Broken Not Shattered

Broken Not Shattered is a lightweight mod that makes durability-based items become broken at 0 durability instead of disappearing entirely.

When a supported tool, weapon, armor piece, or other damageable item reaches zero durability, it stays as the same item stack with all of its enchantments, custom data, name, and other properties intact.

While broken, the item stops functioning normally until it is repaired.

Features

• Damageable items become broken instead of shattering
• Uses the item's real 0-durability state
• Broken tools no longer function as proper tools
• Broken weapons lose their normal combat effectiveness
• Broken bows, shields, tridents, fishing rods, shears, and similar items stop working
• Broken armor no longer provides its normal protection
• Broken elytra cannot be used for flight
• The original item stack and all of its data are preserved
• Repairing even a single point of durability immediately restores the item
• Compatible with repair systems from other mods that directly restore durability
• No special repair station or anvil interaction is required
• Broken items display a configurable red [BROKEN] tooltip by default
• Tooltip text, color, and visibility can be configured
• Lightweight and event-driven with no inventory polling or item ticking

Repair Compatibility

Broken Not Shattered does not use a separate broken-item state.

Instead, an item is considered broken whenever it has no durability remaining.

This means almost any system capable of repairing an item should work automatically.

If another mod, enchantment, machine, command, or script restores even one point of durability, the item immediately becomes usable again.

Modpack Support

All normal damageable items are supported by default, including modded items that use Minecraft's standard durability system.

Datapack item tags are available for compatibility and customization:

• broken_not_shattered:ignore — Broken Not Shattered completely ignores the item
• broken_not_shattered:shatters — the item keeps normal vanilla destruction behavior
• broken_not_shattered:protected — explicitly requests Broken Not Shattered handling

This makes it easy for modpack authors to handle unusual modded items without requiring dedicated compatibility addons.

Resource Pack Friendly

Broken items remain at their actual fully depleted durability value rather than being secretly held at 1 durability.

Because of this, resource packs and item models that already react to durability can continue to work naturally.

No replacement items, no fake broken state, no special repair system.

Your gear breaks, it just doesn't disappear.