Hazards, Wear & Repair
Read this first: a part that wears all the way down is never destroyed. It stays fitted, stays visible, stays yours — it just stops contributing anything until you bring it back. Nothing you own can be taken from you by the water. What follows is exactly what wears a part, what never can, and the three honest prices to undo it.
01 Inert, never destroyed
Every non-stock part you fit carries its own 0–100% condition — not a shared drone health bar, a separate number per part, worn down only by whatever hazard actually touches that part. At 0% the part’s stat contribution goes to exactly zero and the slot falls back to stock-equivalent performance — never below it, never gone. The part is never unequipped, never removed from your Hold, and never at any point stops being yours.
Nobody ever loses a part to wear. Zero is a floor, not a cliff.
02 Two floors under every pilot
03 What wears what, and why some cost more
Every hazard targets one specific slot — never a shared pool — and the rate is deliberately not the same across sources. The one true mistake in the water (grinding the hull against a cave wall) carries the full rate; the sources that are closer to ordinary play than to a mistake are billed gentler. That’s the whole design: the multiplier tells you which risks are worth taking.
Every typed wear source
| Source | Wears | Rate | If you never let up | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cave wall contact | Hull | 1.0× | ≈ 7h 35m | The one hazard with a collider — you have to physically touch it. Full rate on purpose: it's the single avoidable mistake in this list. |
| Kelp / silt exposure | Engine | 0.6× | ≈ 12h 38m | Continuous while you're inside the bed. Incidental — drifting through kelp is normal play, not a mistake. |
| Thermal vent proximity | Lamps | 0.8× | ≈ 9h 29m | Continuous while in range of the vent. |
| Electric fauna zone | Dome | 0.8× | ≈ 9h 29m | Delivered as a zap roughly every 6 seconds, not a steady drain — the multiplier sizes the per-zap amount. |
| Pressure past your hull's depth rating | Hull | 0.5× | ≈ 15h 10m | Slow and constant the moment you're deeper than your hull is rated for — the gentlest continuous source on purpose. |
| Hauling a wreck past arm capacity | Engine | 0.4× | ≈ 18h 58m | Only possible if the fitted arm's own lift falls below the haul's weight mid-reel — see §04. Gentlest of all: a high-value playstyle, not recklessness. |
“If you never let up” is a hypothetical: continuous, full-rate contact with zero relief for the whole window. Nobody actually sits glued to a cave wall for seven straight hours — real, intermittent contact stretches every one of these numbers well past what’s shown here. Read the column as what the multiplier MEANS, not a forecast.
Placed hazards exist only where the fiction calls for them: kelp fouling in the Kelp Forest, the thermal vent in the Midnight Zone, cave walls and the electric shoal in The Lower Dark. The Sunlit Reef and the Twilight Zone carry no placed hazard at all — the only way to wear a part that shallow is pressure past your hull’s own rating, which can happen anywhere you’re deeper than your hull is built for.
04 Two sources with no world object
Pressure and overload wear a part without a hazard placed anywhere — they’re rules about your own drone’s state, not a place on the map. Pressure bites the moment you’re deeper than your hull’s depth rating allows, for as long as you stay there. Overload is narrower than it sounds: it can only ever trigger while a wreck is actively being reeled in, and only if the fitted arm’s own lift capacity has already fallen below that haul’s weight mid-haul — which itself only happens if a claw or engine part fails under you while the line is out. That’s the loop closing on itself: neglected gear fails, the failure costs you lift, and the over-strained haul wears the engine further. Keep your claw and engine in good condition and this source never fires at all.
Heavy ability use wears gear too, at a flat 0.06% per cast, mapped to whichever part actually powers that ability — a Hauler ability leans on the engine bay, a Scout ability splits between thrusters and sensors, a Salvager ability overcharges the claw. It’s a secondary, flavourful contributor by design: spamming one ability at its own cooldown ceiling for the entire window above still only just reaches full wear.
05 Three prices, one outcome
Bringing a part back to full is never gated to the Berth — it lives right on the Drone tab’s own repair block, the same card every part already opens from inside The Hold (I), open mid-dive exactly like the rest of your loadout. A header chip up top counts how many fitted parts currently need attention and, pressed, jumps you straight to the first worn slot — you’re never left hunting the loadout for which part is the problem. Three paths exist there, and the only difference between them is price, never what they restore:
The three doors, by rule
- Ordinary repair — crystals only, and it owns the whole band from 1% to 99%: worn, but not exhausted. The cost is a small, fixed fraction of what the part is worth, prorated by exactly how much condition is missing — mend a scratch and it costs a scratch’s worth, not a full repair’s. Parts that aren’t for sale at any price (salvage, milestone and siege rewards) are valued through their own crafting material instead, so nothing is ever free to mend. Refused if the part is already full, if you can’t afford it, or if it has run all the way to 0% — a spent part is the next door’s business, not this one’s.
- Failed restore — for a part that’s run all the way to 0%. Crystals plus a real chunk of that part’s own-tier crafting material, the same currency diving that tier already earns you — steeper than ordinary repair on purpose, because a fully spent part is meant to cost more than a scratch. Refused if the part isn’t actually at 0%, or you’re short on either leg.
- Crystal buyout — the same 0% restore, paid entirely in crystals at a steep, tier-scaled rate instead of farming the material a second time. This buys time, never power — it skips a grind you’ve already earned the right to skip, exactly like the Workbench’s own craft buyout (see The Part Catalogue & Workbench). It never opens a repair early, never restores a part you don’t already own, and never touches anything but which currency clears the bill.
Open a failed part’s own card and a banner reading INERT — NOT DESTROYED sits above both its prices, restating the one guarantee this whole system rests on in the exact place it’s easiest to doubt mid-dive: the part stays fitted and listed the entire time, never pulled from your loadout while you decide how to pay. Every price on the card — the ordinary repair, the failed restore’s two legs, the buyout — is read live off your own wallet and this exact part, never a flat number pasted onto every card alike. And a refusal is never a bare greyed-out button: short on crystals states plainly how many more you need, and short on a tier’s own materials names the exact currency and the exact shortfall still owed — the same “the shop states its refusals” rule the Workbench already follows.
Two real parts, all three prices
| Part | Ordinary, half-worn | Failed restore, at 0% | Buyout, at 0% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Riveted ShellCoastal | 2 ⬢50% missing, prorated | 32 ⬢+ 6 Coastal Scrap | 212 ⬢crystals only |
| Keeled Pressure HullMidnight | 140 ⬢50% missing, prorated | 2,240 ⬢+ 22 Midnight Plate | 5,320 ⬢crystals only |
Scale up the ordinary column and a full repair from a genuine scratch is still cheap — a handful of crystals at Coastal tier, a few hundred at Midnight. The failed-restore and buyout columns are steeper on purpose: they’re the price of a part that ran all the way to 0%, not a routine top-up.
Repair never travels with you the way condition itself does through the save — it’s spent the moment you pay, same as any other purchase. And repairing a part changes nothing about the part itself: same effects, same slot, same tier, just back at full strength.
Wear shows, too, not just on the numbers: the drone standing on its own stand in The Hold carries real damage art on whichever slot is actually worn — a scored hull plate, a fouled engine hub, a scorched lamp, a cracked and arcing dome, a chipped claw — layered straight onto the same rig, so the card you’re reading and the drone in front of it always agree.