Equipment leveling system

This is my plan for the equipment system.


All equip-able items have an experience counter and can level up.

When the character receives experience, half of it goes to the character and half of it is divided evenly between the equipped items (unless it isn't wearing any, then all goes to the character).

Equipment has various stats, and a hidden growth to each stat which is randomly generated at creation of the item. When an item levels up, each stat grows randomly between 0 and its growth, so the player has to level an item a few times to see if it has potential or not.

In addition to the stat growth, an armor piece will gain a random bonus to a random character stat with each level-up. Higher levels and better items give higher bonuses. Weapons will gain randomly generated bonus special attacks instead.

The required experience per level depends on the total stat growth, so weaker items will level faster.


Items have a maximum level. When the maximum level is reached, their share of experience is given to the character.

Result:

The fastest way to level a piece of equipment is wearing only one piece so it gets maximum experience. But that way the character will be weak and will only able to fight lower enemies. So itself won't level fast. This play-style will be preferred by perfectionists.

The fastest  way to level the character is by quickly maxing out items with bad stat growth and wearing them so that the character receives 100% experience. This play-style will be preferred by people who want to advance quickly. But it won't be sustainable for long because sooner or later the equipment will need to be replaced by items of a higher tier.

Salvaging items:

A leveled item can be salvaged. When the character does so, the item is destroyed and the character receives crystals representing the attribute bonuses or special attacks the item has gained with level-ups. These crystals can be used on an item of the same type to replace a stat bonus or special attack of the same level. This gives the player the option to use good bonuses achieved with lower tier equipment to replace bad or useless bonuses in higher tier equipment. It also opens another way to create the perfect equipment: by training multiple identical items and picking the best bonuses from them.

This not just gives an incentive to train lower-tier items before advancing to the next item tier, it also creates a drain which removes used items from the game and forces newcomers to level good items themselves instead of buying them from higher level players.