Parts wearing out at inconvenient times? Worried your check engine light will turn on during a deep zone mission? This guide details the (somewhat vauge) information i’ve gathered about gauging, and predicting, a part’s wear and tear so you don’t go out into the zone with a part that about to fail on you.
Contents
Guide to Predicting and Planning
Сrеdit gоеs to Sev097!
Part 1: Wear and Tear
As we all know from the absolute “literary classic” Minecraft: Story Mode, nothing built can last forever. This is true for your beater station wagon as well, which will, over time, develop special status effects indicated by the usual status effect prism with an X in the middle, telling you that it’s time to replace em, as seen in the screenshot below. If you see this symbol as a status effect on any part on your car, that means its time for a replacement.
There is, that I know of, no good way to fix any status effect of this sort, and once it shows up the part will start taking much higher damage from natural sources, before eventually breaking entirely. In order to prevent this from ruining a longer run, such as deep zone runs, its best to keep track of when and how it happens. In that respect I have one singular piece of advice.
Part 2: Predicting Part Failures
60 Miles.
That number isn’t really all that helpful from first glance, but let me explain.
From what I’ve gathered, the system for determining when a part fails is mostly determined via the amount of miles you’ve driven with that part on your car. In that respect, I’ve found that in most cases, the threshold required for a regular, steel part to go fragile is, as previously stated, 60 miles driven on that part.
I’ve not tested it, but if for some reason you are driving on crude parts, they likely wear out far faster. Not super helpful, as i don’t really see why you’d drive on crude parts unless you are in the middle of bum**** nowhere without a door or something and needed something quick.
Keeping track of that stat is generally pretty easy, just grab the part off your car, go into your inventory, find that part, and hit V while mousing over it.
This little bar will show up, and right at the rightmost section of that bar is the amount of miles you’ve driven on it. If that number is over 60, its time to replace the part.
Of course, this isnt a hard and fast rule. Parts that don’t get hit as often (Side rack parts, stuff you generally dont use) can apparently last longer, but other parts (such as doors, panels, bumpers) that take the brunt of the damage when hit tend to go out sooner. I’m afraid i’ve yet to get more information on this one, but it is generally safe to assume when a part passes that threshold it is susceptible to wearing out.
Major exception: This is something ive just found (spoiler!): Olympium parts take longer to wear out. I’ve got 3 parts on my car installed 77 miles ago that arent gone yet, and i honestly do not know if olympium even goes fragile at all. I’ll update with more information when i get the chance.
It may also be prudent to keep track of parts installed at the same time, so you can check from a glance which parts need replaced. Of course, that’s more for convenience’s sake, do what you will with that information.
Part 3: Dread It, Plan for It…
…But it comes all the same. Part failures WILL happen to every part you have on your car eventually, its just a matter of time. Hence, plan for that failure.
With the knowledge that the part is going to become less useful at a certain time, you can accurately plan for it. In that case, there’s 3 things that can really be done:
- Leave it alone. Fragile parts aren’t a certain end to the run they occur on, but can be pretty heavily detrimental. If you just don’t want to deal with it, you can pretend the check engine light doesn’t exist and drive until they break. Personally, my OCD-ridden brain wouldn’t let me drive on parts I know can fail and cost me a run at a moment’s notice, but you do you.
- Let it go fragile, then scrap it. Just because a part is fragile doesn’t mean it can’t be scrapped. You will get reduced gains from scrapping it (I generally assume something like 75% of the parts that go into it), but letting it go fragile before getting rid of it isn’t a bad idea if you are okay with procrastinating on it a bit.
- Replace that part the second you find it. This is, theoretically, the most efficient strategy. You get more scrap from a part that’s not already broken, and although it may be annoying to constantly check for it, you’ll get a peace of mind from keeping your wagon in tip-top shape.
Part 4: Conclusion
All parts wear out eventually, there’s nothing that can be done about that. Planning for it is the best way to prevent getting caught out and killed because you weren’t ready for your Ion Shield or LIMpulse to fail in the middle of a deep zone mission.
I have heard rumors that a part going weary is not the end. Supposedly, there is a way to bring a part back from the grave and fix these status effects. Unfortunately, i’ve yet to confirm if there is a way and don’t really have the parts on hand to check. I don’t know if its possible.
Overall, hopefully this has provided some information on a game mechanic I found to be important to understand, but that wasn’t ever really explained. Thanks for spending your time reading my (pretty poor quality) guide, and hopefully you never lose a run to a worn part again!
