Decay

Main / Decay

Description

Decay is the erosion of objects over time in the form of gradually increasing damage. The decay rate depends on the item type, where the item is stored, the item's quality, and sometimes the item's material. Logs, stone shards or dirt for example will completely decay within days while other items may even last months and years. Items made from cedarwood decay slower, and containers made from cedarwood protect their contents better than other containers.

Damage from decay and other sources is displayed in the DMG column. Damage is also done to items from being used or failing an improvement attempt.

There are various ways to reduce decay.

Item decay modifiers

Kingdom

• Kingdoms reduce wall decay by 2x.
• Non-kingdom zones have no reduced decay.

Deeds

• Deeds decrease decay on walls of any kind by 10x, if the upkeep is higher than 7 days.
• Deeds stop the decay on walls of any kind if the upkeep is higher than 30 days.
• Deeds also stop decay on lamps, flags, and banners

Houses

• Houses reduce item decay by 2x? Possibly 3x?. Some evidence that wood is 2x, and stone is 3x ... more testing needed.

Containers

• Containers will reduce decay by 2x.
• Containers in houses might get both bonus. (Testing required)

Other

• Items made out of cedar wood decay slower (they have reduced decay tick frequency).
• Items with normal QL based decay that are made out of Oak or Steel will suffer 20% reduced damage per decay tick.
• Raw materials (clay, dirt, logs, stone shards,meat etc) decay faster than finished materials (weapons, tools, etc.)
• There is a 2-day period of no decay after a wall is finished.
• Items do not decay in inventories or on merchants (note that merchants can be threatened on Elevation), with the exception of food items, lanterns, construction markers, torches, and huge shod clubs.
• Houses that are abandoned get greatly increased decay. A house is considered abandoned when the owner does not log in to the same server for more than 3 months (real life). An abandoned house within a perimeter will sustain an additional damage bonus. The decay rates for abandoned houses are currently unknown.

Note: This calculation is server specific. If you have a building on a server that you do not visit for more than 3 months it will be treated as abandoned.

• For non-abandoned houses that are off deed the decay rate is (perish-ability/QL) total damage per decay tick.
• A stone house's walls/windows/doors perish-ability is 3, making its average decay per tick (3/wall QL).
• A wooden house's walls/windows/doors perish-ability is 10, making its average decay per tick (10/wall QL).
• Perimeter is treated the same with wilderness, thus do not reduce decay.
  • Nor does it increase decay unless the owner of the structure has been away from the server for more than three months. At which time the building will begin to accumulate increased perimeter decay. This occurs in addition to the “abandoned” status decay increase.

Myths

• Stacking a container inside another container does NOT improve the bonus
• Containers in the inventory do not modify the decay rate of their contents at all.
• Bless has no effect on decay. Its only use is to activate metal altars and to enchant planted lamps to stay lit on paved tiles.
• Wooden fences do not decay faster than stone fences (see: [1]).

Notes

• An item in a container, in a house, in kingdom territory probably multiplies the bonus, but this needs verifying.
• It is possible for items to "miss" their decay ticks for some period of time, and then experience "catch up" decay that can result in the destruction of very low ql items.
• Some items will actually give a local event notice when they completely decay to loss. [17:52:34] A stone shards crumbles to dust.

See Also

Damage

Empirical Evaluation of Fences