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Wear and Repair

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Gear in Last Frontier doesn’t last forever: weapons and armor wear down over time, and at some point an item just breaks right in the middle of a run. The good news — breakdowns are rare, and repairs are predictable and don’t depend on luck. Let’s break down how it actually works.

How gear wears down

Items have a hidden wear counter. The key word is hidden: you won’t see a condition bar, durability numbers, or a price drop from wear and tear. The game shows only one sign — the “broken” flag.

  • As long as an item is intact, nothing reminds you about wear — it builds up quietly, on the server.
  • When an item finally breaks, a red background lights up under its icon in the inventory. This is the only visible wear state.
  • A broken weapon or piece of armor is automatically unequipped from its slot back into the inventory. You can’t equip such an item again until you repair it.

Breakdowns are designed to be a rare event. In the current balance, gear’s durability reserve is deliberately high, so things rarely reach the red background. And some items don’t wear down at all: single-use explosives, unarmed attacks and “mob” NPC weapons, as well as items marked as excluded from wear.

The durability of gear is emphasized in the lore too — the KS-1 jumpsuit ad from Karma Industries promises “enhanced durability” and decades of service. But that’s the world’s branded flavor, not a gameplay stat: the suit has no visible durability rating.

What to repair with

Repairs are done with repair kits — craftable consumables. Here too there’s no success roll: a kit either repairs the target fully, or the server refuses and the kit isn’t spent.

An important rule: you can only repair an item that’s already broken. If an item is worn but still working, the repair is rejected without spending the kit — there’s no need to wait for it to break, but you also can’t “patch it up” in advance.

  • Armor repair kit — broken armor only.
  • Weapon repair kit — broken weapons only.
  • Universal repair kit — works for both armor and weapons.
  • Vehicle repair kit — for your own stalled vehicle; the kit is aimed directly at the vehicle itself (item on target).

Each kit holds enough for five full repairs, after which it’s used up. There are two ways to apply it: aim the kit directly at a specific broken item (item on item), or use the kit with no target — then the game will try to repair the item in hand, and then a suitable broken item in the inventory (for example, the one that was just unequipped when it broke).

Repair hints

You see the result via a short pop-up label above your character:

  • FIX — the repair went through, the item works again.
  • TOOL — wrong kit type (for example, repairing armor with a weapon kit).
  • NOFIX — the target isn’t supported or isn’t broken yet.
  • LOW — the kit doesn’t have enough charge left for a full repair.

Where to get kits

Repair kits are part of technical crafting. They’re assembled from recipes using parts like armor plates or weapon components together with glue and tape, and crafting them requires a technical skill and a tool. If you don’t have your own parts, you can look for a kit (or its components) in loot or buy one from a trader — repairs here are tightly tied to crafting and the survival economy.