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Dark Oak Sapling
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Swords are weapons used to kill mobs or players (if multiplayer PvP is on) quicker, but are not required to defeat them. They also can remove several blocks faster than using bare hands (such as leaves, wool, glowstone, and Soul Sand), but instead of one use of the Durability Bar, it counts as two uses. Killing larger slimes with a sword will also prevent more slimes from spawning. In The Nether you can find Zombie Pigmen that use Golden Swords, but they do not drop their swords when killed. Because mobs require fewer hits to kill with higher level swords, you will use these swords less, which causes diamond swords to last an extremely long time.

Stone (or better) swords revert minecarts in one hit with no decrease in durability, whereas wooden swords require two hits.

Crafting

Swords are created with 1 stick and 2 units of a tool material:

Ingredients Input » Output Description
Sticks +
Wooden planks or
Cobblestone or
Iron Ingots or
Gold Ingots or
Diamond Gems
Template:Grid/Crafting Table Deals more damage to mobs than by hand.

The following table summarizes the damage that different quality swords inflict.

Material Bare hands Wood Stone Iron Gold Diamond
Durability 60 132 251 33 1562
Damage ♥ ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Approx. Number of Kills 15 44 83 8 781

As of Beta 1.5, all melee weapons, including the hands, do half a heart more damage, making the stone sword as effective as the iron one at killing mobs with 10 hearts of HP(3 hits).

Combat

The sword is a potent weapon if you can use it properly. Depending upon the type of material you use when building, you can severely injure your enemies. The best choice for a sword is diamond, however, this is a rare material, so it is suggested to use iron instead. The weaker swords are not recommended for creeper combat(especially on hard). If it comes to a stone sword or a bow, the better choice is the bow, having a much farther range. If you approach a creeper with a sword, a recommended strategy is to hit the creeper, and then to run away until the hissing stops and run froward and hit it again, repeating this as many times as necessary. The gold sword is extremely inefficient, and you would be better off making two golden shovels, as these will dig much better than the sword will damage. to sum this up, the sword is a potent weapon for those who know how to properly wield it.

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