Crafting

Crafting is the method in which tools and resources are created in Minecraft. It is currently only available in the indev mode, but will be brought to survival and future game modes when the game enters beta.

Current features

 * Tool, block and armor crafting
 * Food and farming
 * Forging

Upcoming features

 * Crafting in other game modes
 * More tools and blocks to be crafted

Crafting
To craft, materials must be placed into a crafting grid, either the 2×2 grid in the inventory or a 3×3 grid obtainable by building and using a workbench. Different combinations of materials yield different tools and blocks. Stronger materials such as iron or diamond can be used to produce better tools. Better tools mine, dig, chop and kill faster and break less. It does not matter which slots items are placed in, as long as their combination, order and rotation is the same. For example, torches can be built in any two vertical slots, but the coal must be placed directly above the sticks.

See the Durability section below for more information.

Bars, blocks and glass
Certain blocks, when placed in fire or lava, transform into different materials. For example, gold and iron ore (obtained by mining) respectively produce bars of gold and iron. Gravel and sand produce glass.

How to smelt blocks:
 * 1) Drop the stack of ore on the ground. This is done by clicking on the ore in the inventory and then clicking outside the inventory screen.
 * 2) Create a fire where the ore was thrown. To create a fire, use the flint and steel on any block.
 * 3) Collect the bars. The fire changes the ores into pure bars which can be safely collected once the fire is extinguished.

Smelting only works with a furnace as of 2/19/2010.

Durability
For crafted items with durability, each improvement in building material roughly doubles the number of blocks that can be destroyed, or the number of enemies that can be hit, with the tool before the tool breaks.

Note: gold is a very weak material and should not be used for tools or weapons. Items made with gold are as durable as their wooden counterparts.


 * Wood and gold - 33 uses
 * Stone - 65 uses
 * Iron - 129 uses
 * Diamond - 257 uses

Uses before breaking = 32 * 2^n + 1

Where n is the tier of material (wood and gold are tier 0), and a "use" is destroying a block, or hitting an enemy once.

Using a tool inappropriately (e.g. using a shovel to attack enemies, or digging dirt with a sword) cuts its durability in half, effectively reducing its tier (for the purpose of durability) by 1.