I’m not sure if its somewhere in here or someone else has said it, but Peculiar car parts never get status effects from what I’ve gathered, I have a high capacity battery and it hasn’t had a single status effect after 120 miles
No they actually can, probaly take several hundred miles but it can happen
salvaged parts do have that difference in mileage, but generally just keep track of miles added after putting it on your car
I think the brittle status effect may be a worse version of the fragile status effect caused by using lower quality repair substances (putty) on a part too much.
I realised that when the LIM Shield becomes unreliable it barely loses effectiveness. Since it’s relatively expensive to build I’d recommend NOT scrapping it.
Certain parts, like the ones attached to racks will not tell you if they are worn out on the dashboard parts display and will only show as much when you inspect them directly. So be sure to check the backseat rack items when you get back to the garage in case the rear fuel tank is rusted or the mini air turbine has become unreliable etc. That’s my advice.
There’s a bit of exception though.While scavenging parts form those squire(Armored door/panel for free, sometimes more, yeah), all of these doors and panels would have accumulated about 1300~1600 miles already.And, after fixing it to max condition, it will still last dozens of miles before fragile.
The “must repair” statuses definitely do different things. For example, when a seat battery goes bad, it starts zapping your whole car at random intervals, which really sucks and can do serious damage to other parts. Since it can’t be fixed, your best option is to uninstall the worn out battery to spare the rest of your car further shock damage. I don’t know if the worn out battery still shocks your car if it’s in your trunk – I always treat mine like live grenades and chuck them out into the woods.
So, I checked here because I recently noticed that I’m suddenly replacing car parts like a madman. Like parts are crapping out on me after every other drive or some craziness like that. It never occurred to me that a mini-turbine mounted on the side of my car or an extra battery on my back seat might wear out because of mileage (which shouldn’t matter at all for either part, honestly). It makes sense that (some) parts wear out faster on longer drives. Thanks for the explanation!
If you manage your resources well enough and give some forethought then parts wearing out isn’t much of an issue, unless you’re just trying to blitz through the storyline as quickly as possible and don’t ever go out of your way to find extra materials (which a lot of people seem to be doing).
with all honesty, yall are right that it really isnt too big a deal if you are collecting resources along the way for repairs. Problem is, atleast for me, i have enough resources at home base that i generally dont collect many more on the road, meaning that extra repair cost can really hurt while im on the road. if you are going to drive on parts like that bringing extra repair kits probably helps.
also, part of the reason ive got that last bit there is because i asked in the some server if there was a way to repair worn parts during the demo period, and got an answer that didnt rule out the possibility. I’m not ruling it out yet, but i doubt it really exists either.
Worn/Fragile is not a death sentence. I feel like people are really over-stressing this mechanic!
From what I can tell, most parts just lose a bit of defense and are therefore more vulnerable to getting other status effects. That really only means you might spend a little bit more resources repairing them over the course of multiple runs if they are consistently taking lots of damage. Otherwise, it is harmless.
So which strategy is more viable?
The answer actually changes for each type of part in question:
Steel Door gone Fragile and nearly broken anyway? Of course, you should scrap her and never look back.
But if you are wasting a bunch of Olypium/Thermosap to rebuild an expensive part that hardly ever takes damage just because it is looking a little Worn, you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot over some basic junk/puddy… which is super dumb!
Mechanically speaking, the intention is to artificially increase the potential cost of repairs (over several hours of play/impacts) in order to counter players that prefer to keep their HP topped off by repairing often and keeping all parts in good shape at all times (and thereby never needing to craft more than one of each part).
This determent serves only to encourage the opposite strategy of neglecting parts until they fail only to constantly rebuild rather than simply repairing the parts often enough to prevent failure in the first place. Both are still viable options, the former is just not as universally superior as it would otherwise be without the “getting old” mechanic nerfing it.
As is, one strategy saves crafting components; the other saves repair kits.
There’s no fix for regular wear on parts other than avoiding damaging them. Some parts will also just expire from use- tires that you use long enough will go bald. If you scan the damaged part it’ll tell you exactly what is needed to fix it, and when it says, ‘none’ that means you scrap it. And by the time you’re hitting mid-zone and deep zone you’ll be aware that damage starts becoming a near-ambient feature so defensive driving will only go so far. Yes, even if you kit your car out for corrosive and radiation damage.
The good news is that late game you can easily pack a couple extra tires and you do eventually get the tier 3 crafting table in your car.
From my experience, a part that rarely takes damage will last farther beyond the 60 mile threshold than one that frequently need repairing. I have side rack parts that’ve lasted 15 runs without needing replacing since they never really took any hits, and at the same time the front fenders and bumper usually end up yellow after every trip and they always seem to go off at 60 on the dot. I’m not sure if just damage or also status problems (flats, burnt out bulbs, etc) accelerate it, but it does seem to play a factor as well as just mileage.