Tools

A quick guide to the tools you will use in Minecraft.

Tools with Handles

These tools are all made with a handle of sticks, and a head of either wood planks , cobblestone , iron , diamond or gold.

Better materials work faster and last longer (with the exception of Gold, which is the fastest material but also the softest.) There is rarely a good reason to make a gold tool! Iron and diamond are the best for most purposes.

Comparison of Materials
Material	Durability	Speed
Wood	60 uses	Slowest
Stone	132 uses	Slow
Iron	251 uses	Medium
Diamond	1562 uses	Fast
Gold	33 uses	Fastest

Pickaxes

Pickaxe

These are the tools that you will get the most use out of, and you’ll probably want to be using diamond pickaxes when doing a lot of mining.

Note that some materials can only be mined with a pickaxe of a good enough quality:

Pickaxe Materials
Material	Durability	Mining notes
Wood	60 uses
Stone	132 uses	Stone or better is needed to mine iron or lapis lazuli
Iron	251 uses	Iron or diamond is needed to mine gold, diamond or redstone
Diamond	1562 uses	Diamond is needed to mine obsidian.
Gold	33 uses	More easily enchanted?

The only sensible reason to make a gold pickaxe is if you are trying to enchant a pickaxe with silk touch.

Pickaxes are the best tool to mine all kinds of stone and ore, plus Netherrack, Glowstone and many other blocks.

The Right Tool for the Job

Pickaxes can also be used to do almost anything that a shovel or an axe will do (except make snowballs), however shovels work faster for digging dirt, grass, sand etc, and axes are much quicket at chopping most forms of wood.

Swords are the best implement for breaking minecarts, glass, beds, pistons, levers, buttons etc.

Shovels

Iron shovel

This is probably the second most-used tool; it’s the best for shifting sand, gravel, dirt, clay and Soul Sand. It is also required to collect snowballs by digging snow.

Axes

Iron axe

Axes are used for cutting down trees, and chopping up any other wooden items such as chests, fenceposts and wooden planks.

Hoes

iron hoe

The hoe is a single-purpose tool, used for turning dirt into farmland. No other tool will do this.

Other Tools

Shears

Shears are used to collect wool from sheep, leaf blocks from trees and string from cobwebs. They are also used to collect vines and tall grass.

The weird thing about shears is that you right-click to shear sheep, but left-click to collect other stuff.

Buckets

bucket

Used for collecting and placing water and lava, and for milking cows.

Flint and Steel

Used for setting stuff on fire. Flint and Steel can be used to set fire to many types of wooden blocks, or TNT. It is also used to activate a Nether Portal, and can be used as a weapon when fighting mobs.