Item Tags!

“You jump through the window of a gun store to avoid a gas station explosion. You look around, the undead hordes will be upon you soon. You grab a shotgun and the 00 shot and load it up, ready to blast your way out of this situation. A brute knocks through the door and you raise the gun. You pull the trigger and a heavy loud screech comes from the barrel, it was rusted inside! A poof of brown rust comes out the end of the barrel as the shot rolls out the end. You have been eaten by a grue brute.”

So basically item tags are modifiers for weapons/clothing that effect stats.
Rusted - Minus 3-9 for different levels from lightly rusted to heavily rusted
Corroded - Minus 3-9 cutting damage for the levels.
Chipped - Minus 1-5 from cutting damage
Dull - Minus 1-20 cutting damage
Heavy - Plus 1-12 bashing damage, heavier by 3-10 lbs. Slower attack speed.
Light - Plus 1-12 cutting damage, lighter by 1-9 lbs.
Corrupted - Random bad effects on the enemy the weapon is used on.
Acidic - Plus 10-30 cutting damage
Glowing - Slowly increase radiation
Crappy - Randomly breaks when used.
Expensive - Plus 3 to all stats.

That’s all I can think of for melee weapons. I don’t feel like ranged weapons ATM.

For melee weapons, sure.

For firearms? Well, a modern stainless steel and polymer gun would take ages to rust in any significant way and rust wouldn’t stop a gun from firing, just make the barrel burst.

Further more, in your example you stated it was a store, I don’t think a store should ever have damaged items.

For shit you get out of houses or off of corpses? I like it.

It was one of those gunships that buys used guns, one of which had a lot of moisture in the barrel.
Also, I have hunted with guns before and if it sprinkles outside with rain the barrel rusts near instantly.

But yeah, this is a very limited list. I just wanted more custom items. And I was picturing the shot knocking the rust out but losing all velocity in the process.

Also good items would’ve been looted first, leaving the crappiest for you.

a slightly modified version for firearms could be worked out, one that includes dents in the barrels, clearly worn bolts etc etc.

pull the trigger on that ‘historical’ 1911 and that hammer might be bent the ‘slightest’ hair over and catch, failing to fire the round.

that shotgun you just picked up? a slightly bent barrel just sent the buckshot into the floor/ceiling/wall instead of that hulk looming in the door.

corroded clip on that m16 just caused a jam when it tried to push 2 rounds in, now what do you do?? (I think this one is fairly uncommon but meh)

i’d love to see an affix system like this for clothing, so that you can customise items more via tailoring. right now we can make items “fit” which is great, but i’d love to be able to add extra rags to them to make them ‘warm’ or sew some extra pockets in to add a bit of volume, or maybe some wood/leather/metal to add some armour value. this effect could be a % that goes up as your skill in tailoring increases, so that when you first start altering maybe you can only up the warmth of your hoodie by a few points for example, but as you get more skilled you figure out more ingenious ways to alter your items and the bonuses increase - and of course alterations could also effect the weight/encumbrance/volume of items in a negative way as well.

as for weapons, maybe a whet stone item so you can add the “sharpened” tag to bladed weapons, or a gun cleaning kit to keep your weapon in a good state.

…and nails. be able to weld nails on to anything. spiked sledge hammer anyone?