Shovels

Shovel
Type:	Item, Tool
Stackable:	No

Shovels are used to dig soft blocks, such as sand, dirt and snow.

Obtaining

Natural Generation

Stone shovels with 50-100 damage can be found in 21.8% of loot chests in stacks of 1.

Crafting

Shovels are crafted using one tool material and two sticks.

Repairing

Two shovels of the same material can be combined in the crafting grid to combine their durability. This can also be done through use of the anvil, to preserve enchantments.

Usage

Mining

Shovels are required to collect:

• Snow blocks
• Snow balls from snow

Shovels can be used to speed up the collection of these blocks:

• Dirt (mycelium, farmland, etc),
• Sand
• Snow
• Clay
• Gravel

There are five types of shovels, each with different mining speeds and durability.

Shovel	Material	Uses	Comments
	Wooden planks	60	Easiest to craft however it has the slowest mining speed. Can be found in the loot chest.
	Cobblestone	132	Second easiest to craft, and slightly faster than the wooden shovel. Can also be found in the loot chest.
	Iron ingot	251	Slightly harder to craft, however quite fast.
	Gold ingot	33	Fastest mining speed, however it is not recommended for regular use as it has very low durability, so is not worth spending one gold ingot on.
	Diamond	1562	Faster mining speed than the iron shovel, however slightly slower than gold. It has a lot of durability for how much it costs.

Weapon

Shovels can be used to deal more damage than by hand, however they deal the least damage than any tool of the same material and use up two durability points when used to do damage to a mob.

Enchanting

Shovels can be enchanted directly through the enchantment table.

Enchantments applicable to shovels include:

• Silk touch(Max lvl I)*
• Efficiency(Max lvl II)
• Fortune(Max lvl III)*
• Unbreaking(Max lvl IV)

*Note: Silk touch and fortune are mutually exclusive.

Data Values

ID

Different shovels have different item ids.

Here is a table:

Shovel	ID
	wooden_shovel
	stone_shovel
	iron_shovel
	golden_shovel
	diamond_shovel

Item Data

Item data is used to determine the durability of the shovel. If using the /give command, this can be specified using the third parameter. Positive integers are how much durability the shovel has taken away from full durability, and negative integers are how much durability the shovel has left. For example, the command /give wooden_shovel 1 10 gives one wooden shovel with ten durability taken away from full durability.

History

Version	Date	Changes
Prior to 1.4.34	Day 11	Added shovels
1.19	Nov 19, 2011	Updated the textures of shovels
1.27	Nov 13, 2015	Shovels can be repaired through crafting and through the anvil

See Also

• Axes
• Pickaxes
• Swords
• Hoes
• Tools