Tools of the Trade 1B: Wielded Tools (A Minecraft Guide)

Having looked at the tools that you put into place in Minecraft, it is time to consider the tools that you hold in your hand and wield.  There are four basic tools, any of which can be used as a weapon- though one of them is not useful as anything but a weapon.  These tools are the sword, the axe, the pick, and the shovel.

These tools all have things in common- each only exists in stacks of 1, which is to say that one fills an entire slot.  This makes carrying spare complete tools a bit prohibitive on your pocketspace, and certainly harder to achieve than carrying around the materials and a crafting table.  On the other hand, you won’t always have time to craft a replacement when a tool breaks.  I like to make sure that I have two tools of each kind at any given time, to ensure that I have a spare.

The second common attribute all of these tools have is that all forms of these tools are made partly out of wood- specifically sticks.  Sword handles and the hafts of the axe, pick, and shovel all need sticks to be made, meaning that wood will always be a vital resource to have readily to hand.

The third common attribute all of these tools have is that they can be made with five different materials other than sticks- Wood, Cobblestone, Iron, Gold, and Diamond.  As long as you have one of these resources to go with your sticks, you can probably make these tools (unless you don’t have enough of these materials).

This also brings us to the fourth thing that is common to the four basic tools- you should not make them out of gold.  Gold is a rarer resource than Iron, and being that it’s a softer metal, it is not as good a material.  Not only do gold tools hurt, chop, or dig slower than iron tools, they wear out faster and more easily as well.  It is interesting that making these things out of gold is possible- though it was clearly an intentional part of the game, I’m not sure why that was.

The four basic tools also have two attributes in common that are shared with the more advanced tools that you wield in your hand.  First of all, all wielded tools wear out over time as you use them.  Once you have started using such a tool, its icon will manifest a little green bar.  This bar shifts through the chroma from green to yellow to orange to red and empties out as you use the tool, displaying how much use is left in the tool.  The second trait is that by using your crafting area or a crafting table, you can put two of the same tool that are built of the same material together to make another tool of the same kind in better condition.  In fact, combining your used tools like this results in a tool with more remaining durability than both of the worn tools would have if used separately.  This is the other reason to carry at least two of each tool with you at any given time- to make sure that you can get even more use out of the tools you have.