I'm thinking about doing an Abydon's Challenge run, and to partly get around repairing a lot of weapons, the party will be mainly Monk for unarmed combat.  I do have some questions, though, that people who have done it before might know the answers to.

First, my party will be:

My watcher, who will be monk/chanter.  Maybe pure monk, but I like chanter the most of all classes in Deadfire

Xoti as Monk/Priest, with one of my two support slots as her focus.

Fassina, just because I like her, likely Wiz/Druid

Mirke, because Monk.  Probably pure, but both of her MC options are great; 

and either Rekke (as Fighter/Monk) or Ydwin.   I like Ydwin more, but I'm worried about focus gain, though I suppose there's enough ranged weapons in the game where I can just always have some for her.

 

Questions:  Does armor degrade or just weapons.  If it does degrade, how expensive do those repairs get?

If an item is used as a stat stick, but never attacked with, does it degrade?  For example, if Xoti is casting, does her sickle/lantern get damaged?

Do Druid natural attacks get damaged somehow?  If so, how do you repair them?

If it matters, I'll be using both the BPM and the Community Patch.

Armor and also shields degrade when you get hit and thus have to be repaired. However weapons degrade only when using normal attacks, not when using abilities. Soulblades (with Soul Annihilation) and monks (with Stunning Surge or Whispers of the Wind) can use weapons without degrading them. Natural/summoned weapons and armors don't degrade - thus a shape shifter can be great choice for melee. Using potions of the Fearsome Brute is also a good way to avoid weapon/armor breaking during long fights. Besides that, using summons to do the tanking for you and spamming hard CCs are other great options to avoid armor degrading. To deal damage you should try to spam mostly abilities/spells or use summoned/natural weapons (Firebrand is another good option).

I suggest https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Fleshmender for main/one character, its auto healing can cut on Abydon's armor repairing expenses if you don't get damaged a lot

On 6/4/2022 at 2:49 PM, Carys said:

Questions:  Does armor degrade or just weapons.  If it does degrade, how expensive do those repairs get?

they get pretty ruinous, like several 1000s of gold per level of repair damage at superb. at normal/fine you could repair regularly (though i still prefer swapping stuff out instead), but the few times i did abydon i pretty much didn't go past exceptional, relying on summoned weapons to scale past that on any piece of equipment. even then, i'd keep a bunch of equipment in reserve to swap stuff out rather than repair.

On 6/5/2022 at 7:13 AM, abot said:

I suggest https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Fleshmender for main/one character, its auto healing can cut on Abydon's armor repairing expenses if you don't get damaged a lot

i don't think fleshmender restores any abydon-related damage?

and damage is based on hits done, not damage done. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/magrans-fires

Doesn't "the regrowing" feature of the armor imply that the armor loses AR when hit, but then regenerates this? I have no idea if this works on the abydon challenge, as I've never tried it.

22 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Doesn't "the regrowing" feature of the armor imply that the armor loses AR when hit, but then regenerates this? I have no idea if this works on the abydon challenge, as I've never tried it.

yes, that's what fleshmender does - it loses a specific AR bonus enchantment it has (the bonus +3 AR), and gets it back later if you don't take hits.

 

abydon's challenge is a completely different effect, where all equipment tracks how many hits they have taken/done and lose enchantment levels as they accumulate them until they completely disintegrate. afaict, there's no way to restore an item without manually "repairing" an item via the enchant menu outside of combat.