Ideas for Stendhal/Item Deterioration

Like in reality in Stendhal the weapons, armors, shields and so on are subject to being damaged during their use. This behaviour is two fold regarding the intentions behind it:

1. Strategic component
2. Economic aspects

The first one forces players to think about their equipment. Considerations like "Do I need another weapon?" before going adventuring or "Should I return to a city and repair?" in the middle of an adventure add some more depth to the game play.

Further it is also a tool that helps to regulate the amount of money in the game by being a money drain.

Therefore this concept describes how to implement deterioration of items in Stendhal.

Lifetime of items

One of the main questions while implementing damaging of items is how long an item should live. A too short lifetime will be too annoying for players whereas a too long lifetime will be of no effect for the economy in Stendhal. Therefore answering this question is an important step towards implementation of item deterioration.

TODO: Gather data about average session length and fights

TODO: Discuss breaking vs. not breaking, further effects on damaged items?

Repair Prices

How much should a player pay for a repair? What are the factors involved for price calculation?

Implementation

Coding and design

Damaging

damaging

Repairing

repairing

Further Reading

• Geometric distribution on Wikipedia

Notes

If this is implemented, I think it would be a good idea to have a argument for the server where item deterioration can be disabled. That way, someone running their own custom server can choose to have this option. - <player>deluge|AntumDeluge</player>