Well I was looking over the code a little bit today, just to get an idea on what files to work on and such... and so far, it looks like I'll have to tinker with act.wizard.c to show durability (current and max) when statting an item... then there's making the additions to oedit.c so that you can set it in the first place. Structs.h under object data, fight.c is where damage to items (and removal upon breaking) would take place. act.item.c, to make sure that it isn't broken when you try to wield/wear an item (if it's broken, "Hey, this is broken, you can't use it!). Let's see... genobj.c is where item saving and loading takes place, need to do some work there as well. And in utils.h. That's what I've seen so far: it looks like it's going to be a lot of work but not impossible.
NewDawn, huh? I know of another mud that did item durabilities too... Eternal Visions, actually. Thing is, while the place is still up, hardly anyone ever goes on there, and last I heard the coder there is pretty strict about letting anyone look at the code. I'm not even sure if it would help much to take a look, seeing as EV used a circlemud base that's been highly modified.