Question about damage

what happens when your gear is damaged enough to reach 0? does your item get destroyed? or does it just stop working until fixed?. Yesterday i was soloing a leve when my sword had dropped down to 15% i noticed i was losing what seemed like 2% per mob and at that rate i would have hit 0 before my leve was complete. so out of fear of losing my weapon i stopped my leve and gave up. i am a bit bitter since the leve reward would have been 23k gil which is not alot to most of you guys but at my lvl its tones. so again what happens at 0?

at 0% its a major stat reduction on gear

Like Thevedis said, the benefits of using the gear/weapon drop dramatically. For a weapon, you're going to hit less often, and you're going to do less damage when you do hit.

It doesn't "break" in the sense that it disappears. It just becomes less effective. You can wear it down to 0%, and still repair it back to 100% (or 75% at the repair NPC). Also, it doesn't take any more materials or money to repair something from 0% than it would from 50%.

awesome thx guys for the info.