completely useless, although the head can be thrown a few times with devastating results. Containers, which release additional items when damaged, basically count as breakable weapons since they can be broken open on enemies.
• Nonmagical metal weaponry early on in Baldur's Gate would sometimes break on you without warning, justified because the first major quest of the game involved a "plague" upon all the iron coming out of the mines that supply most of the region, meaning much of the processed iron and steel goods in the area were constantly breaking because they were so weak. It sucked, but at least they had a reason. Once you got magical weapons (and paying for them at low level was like drinking gold dust) it wasn't an issue.
• A rare few blades in Planescape: Torment also would break easily, simply because they weren't meant for combat or were in extremely poor shape—things like steak knives, rusted blades, and so on.
  • Don't forget the Glass Gauntlets! (Er, Shards of Fate.)
• Tabletop RPG example: the d20 Apocalypse book, for running post-apocalyptic games with the d20 Modern game system, strongly recommends that Game Masters have pre-apocalypse weapons and equipment break when the player using them rolls a natural 1 (a "critical failure") on the attack roll or skill check. Mainly justified in that most of this stuff has been lying around without any kind of maintenance and probably exposed to the elements for a few centuries.
• Free MMO Voyage Century Online does not allow repairs to the basic starter versions of weapons, nor to any versions of the various tools used to perform crafts. Not much of an issue because starter weapons are extremely cheap and replaceable at any blacksmith, and the basic versions of tools are much the same. More advanced versions of tools last so long before wearing out that it's rarely a major inconvenience to go back and replace them. Repairing more advanced equipment can be a pain if you do not know how to make the item in the first place, meaning you'll be lowering the item's max durability even as you fix it up, meaning it'll break more easily next time, and blacksmiths will do much the same with advanced equipment.
• Seen in Mark Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure - given that the game is more focused on Double Dragon-style hand-to-hand combat and tagging, melee weapons are breakable after three to four uses. And yes, that includes steel pipes and crowbars.
• A major part of the Way of the Samurai series of games on PS2. Aside from only being able to carry 3 different swords at a time, each could have different durability stats that represented how much stress the blade was under. Each attack raised the red bar a little, though extremely powerful attacks, some instant kill attacks, and blocking heavy attacks added lots of stress. Hitting the limit dropped the durability one point, making it easier to break again. Losing all durability generally meant the end of the weapon, particularly painful considering the upgrading you can have done to a blade, and that skills you know and attacks automatically blocked are unique to the sword used to acquire them.
• In STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl all conventional firearms wear out from prolonged use. The lower the weapon's durability, the more likely it is to jam, necessitating a lengthy reload (not a happy prospect in the middle of a firefight). Weapons with a durability of less than 30% become practically unusable.
  • Some weapons also wear out ridiculously quickly. This editor found a brand new handgun in a stash, and only managed to use it for two in-game days before it became so worn it would jam once for every few rounds fired. Fortunately, many mods reduce the rate of weapon degradation and also allow you to pay to have them repaired.
  • Mercifully, in the prequel Clear Sky there are characters who will repair your stuff.
    • And there are mods that add this into Shadow of Chernobyl.
• In the Monster Hunter series weapons become duller the more they are used. However, one can buy an item (or gather them from the environment) and resharpen the weapon back to it's original form during hunts. Also, when the weapon loses all its sharpness, it is still usable, albeit very weak.
  • Rather bizarrely, you also have to sharpen blunt weaponry to the same effect.
• Early editions of Dungeons & Dragons had optional rules where a player who makes a very unfortunate attack roll could break his own weapon, or suffer some other similar calamity, at the referee's discretion. With 3rd Edition rules, players can specifically attack an opponent's weapon or shield in an attempt to break ("sunder") it, just like any other object or material.
  • The Oriental Adventures sourcebook had a "weapon breaker" combat manouever that had a chance to break an opponents weapon - however if used on an "unbreakable" weapon it would fail and there was a good chance you'd break your own weapon instead.
