Crafting



Crafting is the method by which many blocks, tools, and other resources are made in Minecraft. In order to craft something, the player must move items from their inventory into a crafting grid. A simple 2×2 crafting grid grid can be accessed from the player's inventory. A 3×3 grid is accessible by right-clicking on a Crafting Table.

For some items, it does not matter how they are arranged in the grid. These are commonly known as shapeless recipes. For example, a Fermented spider eye can have its ingredients placed anywhere within the grid.

However, many of the more important or useful game objects must have their components placed in the correct relative positions. Even then, provided the resources are arranged correctly, the item can be made in any way that it fits in the grid. For example, a 3×1 recipe, such as bread, can be made in the top, middle or bottom row of the 3×3 grid, but it cannot be made at all in the 2×2 grid because it does need to be three items wide. 'Shaped' recipes can be 'slid' up or down, left or right, and they can even be flipped horizontally. For instance, you can make a bow with the strings on the right instead of the left.

The player always has access to the 2×2 crafting grid from their Inventory screen, and this can be used whenever the screen is brought up. Crafting recipes which are at most 2×2 wide and tall can always be made there. This includes wooden planks, sticks and, importantly, the crafting table itself. To craft with a 3×3 grid, create a crafting table, place it in any convenient spot and then right-click on it. This brings up a pop-up screen with a 3×3 grid on which the player can assemble any crafting recipe in the game.

History
Crafting was first implemented in Indev 0.31, January 29, 2010. Work had been done to the game so that players had a more controllable inventory: things could be picked up, dropped and put wherever the player wanted them in the hot-bar or the inventory grid. This was vital to starting crafting, which relies on moving items around in inventory screens. Among the first few recipes were Sticks, Pickaxes, Torches, Swords, Axes and Gold and Iron blocks. The next day, Indev was updated again with many other recipes. As new blocks and items were implemented into the game, new crafting recipes were made accordingly.

Recipes only had static placements until Beta version 1.2, January 13, 2011. This introduced new recipes that allowed the player to put the ingredients wherever in the grid they wanted (dye + wool).

In 1.8, the Adventure Update, crafting was given a very convenient mechanic. Holding shift while grabbing a crafting output would automatically take all possible outputs from the stock of ingredients it was given.

Daniel Kaplan released preview images of the Minecraft Advanced Touch Technology Interface System (MATTIS) crafting system on April 17, 2012, and the system was implemented in Alpha 0.3.0 on April 24.

A simplified crafting system for the Xbox 360 was implemented with the first version release (Beta 1.6.6).

MATTIS
In the Pocket Edition, crafting is somewhat different and uses the Minecraft Advanced Touch Technology Interface System (MATTIS) crafting system. Rather than having 2x2 and 3x3 grids, there are 4 categories down the left: Blocks, Tools, Food & Armor and Decoration. Tapping on each category brings up a list of items/blocks that are craftable from that menu. In each item, there is an area which lists the requirements. The 1st number is the amount of material collected; the second is the amount required. There is an item description under each item and it tells you what the item is used for. All you have to do then is tap the item wanted as many times as you want to get the desired number of new items. The newly created items show up in your inventory. Crafting is currently limited to survival mode only in PE and is quite limited to very few options.

You do have the option to use a crafting table to give you a lot more choices. You must first craft a crafting table. After you tap on the crafting table, the MATTIS pops up with options on crafting.

Xbox 360 crafting system
The Xbox 360 Edition uses a simplified crafting system. It does not make use of the standard crafting interface, but still has similarities to the PC version's 2x2 and 3x3 crafting grids. The interface does not require the player to place items in the correct place in a crafting menu, but instead simply displays the ingredients required to craft the selected item and allows the player to craft that item so long as the player has the required crafting ingredients. The crafting table orders all craftable items into 7 categories: Structures, Tools, Weapons, Food, Armor, Mechanisms, Transportation and Decoration.

Pressing opens the 2x2 crafting menu. The Armor tab is missing here as crafting any armor requires the use of a 3x3 crafting grid.

Item durability
Certain crafted items, such as tools and armor, as well as certain other usable items, are subject to item durability; a process whereby repeated use of the tool will deplete its number of available uses unless it is repaired. A stronger material will last longer whereas a weaker resource such as wood disintegrates quicker. In order to determine the durability of an item, a small damage bar below each item displays how much longer a tool will last before it breaks and needs to be replaced (this also applies to armor).

A use is counted only if a player completely breaks apart one block or hits a mob. If a block is partially broken, this is not counted as a full use. If a player happens to use a tool that is not suitable for the task at hand (e.g. Using an axe to dig through stone instead of a pickaxe, or fighting a mob with a shovel instead of a sword), it will count as two uses rather than one as this is not using the item in hand for its designed use.

Proper use of tools will maximize their durability. Assuming a player uses a tool appropriately, the following list shows the maximum durability for tools of each material type.


 * Wood - 60 uses
 * Stone - 132 uses
 * Iron - 251 uses
 * Gold - 33 uses
 * Diamond - 1,562 uses

Note that even though that gold tools have lower durability, they do the work faster.

Regarding protective gear such as armor, the amount of damage a piece of armor can protect is dependent on the material the armor is made of. The protection of the armor stays constant and is no longer dependent on the durability of the armor.

Complete recipe list
Currently, there are 174 recipes. Some recipes are depicted in the animations below (note: your browser needs JavaScript enabled).

Dye recipes
Four dyes are not included below because they are not obtained through crafting; they are Cactus Green (green), Lapis Lazuli Dye (blue), Cocoa Beans (brown), and Ink Sac (black).