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 grid can be accessed in the player's inventory or on a Crafting Table. The player must then arrange them into the pattern representing the item(s) they wish to create. As long as the proper pattern of resources is placed, it will not matter where within the grid the ingredients are placed. Crafting recipes can also be flipped horizontally from their depictions in the graphs below: for instance, you can make a bow with the strings on the right instead of the left. Crafting recipes come in two types: definite and indefinite. A defined item such as the bow has to have the sticks and string in the right places. An indefinite item like a Fermented Spider eye can have the ingredients anywhere within the grid.

The player has access to a 2×2 crafting grid in their Inventory screen which can be used anytime the screen is brought up. Crafting recipes that are at most 2×2 materials wide and tall can be crafted there, like wooden planks, sticks and Crafting Tables. To craft with a 3×3 grid, create a Crafting Table, place it anywhere and right-click on it. This brings up a pop-up screen which allows the player to assemble any crafting recipe in the game, as the maximum size for a recipe is 3×3.

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 it's 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 - 1562 uses

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

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

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.