Dark Souls 2's next patch will fix weapon durability bug

One of the most controversial issues of Dark Souls 2 is its durability system, which has changed quite significantly since the original version of the game. In the initial, 30fps iteration, weapons and armour would degrade fairly slowly, but there were still occasions where I'd find myself with a nearly mangled weapon, and with no bonfire in sight. (Bonfires restore durability in Dark Souls 2). The new, 'next-gen' or DirectX 11 version runs at 60fps by default, and due to the way it's been coded, stuff in it now degrades twice as fast.

I haven't played this new version of From's game, but I have seen YouTube videos that show weapons throwing up 'breaking' messages after just a few enemies, making the increased baddie count of an area like the Forest of Fallen Giants seem particularly annoying early in the game. Debate continues to rage in forums over whether this revised durability system is a bug, or whether that's the way it was supposed to be in the original version, but everyone agrees that weapons shouldn't be degrading even more rapidly when players swing their weapons at corpses or friendly characters.

From have announced that this latter issue will be fixed in an upcoming patch. Those patch notes are in Japanese, but Kotaku has a translation, along with with confirmation from Bandai Namco that a patch is on the way for the Steam, PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game. A lot of people are assuming that this patch will increase durability across the board to bring it in line with the original 30fps version of Dark Souls 2, but the patch notes imply that it's only a fix for the specific bug that sees weapons degrade hugely quickly when used on corpses or friendly characters.

So there's a patch for durability in Dark Souls 2 on the way (along with other fixes, naturally), but it might not be the one you were hoping for. Thankfully, because PC, there's a mod that does change durability back to the way it worked in the first version of Dark Souls 2.