I was in 3-2 nosing around and ended up at the bottom of the tower. I was taking care of a face bug and got hit twice and my wepon AND all my armor broke! Besides wasting thousands in souls to get it all repaired… Any ideas???
Bad news for ya, you can either switch out your armor, or pay up. That is the love that this game gives xD. Also I am not exatly sure how the repair cost is actually calculated although my guess is it is directly proportional to the amount of durability lost. I do know that some weapons have a larger cost per durability loss than others ex: Stormruler vs. Northern Regalia. All I can really say about your situation is keep your equipment in tip top shape. You might pay the same in the long run but I find it much easier to pay smaller amounts more often. Then again with millions of souls it is not that big of a problem either way.
Another point you may or may not know, In the equipment menu if you hit square when selecting your equipment it will show a details page and at the bottom the durability. Checking this will allow you to monitor the status of your gear.
things like that are the reason why I do 4-1 ASAP. All it takes is a couple of runs killing the Reaper at the start of 4-2 to pay for all the necessary repairs.
This same thing happened to me once when I re-entered 3-2 after having released the heart. Face bugs broke all of my armor and my sword and it cost more to repair them than I had in souls. So, I made some repairs, used other armor, got more souls, and then fixed the rest. Each item cost me at least 2000 to repair. I hate the face bugs so I now try to do more ranged damage to them before meleeing them. I use Thief's Ring in 3-2 also so that I can see them before they see me.
Weird, the only time my armour was broken was when I was invaded on the first day I started playing. I always made a habit of repairing all of my equipment before going somewhere, and carrying a few of Ed's Grindstones as a backup.