Every block has a hardness, a tool kind and a harvest tier. Together with the tool in
your hand they decide how long the block takes to break and whether it gives anything. The rules
below come from data/mining.json and the break rules shared by the server and the client.
Tool kinds and tiers
A tool is an item with a kind, a tier, a mining speed and a number of uses. There are three tiers of tools in the game today:
- Tier 0, flint (stone age): heads knapped from flint, see Knapping, clay and smithing. The tongs of this tier are made of wood, there are no flint tongs.
- Tier 1, copper: heads smithed on the stone anvil or cast in a mold.
- Tier 2, bronze: heads smithed on the bronze anvil or cast in a mold.
| Kind | Used for | Flint (tier 0) | Copper (tier 1) | Bronze (tier 2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pickaxe | rock, ores, bricks | speed 2.5, 60 uses | speed 4, 180 uses | speed 6, 400 uses |
| Axe | wood, planks, wooden furniture | speed 2.5, 60 uses | speed 4, 180 uses | speed 6, 400 uses |
| Shovel | dirt, sand, gravel, clay, snow | speed 2.5, 60 uses | speed 4, 180 uses | speed 6, 400 uses |
| Hoe | tilling soil | speed 2, 60 uses | speed 3.2, 180 uses | speed 4.8, 400 uses |
| Sickle | crops, thatch | speed 2, 70 uses | speed 3.2, 210 uses | speed 4.8, 460 uses |
| Knife | cobwebs; recipes (a bow, a club, scraping hides) | speed 2, 80 uses | speed 3.2, 240 uses | speed 4.8, 530 uses |
| Saw | recipes (logs into beams) | speed 2, 60 uses | speed 3.2, 180 uses | speed 4.8, 400 uses |
| Hammer | the anvil; recipes (cobbles, cracked ashlar) | speed 2, 80 uses | speed 3.2, 240 uses | speed 4.8, 530 uses |
| Chisel | the anvil; recipes (ashlar) | speed 2, 50 uses | speed 3.2, 150 uses | speed 4.8, 330 uses |
| Tongs | carrying hot metal | wood: speed 1, 40 uses | speed 1.5, 200 uses | speed 2, 450 uses |
The 
Fishing Rod is a tool too (kind “rod”, tier 0, 64 uses), worn once per catch.
Breaking a block
- A block takes its hardness in seconds with a bare hand.
- A tool of the block’s kind whose tier reaches the block’s harvest tier divides that time by its mining speed.
- Any other tool, or a tool of the right kind but too low a tier, breaks the block at a bare hand’s pace.
- Blocks of hardness 0 (loose stones, grass, leaves) break at once. In creative mode everything breakable breaks at once and nothing wears.
For example 
Stone has a hardness of 6: 6 seconds by hand, 2.4 seconds with a
Flint Pickaxe (6 / 2.5), 1.5 seconds with a 
Copper Pickaxe and
1 second with a 
Bronze Pickaxe. 
Granite (hardness 10, harvest
tier 1) takes 10 seconds with a flint pickaxe, as by hand, and only 2.5 seconds with a copper one.
A chiselled block is timed and harvested as the hardest material its shape holds, so carving a rock does not make it quicker to break.
Harvest tiers: who gets the drops
Breaking a block below its harvest tier still works, slowly, but it gives nothing. A bare hand, or a tool of another kind, counts as tier 0, with one exception: blocks whose kind is pickaxe give nothing without a pickaxe, even at tier 0. Rock and ore give nothing by hand; a flint pickaxe is the least that gets them. Every other kind gives its drops by hand at tier 0 (a shovel only digs faster).
| Harvest tier | Least tool | Blocks (hardness) |
|---|---|---|
| 0, pickaxe | flint pickaxe | Stone (6),  Limestone (4.5),  Sandstone (4),  Andesite (7),  Slate (5),  Coal Ore (7),  Copper Ore (8),  Flint Nodule (5),  Rock Salt (4),  Jet Ore (7) |
| 1, pickaxe | copper pickaxe | Granite (10),  Basalt (10),  Tin Ore (10),  Galena Ore (9),  Quartz Ore (11) |
| 1, shovel | copper shovel |  Bog Iron Ore (2.5) |
| 2, pickaxe | bronze pickaxe |  Iron Ore (12),  Gold Ore (9) |
| 3, pickaxe | none yet |  Magnetite Ore (14) |
No tool of tier 3 exists yet, so magnetite cannot be harvested in the current game. Dirt, sand, gravel, clay, wood and the other blocks of tier 0 outside the pickaxe kind drop by hand.
What a broken block gives
What drops is listed per block in the data (see each block page); each drop rolls its own chance and pops out of the block’s middle. Some examples:
- Rock gives its own block: Stone gives stone, Granite gives
granite. Ores give their ore block (Copper Ore, Tin Ore…).
- A Flint Nodule gives one
Flint, plus a second one 35% of the
time. - Loose stones on the ground break at once by hand and give a pebble, such as a
Stone Pebble. - Grass gives
Dirt, farmland gives back its soil, snow layers give snow only now
and then (one eighth of a chance per layer). - Leaves give a sapling of their tree 5% of the time. Cutting a tree branch fells everything it carries, and each felled block drops what breaking it would give: logs from the thick branches, plus bark half of the time on oak and birch.
- Crops do not use their block drops: breaking one harvests it, faster and better with a sickle (see Farming).
- Ice and glass give nothing.
In creative mode nothing drops.
Durability and wear
- A tool loses 1 use each time it breaks a block of its own kind that takes time. This counts even when its tier is too low for the drops. Instant blocks and other kinds cost nothing.
- A weapon loses 1 use per blow that lands; each worn armour piece loses 1 use when its wearer is hit.
- On the anvil, the hammer and the chisel lose 1 use per gesture.
- The hoe loses 1 use each time it tills.
- A grid recipe that uses a tool (a saw, a knife, a hammer…) leaves the tool in its cell and takes the uses the recipe names, for example 2 uses of a saw for a beam.
A tool worn to nothing breaks and leaves your hand. Its hotbar slot is then refilled from your bags with the same item, or with a tool of the same kind and tier.
Making tools: heads and hafting
Every tool is a head on a stick, lashed with a binding: any of 
Plant Twine,
Birch Tar, 
Rawhide or 
Rope. Flint tools are
hafted by hand from the inventory; copper and bronze tools need a workbench.
The heads come from:
- Flint: knapped on a
Knapping Stone. The pickaxe head:
FlintFlint Pickaxe Head- Copper and bronze: smithed from an ingot on an anvil (copper at 600 degrees or more, bronze at 500), or cast in a fired mold: the pickaxe head and axe head molds take 3 units of metal, the blade mold 2 (a knife head). The smithing section and Metalworking explain both.
The wooden tongs need no head: two sticks and a binding, by hand.
Hot metal above 60 degrees burns a character carrying it (2 damage a second) unless tongs are in the hotbar.