• Materia Magica has equipment decay. Items will lose durability when used (but won't suffer any stat penalties until they break completely and disintegrate). Interestingly, items can only be repaired a fixed number of times (with better items having fewer repair chances). Items can also be "reforged", possibly increasing (or decreasing!) their stats at the expense of one repair chance.
• 7th Sea takes a similar, though more conservative approach. Unbreakable Weapons are the default, but a select few swordsman schools gain the ability to smash opponents' weapons or even crush them in their gauntlets, although both are difficult (the required rolls start at 30, which is higher than the difficulty to hit the vast majority of foes in the first place) and may even require spending a Drama Die. The only weapons that are Breakable Weapons by default are improvised weapons, which break when a player rolls and keeps a 10 on a damage die. Since 10s explode, this tends to mean that improvised weapons break rather cinematically, shattering as the result of a mighty blow.
• In Condemned: Criminal Origins, most melee weapons would last forever if you wanted them to, with the sole exception of firearms used as melee weapons in order to prolong the inevitable invocation of the Law of Conservation of Ammo. In Condemned 2: Bloodshot, -all- weapons degrade and eventually break if used in any form of melee combat, especially blocking. Whether it's to encourage Good Old Fisticuffs or keep you scrounging for weapons is unknown.
• In Def Jam: Fight for NY, participants can get their hands on any number of nifty weapons, from baseball bats to beer bottles to barbed-wire-wrapped 2x4s, all of which break after 1-5 hits. This even applies to the rare (and devistating) chrome tube and lead pipe, though they don't actually break - once you hit the limit, the item bends over the opponent's head.
• Izuna: The Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and its sequel. Armor is breakable, too, but most weapons and armor last a long time when not overloaded with talismans.
• The Streets of Rage series has all weapons vanish after a certain number of hits, but a certain exploit in the some of the games can make the weapons' durability gauge refill again, basically renewing them. If an enemy picks up a weapon dropped by the player, its durability will be near full once the player take the weapon back.
• Kingdom of Loathing has a few breakable items, mostly due to them being of flimsy make, like the Palm-Frond Whip. Usually they have an advantage to offset their fragility; the whip, for example, deals a ridiculous amount of bonus damage when it hits.
  • Another example is the weapon and pieces of armor making up the Antique Arms and Armor outfit, each of which has a random chance of being destroyed during combat, with the offset being that all of the items are some of the most powerful in the game.
• From the page quote, Silent Hill Origins and also Silent Hill 4. The golf clubs snapping after a few hits was particularly irritating.
• In Drakan, only the weakest weapon is indestructible.
  • And the two strongest ones - the vampire sword (don't remember the name) and the Infinity+1 Sword, aka Sword of Plot Advancement that you only get at the very ending of the game.
• Betrayal at Krondor has a curiously rare system where the weapons' and armors' effectiveness (measured in percents) degrades gradually over use instead of going from 100% to snapped in half in one sudden moment. A sword in 73% condition will only do 73% of the normal damage. It employs a similar system for people - when you get injured, all of your skills will temporarily drop in proportion to the injury. Whetstones and hammers for repairing gear exist, though they also degrade over use.
  • A bug in the game's code made the displayed condition of the weapon or armor independent of its actual use; a sword will do the same damage at 10% as it does at 100%, and a suit of armor prevents just as much damage at 35% as it does at 100%. The only in-game effect for the durability is for crossbow strings (which will break randomly, based on the condition of the string and render the weapon unusable) and selling looted or obselete armor to shops.
• Ultima Underworld and its sequel have a system similar to Ba K above, except they show vague descriptions of condition instead of definite percentages. Everything in them can break upon repeated use (or repeated throwing against a wall), including potions.
• The weapons in Far Cry 2 degrade over time, losing effectiveness. Eventually, they'll start jamming more and more often, and will blow up altogether if the player continues using them. Luckily, weapons purchased from the gun stores are always brand-new, and you get an infinite supply of replacements for any gun you've purchased before. Guns picked up from enemies, on the other hand, tend to be rather old and beat-up; it's better just to snag their ammo.
