| Today tools come in seven tiers: wood, gold, stone, copper, iron, diamond, and netherite. A pickaxe's mining level decides what it can harvest: wood 0, stone 1, iron 2, diamond 3, and netherite 4. Blocks tagged as needing a stone tool, such as iron, copper, and lapis lazuli ore, need level 1; diamond, emerald, gold, and redstone ore need an iron one, level 2; obsidian and ancient debris need a diamond one, level 3. Any other block needs level 0, and the wrong tier breaks a block without it dropping anything. | Usage, Breaking | Wiki |
| Tool tiers arrived during Indev in 2010. Pickaxes were added on 10 January, mining stone 400% faster than a hand; wooden, stone, and diamond pickaxes joined the existing one, now the iron pickaxe, on 28 January; wooden, iron, and diamond pickaxes could be crafted from build 20100129-1447, and the stone one, because of a bug, only from the next build, 20100129-2332. On 1 February higher-tier pickaxes became required for harder materials, and the tiers page says that before then blocks and ores could be broken by hand. | History, Java Edition Indev, 20100110History, Java Edition Indev, 20100128-2200History, Java Edition Indev, 20100128-2200History, Java Edition Indev, 20100129-1447History, Java Edition Indev, 20100129-1447History, Java Edition Indev, 20100129-2332History, Java Edition Indev, 20100201-2227 | Wiki |
| Each pickaxe is crafted from two sticks and three of its tier's material (by the tiers table's repair items: planks, cobblestone, iron ingots, diamonds), and each tier's ore takes a pickaxe of the tier below: any pickaxe for stone, a stone one for iron ore, an iron one for diamond ore. | Obtaining, CraftingUsage, Breaking | Wiki |
| Minecraft's pickaxe chain is a gate: a wooden pickaxe mines stone for a stone one, which mines iron ore for an iron one, which mines diamond ore for a diamond one, and the wrong tier gets nothing from a hard block. Factorio's early wooden, stone, and iron picks, which Friday Facts #266 calls "clearly Minecraft affecting our ideas", were cut to iron and steel picks and then removed in 0.17; the post doesn't say whether Factorio's picks gated any resource the way Minecraft's tiers do. | Usage, Breaking | Wiki |