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Guide for Digging in 'Minecraft'

Digging is the only way to obtain certain materials, such as diamonds, iron and gold, in the "Minecraft" construction video game. Depending on the type of block you are digging through, you will need to use either a shovel or a pickaxe; certain types of blocks also require your tools to be made of very specific materials if you want to collect items rather than just destroy blocks.

Shovels
- Create a shovel by placing two sticks and another block within three vertically adjacent spaces in a crafting bench, with two sticks on the bottom and the other block on top. The last block can be a wood plank, stone block, iron ingot, gold ingot or diamond. A shovel will increase your digging speed when you are digging through sand, clay, grass, gravel, dirt and snow. Digging through snow with a shovel will allow you to collect snowballs, while doing so by hand will remove the snow, but yield no items.
Pickaxes
- Create a pickaxe by placing two sticks and three other blocks in a crafting bench in a "T" shape, with the two sticks forming the vertical part of the "T" and the other blocks forming the horizontal part. The three horizontal blocks can be wood planks, stone blocks, iron ingots, gold ingots or diamonds; all three of them must be the same. A pickaxe will increase your digging speed when you are digging through obsidian, diamond, iron, coal, gold, redstone, lapis lazuli, stone, sandstone, netherrack and glowstone. Digging through these blocks can also be done by hand, but will yield no items.
Material Requirements
- Use a pickaxe made out of stone at least to be able to collect iron and lapis lazuli. oT collect gold, redstone and diamonds, you'll need an iron pickaxe. Obsidian can be gathered only with a diamond pickaxe.
  
  Diamond tools are the best available in the game, offering a fast digging speed and high durability. Gold tools break some types of blocks faster than diamond tools, but have the lowest durability of all tools in the game, breaking after only 33 uses, compared to the 60 uses available from a basic wooden tool and the 1,562 uses available from diamond tools.
Warning
- Digging straight up or straight down is extremely dangerous and should not be done under any circumstances. Digging straight down can cause you to drop into a large cave or a lava pool, killing you. Furthermore, if you're digging straight down and your only tool breaks, you'll have no way to get out of the hole you have dug for yourself. Digging straight up can cause blocks that are affected by gravity, such as gravel or sand, to fall on you and suffocate you; you may also be killed by falling water or lava.

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