Durability and Decay in Palworld 1.0: The Repair Bench, and the Two Rates That Control Everything
Palworld runs two independent decay systems that players routinely confuse. Your equipment loses durability with use and breaks at zero. Your buildings deteriorate on a timer whether you touch them or not. They are repaired differently, they are configured differently, and on a server they are governed by two separate multipliers — EquipmentDurabilityDamageRate and BuildObjectDeteriorationDamageRate.
Equipment Durability
The rule is short: equipment loses durability with use and breaks when durability reaches 0. A broken item is not destroyed — you restore it at the Repair Bench, using materials.
Two things people get wrong here:
- Repairs cost materials, not just time. The bench needs the resources the item is made of. A pickaxe that broke because you were out of ore is a circular problem, which is the argument for repairing before things break rather than after.
- Breaking is not losing. There is no permanent equipment loss from durability in the way there is from the death penalty. The item sits at zero waiting for you.
The Repair Bench
It is one of the cheapest and earliest structures in the game, and there is no reason not to have one:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Technology level | 2 |
| Materials | Wood 10, Stone 10 |
| Required suitability | Handiwork Lv.1 |
| Worker maximum | 1 |
| Build work | 30 |
| HP | 2,000 |
| SAN effect | -0.11 |
Technology level 2 puts it within the first few minutes of play for ten wood and ten stone. Build it immediately.
The SAN -0.11 is worth flagging because it is easy to miss. Working the Repair Bench costs a Pal a small amount of sanity per tick, which is normal for production structures but adds up in a base with no Hot Springs or beds nearby. If your Handiwork Pals are chronically depressed, the repair bench is one of several contributors, not the sole cause — but it is a contributor.
The bench also carries ExtinguishBurnWorkAmount 1000, meaning a Pal can put it out if it catches fire during a raid, and a deterioration value of 0.08 like most base structures.
Building Decay
The second system is structural. Every base object has a deterioration damage value that ticks against it over time — 0.08 on a Repair Bench and a Cooler Box, 0.1 on a Refrigerator. Left alone long enough, structures take damage and eventually fail.
This is the system that actually bites on servers, because it runs whether or not anyone is logged in. A base that looked fine when your group stopped playing on Sunday is not necessarily fine on Friday. The multiplier is:
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
BuildObjectDeteriorationDamageRate | Building decay speed multiplier |
Setting it to 0 switches structural decay off entirely, which is the single most commonly changed building setting on group servers and for good reason: on a world that runs continuously while players are offline, decay punishes people for having jobs. Lowering rather than zeroing it keeps a reason to maintain your base without turning a week's absence into a rebuild.
The Durability Multiplier
The equipment side has its own multiplier:
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
EquipmentDurabilityDamageRate | Equipment durability loss multiplier |
Raising it makes gear wear out faster, which pushes players toward carrying spares and keeping a stocked Repair Bench. Lowering it — or zeroing it — removes maintenance from the loop entirely. For a building-focused or short-session server, EquipmentDurabilityDamageRate=0 together with BuildObjectDeteriorationDamageRate=0 removes both maintenance systems in two lines, and most casual groups end up there.
Note that these two settings do not affect each other. Turning off building decay leaves your pickaxe wearing out exactly as before.
The Setting That Removes the Bench Entirely
There is a third, blunter option. DenyTechnologyList disables specific technologies by ID, and the official documentation's own example is:
DenyTechnologyList=("PALBOX", "RepairBench")
That is a real configuration, not a hypothetical — the Repair Bench is one of the two technologies the docs chose to demonstrate with. Denying it produces a server where equipment durability is permanent and irreversible, which is a coherent hardcore ruleset if paired with a generous drop rate, and a miserable one if not. Denying PALBOX is a far more drastic change and should not be done casually.
Used more sensibly, DenyTechnologyList is how you build a themed server: strip firearms, strip a particular tier of structure, or lock off a technology branch your group has agreed not to use.
Running your own Palworld 1.0 server
Building decay runs on wall-clock time, which means it runs while your group is offline — and that is entirely a server-side question. A gamever Palworld server puts both decay multipliers in a panel, with full crossplay, automatic updates and one-click backups.
Conclusion
Palworld decays two things independently. Equipment loses durability with use and breaks at zero, restored with materials at the Repair Bench — a Technology level 2 structure costing Wood 10 and Stone 10, needing Handiwork Lv.1, capped at one worker, and carrying a small SAN -0.11 cost for the Pal working it. Structures deteriorate on a timer at values like 0.08 for a Repair Bench or Cooler Box and 0.1 for a Refrigerator, and that clock runs while nobody is logged in. Server owners get one multiplier for each: EquipmentDurabilityDamageRate and BuildObjectDeteriorationDamageRate, which do not interact — zeroing building decay leaves your tools wearing out normally. Setting both to 0 removes maintenance from the game in two lines, and most casual groups should. For anything stricter, DenyTechnologyList can remove a technology outright, and the official documentation's own example is ("PALBOX", "RepairBench").
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