What if we tweaked the durability and repair system a little in order to get rid of the glut of NQ items?

Something like this:


Repair mechanic is basically the same as it is now - using repair mats to repair items and what not however much you like. However there is an additional counter added to the durability gauge.

It has a counter of, say, 5. Whenever you use up the equivalent of 100% of the durability of an item, the counter decreases by 1. Once the counter reaches 0, you cannot repair the item with just the normal repair mat anymore. You need to get the same item and infuse it with your own item to fully repair it and reset the counter back to 5.

This would give a reason for someone with a +3 crab bow to buy a NQ crab bow eventually after using it for a long time. Going from a counter of 5 all the way down to 0 would take a while, too. I don't want this to be a common thing one has to do as it would get annoying.

For items that are already rare, like the Barbarian's Bardiche or Champion's Lance, I'd just make the infusable item be something else, like a Bronze bardiche or Banneret Lance.