Every non-stock part you fit now carries its own condition, 0 to 100%, worn down only by whichever hazard actually touches that part — never a shared drone health bar. Read this next part twice if you read nothing else: a part that hits 0% is never destroyed, never unequipped, never pulled from your Hold. It just stops contributing its bonus until you bring it back. The slot falls to stock-equivalent performance, never below it. Nobody loses gear to wear, full stop.
Two floors hold no matter what. Your free starting kit is architecturally exempt — it cannot wear, ever, so a broke or unlucky pilot always has a working drone to fall back on. And every wear rate is billed by actual hazard contact while you're piloting, never by the wall clock — park the drone, background the tab, moor for a week, and nothing decays. Close the game for a fortnight and your gear is exactly as you left it.
What wears what is deliberately uneven: cave wall contact (hull) runs at the full rate — it's the one genuinely avoidable mistake in the list. Kelp fouling (engine), a thermal vent (lamps) and an electric shoal's zap (dome) all bill gentler, because drifting through ambient hazards is normal play, not a blunder. Pressure past your own hull's depth rating (hull) and hauling a wreck that outweighs a failing arm mid-reel (engine) are gentler still — the second one only fires if your own claw or engine has already failed under you, which is the system's one honest feedback loop. Bringing a worn part back costs one of three real prices — cheap crystals for a routine top-up, crystals plus this tier's own material for a fully failed part, or a steep all-crystals buyout that skips the material grind without ever skipping the earn-it-first gate. Full breakdown, real numbers, in the guide: Hazards, Wear & Repair.
Pearl shells shipped in the same pass — the arm's other job. A shell needs no cast and no tether: you're already standing next to it, and the same claw-slot arm holds against real resistance until it gives, checked against your fitted arm's own lift capacity exactly like a wreck is. What comes out is rolled the instant it opens, off nothing but depth — every shell in the water looks identical, so the only choice you're making is how deep you're willing to go. Full drop curve, honestly published, in Pearl Shells.