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### Topic

#### To create a tool market, should tools have life span?

I don't mean before they become broken, because most are like that now. But a point at which they have been broken so many times that they are beyond repair.
The reason this might be a good idea is that right now there is an extremely limited market for tool, even high end one not available from vendors. Once someone buys a tool, they rarely need a new one, especially once they get a couple levels of tinker.
Perhaps this life span ONLY kicks in when a tool breaks. An example, a hoe can be broken and repaired 20 times. After that you can't fix. But if you repair it before it breaks, you can use it infinitely.
Just a thought to be the market flowing.

Posted 8 months ago by Lord Bacon-o | Permalink

### Replies

- +1. That's one idea. Another would be to remove the repair option from ALL tools and still subject them to random breakage. Then make the tinkertool a 'craft only' tool. When a tool randomly breaks you would have the option of making yourself another, or if you don't have/want the tinkering skills you could buy one from the auctions.
  Posted 8 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- +1
  Tools need a better market, otherwise what's the point of even having tinker?
  Posted 8 months ago by La Mariposa | Permalink
- +1
  Indeed.
  Posted 8 months ago by Neu Trin | Permalink
- An even smaller change would be to just make is so that if a tool broke completely, it wasn't repairable. I.e., if someone was vigilant about tool upkeep, they could keep it going by repairing it, but if they let it go too far, and it actually broke, they would have to replace it.
  Note some tools (notably the cooking ones), don't have a repair bar and can't be repaired until they break, so that would be a big change for these. It might be too frustrating to be in the middle of cooking a large batch of something and not be able to repair your broken saucepan.
  Posted 8 months ago by Janitch | Permalink
- +1. I got all the tinkering levels, and then realized there was absolutely no reason to craft tools! Made a few to donate, but there are much more time and cost effective ways to get favor :)
  editing to add: I really like the idea that you could keep your tools working if you repair as you go, but if you break it all the way you have to get a new one. That seems like a good compromise!! So maybe there needs to be a "repair" option for the kitchen tools as well?
  Posted 8 months ago by Clarabelle | Permalink
- There is a reason to craft tools right now, but it's entirely economic. Tools are worth more than the sum of the materials made to use them, so, particularly in some cases, you're better off crafting a tool to sell or donate rather than just donating or selling the raw materials. That's leaving aside energy considerations, of course.
  Posted 8 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale | Permalink
- Perhaps if a tool broke completely it would revert back to the materials needed to create it.
  Posted 8 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- Don't forget time considerations Scarlett :) In the time it takes to craft 20 crystalmalizing chambers, one could probably gather the difference in value between the 20 ingots and the chamber itself by nibbling pigs ;)
  Posted 8 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom | Permalink
- That's true too!
  Posted 8 months ago by Scarlett Bearsdale | Permalink