  • The guns themselves are ridiculously bad, however. There is no way a dart rifle (with no propellant fouling) explodes after 15 shots. The actual ridiculing can be found at IMFDB.
• Fallout 1 and 2 had unbreakable weapons, but a critical failure had the potential to destroy a weapon, making it disappear completely. This was one of the many reasons that made the 'Jinxed' trait so unpopular.
  • Fallout Tactics occasionally have weapons break on a critical failure, but rather than vanish you simply couldn't use it. You could, however, repair it.
  • Fallout 3 had weapons that did less damage and jammed more frequently when damaged. They could be repaired by NPC for usurious fees, or, unusually, by scavenging parts from other weapons. If you've got two beat up 10mm pistols, you take take apart one and end up with a single 10mm in better condition.
    • Makes a small bit of sense with firearms if the individual parts of the guns are in different conditions (one has a better barrel than the other) but it makes no sense that you can use one sword or combat knife to repair another.
      • With swords and knives, the player can assume that one weapon has a dull blade, and the other has a flimsy grip. There are really no excuses for combining two baseball bats and ending up with one in good condition, though. Buh?
    • Taken to its logical extent in Fallout 3, where you could shoot your ENEMIES' weapons and render them unusable by damaging them enough, causing your enemies to drop them. They can still be repaired or used for pieces, though they cost a huge amount to repair and don't repair other items much.
    • Fallout 3 also averts the "no effect on performance" part of this trope. Weapons in better states of repair do more damage (likely brought over from TES series) and firearms in poor states of repair have a chance of jamming when they're reloaded.
    • Also, armor provides less damage resistance if it's in poor condition, but it won't lose any of the bonuses it gives you.
  • Further expanded upon in Fallout: New Vegas, where loading your guns with poor quality 'Surplus' ammo or over-charging your Energy Weapons causes them to deteriorate even faster, but you can put together toolboxes which can be used to fix stuff without needing a copy to break down for parts.
    • New Vegas also introduces the "Maintain" threshold, a condition value of about 80% where weapon degredation doesn't affect its performance (fire rate, accuracy, damage) until the condition level drops below it. The game also makes it possible to repair items to 100% regardless of your repair skill as was the case in Fallout 3.
    • Components of one "Weapon Repair Kit": Three pieces of Scrap Metal. Two bottles of Wonderglue. Two Wrenches. One pile of Scrap Electronics. And of course, a spool of Duct Tape for Everything!
• Partially done in the PlayStation 2 Buffy the Vampire Slayer game Chaos Bleeds. A shovel, for example, will eventually snap (including if you bash it against a wall enough times), but since vamps are weak to wood, you can just pick up the handle and keep using it until it snaps again and makes a standard-sized stake, which you can then keep using until it is completely worn away. Metal weapons like swords never break, though.
• In Forumwarz, using broken items causes a temporary maximum health decrease. Fortunately they are reparable- for a price.
• EVE Online, believe it or not. If you overheat your modules, they will shortly start to incur heat damage, too much heat damage and the module(s) will go offline; you will either need to drop by a station with a repair facility and pay to have them repaired, or use some (expensive) nanopaste if that is not an option. Assuming you don't (or can't) overheat your modules, however, the only way for them to get damaged is to be in or on a ship when it goes boom...
  • It should be noted that like all things in EVE Online this is a tradeoff. Modules that can be overheated will often give some addition boot. (range, Ro F, Damage, etc) Additionally, keeping somewhat accurately to science, heat will "spread randomly" to other modules. So, one tactic used is to have an offline modules to act as a "heat sink" to run your other modules hotter longer.
• Soulbringer uses this fairly realistically. Weapons gradually become less effective as they're used (especially if used against certain armors, like using a scimitar to slash against plate armor.) They can be repaired to perfect condition at any point up from ?ruined,? but use beyond that can break them beyond repair. The game also features breakable armor, in the same manner.
• Alone in the Dark had weapons which fell apart literally in about a dozen strokes. Combined with unlimited supplies of some mooks, this can get pretty aggravating.
