Tool

Tools are items used by the player while held to perform actions faster, to gather materials not obtainable by hand, or to perform completely new actions. Note: All tools, except for the fishing rod, are not stackable.

Beginner info
Use any item's special ability by right or left clicking with your mouse.

Shovel
Shovels are used for removing dirt, sand, gravel, clay and snow faster. You can only get snowballs by using a shovel.

Pickaxe
Pickaxes are used for removing stone, cobblestone, moss stone, coal, iron ore, lapis lazuli ore, gold ore, diamond, obsidian, netherrack, glowstone, stairs, Iron Doors and Ice faster.

Wooden Pickaxe or better: Stone, Cobblestone, Coal Ore, Netherrack.

Stone Pickaxe or better: Iron Ore, Lapis Lazuli Ore.

Iron Pickaxe or better: Redstone Ore, Gold Ore, Diamond Ore.

Diamond Pickaxe: Obsidian.

Axe
Axes are used for removing logs, and planks faster.

Bucket
Buckets are used to hold water, lava, or milk for transport. They can only pick up water springs and lava springs and not the "runoff" from these blocks. Springs can be identified by being the “upstream-most” block in rivers; lakes and oceans are also made of spring blocks.

Flint and Steel
Flint and Steel is used to light trees, grass, and mobs on fire.

Hoe
Hoes can be used to till dirt blocks into field blocks. Tilling Grass can cause seeds to drop, which can then be grown on tilled ground that is near water.

Sword
Swords are used to attack mobs. They can also be used to remove some blocks (for example, glass and leaves) slightly faster; however, this damages the sword for two uses. They can, however, remove minecarts in a single swipe, and take no damage from doing so.

Saddle
Saddles are items only found in the chests found in map-generated underground dungeons; they cannot be crafted. They can be placed on pigs which will allow the player to ride them by right clicking the saddle. However, the player cannot control the pig.

Tool Material and Efficiency
The primary tools can be made out of four different materials: wood, stone, iron, and diamond. A fifth material, gold, is equal to wood. Each material has a limited durability and a specific action time. The better the material used, the more uses it has and the shorter the action time. Wood tools have 60 uses, Gold, 33 uses, Stone, 132 uses, Iron, 251 uses, and the best, Diamond, a full 1025 uses. The following chart, courtesy of Crixnmix, portrays the average time, in seconds, required to break a block depending on what material is used to craft a tool. In the Beta 1.2 patch gold tools were made to have increased speed at removing stone and wood than their diamond counterparts, but continuing to have the same durability. Wood, stone and iron and possibly diamond tools have had their durabilty increased.

(*) These values represent tools which yield no block drops.

(**) There is double durability damage to weapons when they are used to break glass and leaves.

Crafting recipes
Werkzeuge