armor breaks without being hit

Darthryan · April 2014

So today I grinded for about an hour with my bow. I counted that I got hit 9 times from mobs. I sold all my found gear and loot besides a blue sword I kept. I made 700g. Went to repair and it was 1300g!!!!!!!!! So I guess just fighting mobs wheather u get hit or not your armor degrades. I dislike this very much.

Hitchhiker · April 2014

Do you do a lot of jumping off cliffs, rocks, etc. and take fall damage? I tend to have higher repair bills when I jump far enough to take damage.

zgrssd · April 2014

Yes, armor does degrade somewhat from fighting alone.
But mostly it degrades from death (as of 1.0.5 it is unimportant if that happened in combat from damage, via /stuck or with killing yourself by falling from cliffs).

In order to get anything on the order of 1.3k gold, several of these thigns must have been in place:
- You wore exclusively blue,purple or very high level stuff
- you tried "costless" quicktravel via death (it is not costless due to item damage)
- the armor was already damaged before, you just forgot that before running off grinding

Some other damagign effect degrades armor too, like falling (as @Hitchhiker‌ said).
Considering that you have no excluded either of those and gave little info (level, quality, heavyness of armor) in your OP, you propably just overlook a source of attrition or this was just how much minor damage costs on your level.

Darthryan · April 2014

So I did it again today. 5 med two heavy. Blues and greens. Repaired armor before grind with bow. After about an hour. 1109g repair bill. 879g from selling all stuff I found. Bad grind. Got hit 11 times. Lvl 30. Sucks ass.

zamiel · April 2014

zgrssd wrote: »

- You wore exclusively blue,purple or very high level stuff

Repair costs barely depend on item quality, only on their level.

On high levels (vet3+) fighting itself incurs the most cost. Was trying to solo a world boss and died about 5 times to her - total repair costs were 170gp.

Did questing for an hour - ranged build with low hp, so I don't get hit often (or I would die) - 880 gp.

Now add to this that after vet3 quests only cover about 60% of the vp needed to rank up the high level economy is downright idiotic. It really needs an overhaul. I understand the concept of money sinks and how to avoid inflation - but losing money while playing the game is a bit too much.

roney.jeremyub17_ESO · April 2014

Actually, armor decay is currently bugged. I lose about 1% of my total durability per mob group whether I take a hit from them or not. It's as if our durability is linked to our XP gain, or a timer starts ticking and our armor is only good for 30 minutes of combat or something. The OP is completely correct on this issue, currently armor repairs cost more than you make by playing the game in a "normal" manner. Also, your armor decays so rapidly it feels like its disintegrating before you've taken five steps from the vendor. I don't know if this is true of all levels, but I do know that I began noticing the issue after I hit around level 40. By V1 the problem has only grown worse.

Tetujin · April 2014

I wouldn't be surprised if it's bugged and only supposed to be on death. The 'sturdy' trait references death, and when you die they give you a big warning message about it. It's like it's happening sometimes at the end of combat, whether you die or not.