• Free MMORPG Mabinogi has all equips subject to this trope; with functionality is fully retained until breakage. Weapons can be repaired at any time by certain NPCs. However, the reliability of the repairs varies considerably between NPCs, with environment effects also affecting reliabity. Failed repairs reduce the maximum durability of the item by a point, potentially to zero with enough failures. Failed attempts to add certain effects to a weapon through "enchantments" can also reduce durability, up to and including permanent breakage. Cost to repair varies with the NPC (higher reliability = higher price), and item value. Subscribing to a paid premium service slows the decay rate, and increases the reliability of repairs.
  • Not all weapons can be repaired. A few, such as the Ghost Sword, break after a single use, or very limited use (a single point of durability). This is justified in that they are often One-Hit Kill weapons, or required for specific quests.
  • Some items, including weapons, are only available for a limited time during special events; and typically cannot be repaired. Justified in the case of most weapons by giving them better stats than similar weapon types; although some are purely cosmetic differences.
  • The game's sentient "spirit" weapons" follow a slightly different mechanic. They also wear out and break; but have a much higher maximum durability, which can be increased. Unlike ordinary weapons, spirit weapons are repaired by the owner, using a more complex process, and the chance of a failed repair is dependent on several factors. A "spirit weapon repair potion" is available through the premium (cash) shop which eliminates the normal repair process, and the risk of losing durability.
• Capcom's Shadow of Rome for the PlayStation 2. Weapons in both the gladiator and stealth sections would break with enough use. Justified though, since if they didn't break, any fight would become trivial when the Magnus lands in the arena.
• RuneScape uses this in a few different ways. First, there are some enchanted rings, necklaces, bracelets, and other jewelry that disintegrate after a specific number of uses. By the same token, there are some gloves that give a massive exp bonus in Runecrafting, but they only last when you create 1000 runes. After number 1000, they just disintegrate.
  • There is also equipment referred to under a blanket term as Barrows Equipment. There exists some incredibly powerful melee, ranged and magic equipment that belonged to immensely powerful warriors of days gone by, and you can go graverobbing to get your hands on some. They're the best weapons in the game...Usually. However, after about 15 hours of combat, they break, and require you to pay through the nose to repair. The PVP equipment released rather recently takes this a step further - Powerful to the point of bordering on being a Game Breaker, but they're rare, expensive, and once used for an hour in combat, it's Lost Forever. Jagex then took it to the ultimate extreme with the Hand Cannon. It's an uncommon weapon with annoying-to-get ammo, but under the right conditions, it can hit right up to 60 HP (and in a game where the maximum HP is 99, this is a big deal). However, seeing what trope we're in here, it should be obvious what it's issue is - Due to the brilliant dwarven craftsmanship, it can violently, and without warning, explode in your face. The 16 damage to your health will heal. The sheer fury of the weapon you were having so much fun destroying people with being suddenly Lost Forever will stay with you far, far longer...
• In Muramasa: The Demon Blade, your swords will break and become useless for attacking and defending if you use them too much for blocking or using special moves. They can, however, be repaired if you keep them in your sheath for a while.
  • The fact that you can switch between three equipped blades and the two not in use regenerate (faster if not broken) makes this less of an issue, though you won't have access to durability-draining special moves if you block too much.
• Tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000 features Plasma weapons for it's Space Marines and Imperial Guard troops that have a tendency to explode at inopportune moments.
• This is a very prominent Scrappy Mechanic in the Resident Evil clone Koudelka. Breakable weapons do not show up in its sequels, the Shadow Hearts series.
  • Guns in Koudelka don't break. They just use ammo from a limited ammo supply and must be reloaded once the clip's empty. Every bit as scrappy a mechanic, though. So much so that it's generally less of a ball-ache to have Koudelka spam magic and the other two characters use their fists. All the time.
• Weapons in the Might and Magic series have an annoying tendancy to break quite often (as do armor and accessories). However, they can be fixed for the right price or if one of your party has some skill at repairing things.
• Items break at seemingly random in Albion. There's no durability, just usable items, and broken weapons. Some items are found broken, and must be repaired before use.
