What specific actions decrease a weapon's condition?

Question

I know that "using" a weapon will cause its condition to decrease. What specific actions will cause the condition to drop?

Is it only if a weapon connects with an enemy and causes damage?
What if a weapon is used to break an object (boxes, vases, etc.)?
Does simply swinging or shooting a weapon cause a decrease in condition over time even if it doesn't connect with anything?

Are the specific actions that decrease a weapon's condition universal or are there different conditions for different weapon types (daggers, fae blades, longbows, sceptres, etc.)?

If there are different actions that can decrease a weapon's condition, does one decrease the condition more than another (if striking an object and striking an enemy both decrease a weapon's condition, does striking an enemy decrease the condition more quickly)?

Answer 1

The amount of degradation your weapon experiences is directly proportional to the amount of damage that your weapon inflicts.

Since your weapon will only inflict up to the remaining health of the entity you are attempting to destroy it will only degrade by that amount. In other words, if you have a set of Prismere Chakrams that inflict 199 damage and you attack a poor defenseless storage crate that has, let's say, 5 armor, your weapon will degrade by whatever 5 attack does to it and not 199.

I had a similar question when I was questing near Didenhil: Does attacking boxes hurt my weapon? So what I did was fairly simple: I repaired all my stuff at the blacksmith, ran outside and smashed a bunch of crates, then ran inside and repaired my stuff again. Lo and behold, they had a bit of damage (-1). Then I thought, what about my staff? What if I just launch a bunch of fireballs and don't actually fight anything? And the answer is yes, that does degrade your weapon. I would assume that if you are dumb enough to use a sceptre, it would also degrade in a similar fashion. Physical/piercing weapons do not seem to be affected by just waving them about.

Answer 2

As far as I know your weapon decreases whenever it hits something, if you are just swinging in the air it does not decrease. But hitting boxes, enemies, or even walls it will slowly start to decrease everytime it makes contact with something.

Also it is the same across all weapon types, the staff and sceptre are the same, each blast out of that hits something will make it decrease slightly.

It is possible that hitting a box might degrade the weapon a smaller amount than hitting an enemy, but I have not seen any evidence playing the game or from other people through the community if there is a difference.