Durability

Description

At zero, items break and become ineffective.
Durability is restored by resting at a bonfire, but a broken item must be repaired first.¹

During combat, the durability of equipped weapons and armor degrades. Weapons degrade when you hit something, armor and rings degrade when you are hit.

When an item reaches 0 durability, it is fully broken and it must be repaired at a blacksmith. Armor and rings lose all their stats while weapons suffer greatly reduced damage when they are broken.

Enviromental Causes of Durability Damage

Cause	Location	Damages Weapons or Armor
Undead Citizen (brown core)	Dragon Aerie	Armor
Corrosive Ant Queen	The Gutter	Armor
Acid Horn Beetle	Shrine of Amana	Armor
Giant Acid Horn Beetle	Shrine of Amana Aldia's Keep	Armor
Corrosive Egg Insect	Shulva, Sanctum City Dragon's Sanctum	Both
Royal Rat Authority	Doors of Pharros	?
Bradley of the Old Guard	No-man's Wharf	Armor
Maldron the Assassin	Brume Tower	Both
The Duke's Dear Freja	Brightstone Cove Tseldora	Armor
Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon	Dragon's Rest	Weapon
Pools of Acid	Various	Armor
Acid Jar	No-man's Wharf The Gutter	Armor
Egg Sack	Shulva, Sanctum City Dragon's Sanctum	Both

Player Causes of Durability Damage

• Fire Destructive Greatarrows with a Greatbow.
• Cast the Acid Surge pyromancy.
• Throw a Corrosive Urn.
• King's Ultra Greatsword deals increased durability damage to enemy armor.
• Using a weapon's special attack damages the weapon greatly.

Restoring Durability

• Rest at a bonfire.
• Use Repair Powder.
• Cast the Repair sorcery.
• Items that are already broken have to be repaired at a blacksmith.
• Attack the Pagan Tree with any whip and it will emit a mist that has a repair effect. This also repairs items that are already broken.

Avoiding Excess Durability Damage

• Wear the Bracing Knuckle Ring, which increases equipment durability by up to 50%.
• Don't attack corpses of dead enemies or friendly phantoms, as this rapidly lowers weapon durability.
• Don't walk on lava or spikes for an extended period of time.

Notes

• PvE opponents don't have durability, so don't try breaking their equipment.

This is actually false.
Human enemies, such as human red phantoms and invading NPC's, can have equipment broken.
the two red phantoms at the kings door in FOTFG can be used to test this, as at least one of them has a low durability ring to break.

• Attacking Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon with melee weapons damages their durability at a faster rate than usual.
• Ring of Life Protection and Ring of Soul Protection break when you die.
• Gower's Ring of Protection takes increased damage when you are hit in the back.
• Santier's Spear changes significantly when it's broken. See its page for details.

Footnotes

1. In-game description.