• Melee weapons in Arcanum can be damaged if used on hard, hot, or corrosive objects (e.g., doors, chests, fire elementals, or certain slimy things). Certain weapons such as axes or hammers are more resistant to damage, but some enemies are still better dealt with from a distance.
• Halo has plasma weapons, and while some way of recharging them must exist, this method is never shown. Even when one plays as a member of the Covenant, which developed and use plasma weapons, no method of recharging plasma weapons is presented. Once the plasma runs dry, the weapon is useless. Most weapons, even ones which are actually important to the status of the bearer, are throw-aways.
  • With the exception of detached turrets, anything that doesn't use physical projectiles can and will run out of juice and become nothing more than a slightly interesting bludgeon. Everything else can be reloaded or never needs to be.
  • Vehicles will take damage to a certain point before exploding in a fiery ball of death for all passengers or nearbystanders, but will not be reduced in performance or capacity for destruction. Damage is even received by running into too many other players, which makes sense, as Spartans are essentially walking tanks with shields.
• Blood Omen 2 features this; there is a considerable variety in the types of weapons shown, but they're pretty much all breakable, usually only lasting two or three fights. When they break, they will shatter into a million pieces. Oddly, weapons only break when you use them; You can strike an enemy's weapon all day long, and block their every attack, but it'll never break until it gets into your hands.
• In Deadly Premonition, melee weapons are much more powerful than guns, but have limited durability and will eventually break; hitting enemies breaks them much faster than hitting crates or fences. You can get some unbreakable melee weapons by doing sidequests, though.
• Vagrant Story, true to its nature, has a rather complicated example. Weapons in Vagrant Story have durability. Durability decreases with use, and when it reaches 0 the weapon is weakened by 1/2. The durability can then only be restored at one of the various workshops in the game. This drains the weapon's PP by the number of durability points that are restored. PP, which grows from use of the weapon, will cause the weapon to deal double damage when it is maxed out. On top of that, there is at least one skill that partially restores durability in the middle of combat.
• In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, every weapon in the game will break after enough uses. Every weapon. Even the Power of Love sword, although it does have a very impressive number of uses before it fails.
• In Zettai Hero Project, all weapons and armor have limited uses, represented by its Condition. If Condition reaches less than 50%, the item becomes less effective. This instills into the player that weapons, no matter how useful/cool, are ultimately expendable and should be treated accordingly. The objective is to win, at any cost, particularly apt for a Roguelike.
• In Assassin's Creed II, certain moves with the polearm will cause Ezio to break it.
• In Dead State, improvised weapons have a chance to break whenever they're used—the kitchen knife even has an attack that deliberately breaks the blade off in the wound in order to cause a guaranteed critical and bleeding damage—but survivors are encouraged to carry an unbreakable weapon too, like a baseball bat.
• Most of the wooden weapons in Mitadake High - the wooden bat, the bokken, and the nailbat are all susceptible. In a slight variation, tasers can run out of battery life, but you can still hit people with them.
• In Project Blackout, weapons have a set number of uses. When they run out, the weapon disappears and you need to buy a new one.
• In Arx Fatalis, every hit damages the weapon as well, and hitting something hard, like armor, bone, or wall, only increases this damage. Repairing lowers max durabilty, to avoid this you can repair it at the blacksmith. Weapon, however, will be fully functional until the end, when it (according to the following sound) is pulverized. Furthermore, buying or repairing weapon at blacksmith is virtually the only way to get non-damaged weapon; pieces you loot are generally in bad condition, due to being used. However, "generic" weapons with no bonuses can be enchanted with one of several magic ingredients, one of which makes them undestructible. Finally, any Mithril sword is unbreakable by design.
• In Godai, Elemental Force, weapons would wear with every use. A lot. And you can't repair them. Add to that the fact that all of the bosses have more HP than all your weapons combined, and this game gets very hard, very fast.
