Skip to main content

Does Elden Ring have armor and weapon durability?

One aspect of the Souls games that doesn’t get talked about too much, but is one of the most beloved features by fans, is just how many options there are for different weapons and armors. With two major exceptions — Bloodborne and Sekiro — FromSoftware games somehow pack in dozens upon dozens of different styles of equipment that all have different stats, moves, special abilities, and requirements. Elden Ring, being the studio’s largest game by a wide margin, has even more space to fill with all these items. It’s safe to say that the weapon variety is what makes these games so replayable.

The variety of weapons is again outstanding in Elden Ring, with everything from typical swords, spears, and axes, to weirder options like whips and claws available to be wielded. Armor also runs the gamut of styles. In past Souls games, every weapon and armor also had a durability stat that would need to be monitored or else they would become next to useless. This was another one of those hidden mechanics you probably never knew about until you got a warning, and even then it was unclear what it meant or what to do about it. Elden Ring is just as cryptic with its inner workings as past Souls games, but does it have armor and weapon durability? We have the answer.

Recommended Videos

Further reading

Is there weapon durability?

Three soldiers about to attack in a castle in Elden Ring.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Weapon durability, or rather it running out, was always a major pain in past Souls games. You would be going along fighting enemies or, worse, be in the middle of a boss fight, only to get the alert that your weapon was at risk. Every hit your weapon took, no matter if it was against an enemy or the environment, would chip away at its durability until it was low enough to warn you. When that happened, you would have to either use an item that restored durability, or travel all the way back to a blacksmith and pay to repair it. These repairs cost next to nothing, and felt like a waste of time. But you couldn’t ignore it, because if your weapon broke, you were better off fighting bare handed.

Depending on the game, durability was always hard to track, and hardly consistent. Thankfully, in Elden Ring, you don’t have to worry about your weapon going dull on you. There’s no weapon durability or repairs in this game, only upgrades. Feel free to swing away at every wall with a sign in front of it that says it’s illusory (but it never is).

Is there armor durability?

What about your armor? Armor breaking can be almost as bad as your weapon, and is probably harder to notice. Again, Elden Ring does away with this archaic system and makes your armor stay in pristine shape no matter how many battles you take it through. Once you find the set you like, you’re free to upgrade it and rock that set for as long as you want without it breaking.

Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox has been a writer at Digital Trends for over five years and has no plans of stopping. He covers all things…
Is Elden Ring cross-platform?
Multiple players dueling in Elden Ring.

By the time Elden Ring came out in 2022, the cult following FromSoftware had been building had breached the mainstream. The massive risk of going open-world paid off big time as millions of players have flocked to the game since release, even going back for seconds with the amazing Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.

Just like older titles, Elden Ring makes use of a (cryptic) multiplayer system, allowing you to explore the Lands Between with a buddy by your side if you find a boss or two a bit too challenging to take on alone. Even on our third, fourth, and fifth playthroughs of the game, we're not ashamed to say we rely on summoning a friend for a few bosses to this day. But is Elden Ring a cross-platform game, or are you stuck playing with folks on the same platform as you?

Read more
The best Syndicate rewards in Star Wars Outlaws
One character points a gun at others while gambling in a bar in the trailer for Star Wars Outlaws.

You will learn very quickly in Star Wars Outlaws that it isn't the Empire that runs things -- it's the syndicates. These crime families each fight for power over the various planets you will explore and all see you as a potential pawn in their schemes. Kay has a lot of useful skills and abilities they want to take advantage of, but it isn't a one-way street. If you can raise your reputation with a syndicate all the way to the max, you can earn yourself some valuable and exclusive rewards you won't find in any container you lockpick. Doing that many jobs for a syndicate takes time, but also tends to incur the wrath of other syndicates at the same time, making it very challenging to keep everyone happy. These syndicates have the best rewards that you should work your way through the ranks to get.
How reputation works

Each of the four major syndicates in Star Wars Outlaws has their own reputation meter you need to manage. These have five major segments: Terrible, Bad, Poor, Good, and Excellent. You raise that meter by doing jobs for a syndicate and lower it by either doing jobs that hurt that syndicate or by fighting or trespassing on their turf.

Read more
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree appears to have a secret, tougher difficulty
One of Shadow of the Erdtree's bosses, Divine Beast Dancing Lion.

Elden Ring is already an immensely difficult game -- as was expected from a FromSoftware title -- but players found that Shadow of the Erdtree was even a bit too difficult. But Redditors have discovered that there might even be a secret difficulty setting that makes the DLC even tougher.

A thread by user Spleenczar posted Wednesday noticed a feature called DLC+ at the bottom of the Fextralife new game plus page, which claims that if you've already played through the DLC on New Game+ and want to do another playthrough, the game gets more difficult, with enemies dealing more damage and having more health. To test this, Spleenczar made a save copy of an almost-completed DLC run, defeated the final boss in the copied save, and then compared how each character fared in an encounter with Messmer the Impaler.

Read more