A shovel is a tool used to quickly destroy certain types of blocks.
Mechanics[]
Shovels are designed for blocks of dirt, sand, gravel, snow, and grass. When a block is destroyed by a shovel, it will be left on the ground for any player to pick up. Crafting a shovel is not a requirement to progress in the game, but they are very useful to have, as they allow a player to destroy some blocks faster than with bare hands. All shovels degrade as they are used for their intended purpose. However, a shovel will lose durability at twice the rate if it is used to attack mobs. Shovels made with better materials will last longer. In addition, a shovel can be enchanted with useful qualities, such as Unbreaking and Silk Touch.
Shovels can be crafted out of the following materials (in order of lowest, to highest durability):
- Gold (has almost half the durability as wood, but is faster than a diamond shovel).
- Wood
- Stone
- Iron
- Diamond
- Netherite
Other uses[]
Shovels can also be used to flatten grass into Grass Paths, by right-clicking on the grass block (PC), or holding down the action button over the grass block (PE).
Crafting[]
Place two sticks vertically, with either Wood, Stone, Iron, Gold or Diamond on the top.
| Gold Shovel | Wooden Shovel | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | Gold Ingot | None | None | Wooden Plank | None | |
| None | Stick | None | None | Stick | None | |
| None | Stick | None | None | Stick | None | |
| Stone Shovel | Iron Shovel | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | Cobblestone | None | None | Iron Ingot | None | |
| None | Stick | None | None | Stick | None | |
| None | Stick | None | None | Stick | None | |
| Diamond Shovel | Boat (BE only) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | Diamond | None | None | None | None | |
| None | Stick | None | Wooden Planks | Wooden Shovel | Wooden Planks | |
| None | Stick | None | Wooden Planks | Wooden Planks | Wooden Planks | |
Trivia[]
- Shovels are used to acquire Snowballs from top Snow.
- Zombies and Husks can rarely spawn holding an iron shovel which they also have a small chance to drop. This drop chance can be increased by the Fortune enchantment on the sword used. Thus, players can farm zombie spawners for iron shovels if they desire to do so.
- Wooden shovels are used as oars to steer boats in the Bedrock Edition and Windows 10 Edition. They are also used on the Java Edition, but they are not used in the crafting recipe for boats.
- Enchanted iron and diamond shovels can be found in some End City Chests.
- The wooden shovel is the only tool that can be used in crafting an item (which is the boat).
- As of 1.14, shovels can now put out lit campfires.
