Item durability...

[LordRahl86]

A quick search turned up very little information in regards to item durability. I have four ideas of how this might work... as well as problems that could result. The first three require worn defensive procs using the item worn as a reagent (I'm not entirely sure that would work... from what I know of procs, they don't consume reagents, though I seem to recall some items that have required items, such as Mag-summoned lev rings):

1. Consumes a particular item that's crafted with the item (essentially a "power source"). A new item is created that can be re-crafted into the original power source, at a loss (IE 10 burned out power sources would turn into 8 recharged ones). There would have to be some way to ensure that people both wear the armor and carry around the "power sources" for each armor.
2. Stackable armor (named, say, X) that consumes one of itself and produces something along the lines of "broken pieces of X." The repair would work the same as the power sources (10 broken pieces of X result in 8 of X)
3. The worn defensive proc consumes the armor and produces new armor that's at a lower quality. For example, armor X is consumed and produces armor X 90% (with lower AC and stats).
4. Evolving items. As the item gets used, it goes through stages where it becomes less and less effective (for example, armor that gives 50 AC at stage 1 might give 46 at stage 2). In the final stage, the item becomes effectively useless unless repaired, and even then it might not be able to return to its original state (fully repairing the armor at stage 6 would result in an armor with a base AC of 45).

Problems with each:

1. Oh so very much bag space, as well as exploitability (what's to stop people from selling "power sources" to people wanting to keep 2-3 stacks of them?). This also has the problem of items not decreasing in quality over a long period of time.
2. I'm not entirely sure that you can have stackable armor, as well as the problem that is presented above (bag space, though less of an issue here). I believe that it would be possible to work in decreasing quality, but it would mean that you couldn't, say, turn in 50 of a BP, get 40 back, and just restack them with the old ones.
3. First of all, there's the issue with the database. This would require a LOT of items in the database for a relatively small amount of different armors. This gets even worse if fully repairing an item produces a different item of lower quality (for example, if you got an Worn X 100% upon repair, which would result in Worn X 90% down to 0%, then Old X 100%, etc). This is why I suggested armor decreasing in quality by 10s rather than 1s (which would be oh so very bad). And then, of course, there's the issue with the armor unequipping every time the defensive proc is activated. Furthermore, there's the problem with exploitability here, too, unless EVERY piece of armor is lore.
4. Evolving items are not in EQEmu yet, and then there's the issue of database once again, though it's less of an issue here than in #3.

Does anyone have other ideas, or could suggest which of these is the most viable (are the people working on evolving items mostly done?)