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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. There is a rare chance that zombies drop an iron shovel. To see the durability press f3 and h.

Uses

A shovel is used to dig some materials (such as dirt) faster. A shovel is not required to advance forward in the game, it only makes the removal and collection of some materials faster, all listed in the table below. It also does a heart and a half less damage to mobs than the sword of the same material.

Crafting

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

Ingredients Input » Output Description
Sticks +
Wood Planks or
Cobblestone or
Iron Ingot or
Gold Ingot or
Diamond
Template:Grid/Crafting Table Used to dig dirt, grass, sand, gravel, Soul Sand, mycelium, 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 with a red background indicate that no resource will be dropped when the block is destroyed without a shovel. The best type of shovel is, without a doubt, the diamond shovel because of its quick block destruction and high durability. However, diamonds are hard to find in the beginning so the best alternative is an iron shovel. Iron is much less rare than diamond, and iron ingots and iron shovels are renewable resources because they are rare drop from Zombies and can also be dropped from iron golems. In addition, according to the table, an iron shovel digs all blocks just as fast or with a 0.05 second (barely noticeable) difference.

Nothing Wood Stone Iron Diamond Gold
Durability 60 132 251 1562 33
Clay 0.9 s 0.45 s 0.25 s 0.15 s 0.15 s 0.1 s
Farmland 0.9 s 0.45 s 0.25 s 0.15 s 0.15 s 0.1 s
Grass Block 0.9 s 0.45 s 0.25 s 0.15 s 0.15 s 0.1 s
Gravel 0.9 s 0.45 s 0.25 s 0.15 s 0.15 s 0.1 s
Mycelium 0.9 s 0.45 s 0.25 s 0.15 s 0.15 s 0.1 s
Dirt 0.75 s 0.4 s 0.2 s 0.15 s 0.1 s 0.1 s
Sand 0.75 s 0.4 s 0.2 s 0.15 s 0.1 s 0.1 s
Soul Sand 0.75 s 0.4 s 0.2 s 0.15 s 0.1 s 0.1 s
Snow 1 s 0.15 s 0.1 s 0.05 s 0.05 s 0.05 s
Snow (cover) 0.5 s 0.1 s 0.05 s 0.05 s 0.05 s 0.05 s

Achievements

Main article: Achievements
Icon Achievement In-game description Prerequisites Actual requirements (if different) Version restriction Xbox points earned
MOAR Tools
MOAR Tools Construct one type of each tool (one pickaxe, one spade, one axe and one hoe). Benchmarking Xbox 15G

Video

Shovel/video

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