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Shovels are auxiliary tools used to ease the process of collecting dirt, sand, gravel, clay and snow. Shovels are only necessary to collect snowballs from snow; all other blocks for which shovels are useful can be successfully harvested by hand.

Uses

A shovel is used to dig some materials faster. A shovel is not required to advance forward in the game, it only makes the removal and collection of some materials faster.

Materials that shovels dig more efficiently

Crafting

Shovels are crafted using 2 sticks and 1 unit of a tool material:

Ingredients Input » Output Description
Sticks +
Wood or
Cobblestone or
Iron Ingots or
Gold Ingots or
Diamond Gems
Template:Grid/Crafting Table Used to dig Dirt, Grass, Sand, Gravel, Clay and Snow faster than by hand. Shovels are required to dig snowballs.

Speed and Durability

The following table summarizes the speed at which different quality shovels perform on different block types. Values marked with (*) and highlighted in red indicate that no resource will be dropped when the block is destroyed by that quality of shovel. Green cells indicate the fastest tool type.

Shovels Nothing Wood Stone Iron Diamond Gold
Durability 60 132 251 1562 33
Clay 0.9 secs 0.45 secs 0.25 secs 0.15 secs 0.15 secs 0.1 secs
Grass 0.9 secs 0.45 secs 0.25 secs 0.15 secs 0.15 secs 0.1 secs
Gravel 0.9 secs 0.45 secs 0.25 secs 0.15 secs 0.15 secs 0.1 secs
Dirt 0.75 secs 0.4 secs 0.2 secs 0.15 secs 0.1 secs 0.1 secs
Mycelium ? secs ? secs ? secs ? secs ? secs ? secs
Sand 0.75 secs 0.4 secs 0.2 secs 0.15 secs 0.1 secs 0.1 secs
Snow Block 1 sec* 0.15 secs 0.1 secs 0.05 secs 0.05 secs 0.05 secs
Snow 0.5 secs* 0.1 secs 0.05 secs 0.05 secs 0.05 secs 0.05 secs

Shovels are not effective at destroying Soul Sand.

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