• A significant case exists (at least, did - no guarantee that it is still the case after to so many years) in Ultima Online. Both weapons and armor have durability which wears down over time and can be repaired by someone with the appropriate skill, but every repair reduces the maximum durability of the item and weapons at lower durability deal less damage. If you are diligent about keeping your weapons at optimal killing capacity, then you'll have to replace them entirely before long. Fortunately, the really powerful magical weapons were never mandatory, and most people could get by with a simple player-crafted katana.
• Nethack has a variant: You cannot break melee weapons through fighting with them, but using bladed weapons to force locks can break them. Missile weapons have a chance of being "lost" (i.e., disappearing from the game) when they are used.
• Obscure arena combat mech-sim Steel Lancer Arena International has this...with your Partner AI. It wasn't broken via use, but by repairing your partner's 'data chip' after battles when they've taken a few knocks. Fridge Brilliance sets in when you realize that what you're doing is essentially repairing bad sectors over and over on a hard disk with your partner on it; do this enough times and you start to lose storage space to artifacts of the recovery process. It costs a pretty penny to just port your partner over to a new hard drive, an act equivalent to topping them off to their original HP value, before starting the process all over again.
• In Dark Souls, all weapons (and armor) degrade slowly with use. Certain enemy abilities cause durability damage on your items, and some weapons allow you to use a powerful special attack at the cost of rapidly degrading the weapon's condition. Fortunately everything can be repaired relatively easily aside from the frail and unrepairable Crystal items.
  • One notable exception is the Dragon Tooth hammer which will never break. This is because the Dragon Tooth is literally the tooth of one of the everlasting dragons, whose bones and scales are indestructible even if they themselves could be slain.
• In Pathologic, all weapons have 'durability' scores that go down when you use them. Though weapons can still be used even at 0% durability, the game averts Critical Existence Failure; melee weapons will dull and deal less damage, and ranged weapons will become less accurate. Fortunately, you can repair weapons for a modest sum by talking to a certain type of NPC.
  • Equipment also has a durability score that goes down the longer it's worn, though it seems to play Critical Existence Failure straight.
• Left 4 Dead 2 originally was going to have melee weapons fall apart after several uses, but the idea got scrapped for being too annoying.
• Some weapons and items in the Golden Sun series had a secondary function that could be used in or out of battles, such as a weapon that blinds enemies or an accessory that restores HP upon use. Using these functions one too many times causes the item to be broken, but all it does is render the secondary function useless and you can get broken items fixed for a small fee.
• In The Tower of Druaga, though pickaxes can't actually be used as weapons, they will break if you use them on outer walls or, except with the Golden Pickaxe, when used on too many walls on the same floor. Breaking your pickaxe obviously isn't good, but since the puzzles in this game tend to be anything but obvious, there's a floor where you need to break the Copper Pickaxe to get the Silver Pickaxe.
• Discussed in Cracked: Photoplasty advertises a product that dulls weapons in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
• MadWorld, where nearly all weapons are breakable. However, this is more of a balancing issue, because if all weapons were unbreakable, the game would be a breeze.
• In Escape Velocity it's possible to design outfits that wear out after a given amount of time by putting together two oütf resources (one for the good version, one for the bad version) and a crön resource (a time delay) that replaces one with the other. EV Nova's in-game example is the black-market versions of the Fission Reactor (which breaks down after a few months) and the Thorium Reactor (which becomes an explosion waiting to happen).
• Space Rangers has a similar example in that all equipment wears out if used (so you repair bot will not wear out if your hull doesn't need repair, and weapons don't wear out if you don't fire). Also, if something is broken enough, it starts malfunctioning—for example, the fuel tank starts leaking, making you waste fuel, and sufficiently damaged engine will slow you down to a crawl.
• In The Punisher arcade game by Capcom, all the weapons that can be used by the player have limited durability that is displayed when wielded. After the limit has been reached, the weapon will no longer be usable. Some of the melee weapons, such as the baseball bat and the pipe, will break in its last use.
• In Shintolin, all weapons can break, from simple sticks to ivory spears. This is justified to the extent that all the weapons are made with sticks, which tend to break when struck against something/one.
• Nearly every melee weapon longer than a knife in Resident Evil Outbreak will eventually break unless in Bottomless Magazines mode is enabled.