Newbie Hammer/Tailor Kit/Tinker Set breaking?

[SirEricKain]

Anyone else remember this not being accurate?

I can't find anything on them breaking in era or not.

Only conducive responses here please.

[Kaivan]

From the demo we can tell that these items did indeed have a limited number of uses, specifically: 51. The usage scripts for various tools have a specific function call to a generic function in another script that checks to determine if a particular variable known as "lifeRemaining" is present on the item. If the item does not have the variable (they aren't created with the variable to begin with), then the variable is added to the object, with a value of 50. If the value is present, it is decremented by 1, and if it reaches 0, the item is destroyed. This particular code runs independently of any newbie code, and adds the value to any of the crafting items when they are used the first time, regardless of their other properties.

[SighelmofWyrmgard]

From the demo we can tell that these items did indeed have a limited number of uses, specifically: 51. The usage scripts for various tools have a specific function call to a generic function in another script that checks to determine if a particular variable known as "lifeRemaining" is present on the item. If the item does not have the variable (they aren't created with the variable to begin with), then the variable is added to the object, with a value of 50. If the value is present, it is decremented by 1, and if it reaches 0, the item is destroyed. This particular code runs independently of any newbie code, and adds the value to any of the crafting items when they are used the first time, regardless of their other properties.

I can add (only) a pre-T2A anecdote:

My very first character, a miner-smith, had been PKed while mining, relatively early in that character's life (read, August or September, '98), and lost a lot of stuff and a packhorse: I mined more ore and intended to smith some stuff to pay for a new packhorse, and tools; my newbie-smith's-hammer broke right away, and I thought I was completely stuck (the character was flat broke, or at least couldn't afford a new tool), excepting only that another player happened to be right there and gave me a replacement tool. For whatever reason, I had thought that "newbie-stuff" was unbreakable, and I remember feeling quite shocked at this occurrence.

SS

[Kaivan]

In this case we have a clear set of information that tells us exactly how these things worked, so thankfully we don't actually need to dive into newsgroup posts to verify whether this was or wasn't a mechanic.