How does item durability work

starbound

Whenever I use my pickaxe, a little indicator under it keeps going down:

Image of the half-empty indicator

Presumably, this indicates the remaining durability of said pickaxe. But I'm not sure how it works. Is that pickaxe getting weaker as the indicator goes down? Or is it perfectly usable until it suddenly breaks? Is there a way to repair it, other than using it up in crafting a better one? When it breaks, do I lose it completely?

In short, how does item durability actually work?

Best Answer

A pickaxe remains the same strength until it reaches 0 durability, at which point it does not break entirely, but instead reduces the strength to even lower than the matter manipulator. It can be repaired at any time by right clicking on it while holding any of the ores used to make pickaxes/drills (copper, silver, gold, platinum, or diamond*).

*Due to a suspected bug, when using diamond to repair, you must use a full diamond instead of diamond ore.