Breaking

Breaking, digging, punching, or mining is a common activity in Minecraft, performed (by default) by holding the left mouse button or right trigger while the crosshair is pointing at a block, or by long-pressing on the block on touch screens. Breaking is the primary way to remove unwanted blocks and acquire blocks for future placement or crafting.

By holding down the destroy button while looking at a block within range, the player's hand begins swinging, making a repetitive "thump" sound as the player hits the block. Cracks appear on the block, which show that it is being broken.

In Java Edition, this range is 5.2 blocks in Creative mode, and 4.5 blocks otherwise. In Bedrock Edition, the range is 5 blocks when using a keyboard/mouse or controller input; when using touch input, the range is 12 blocks in Creative mode and 6 blocks otherwise.

Targeted blocks are marked with a wireframe cube outline; in Bedrock Edition, this can be changed to a white highlight by disabling the "Outline Selection" option in video settings. After the cracking animation is finished and completely covers the block, it breaks and depending on the type of block and the tool used to do so, it may drop an item.

Although many blocks can be harvested with bare hands, certain ones require the use of a tool. In particular, to obtain resources from stone or metal-type blocks, the player must use a pickaxe. For harder blocks like iron ore or obsidian, a pickaxe made from a higher-tier material is required.

The player can use shovels, axes and hoes to speed up the breaking of dirt-type blocks, wood, and plant-type blocks, respectively. However, tools are not required to get the resource drop (with the exception of snow and snow blocks, which require a shovel to get a drop). A downside to this is that tools also have durability, so they eventually wear out.

The progress for breaking a block is reset if the target block changes while breaking. Progress is also reset whenever the breaking control is released. The player can move freely while breaking blocks. The player can even dig while jumping, swimming, or riding, although this reduces the breaking speed.

In Survival mode, however, some blocks are unbreakable, like bedrock, and in Adventure mode all blocks are unbreakable unless the player has an item or a tool with the can_destroy tag. In Spectator mode a player can't break blocks in any way, and in Creative mode all blocks are breakable unless the player is holding a sword, spear, debug stick, trident, or mace.

The player's mining efficiency (digging speed) is controlled by three factors: the block being broken, the item the player is currently wielding, and the mining penalties affecting the player. Every block has a hardness value, which determines the base amount of breaking time if the player hits it with their bare hands.

The base time in seconds is the block's hardness multiplied by:

• 1.5 if the player can harvest the block with the current tool;
• 5 if the player cannot.

Assuming that the player can harvest the block, the next check is whether the player's tool increases the breaking speed for the block. See Best tools for a full list.

If the tool helps, then it increases digging speed by a constant multiplier, given in the following table:

If a proper tool is used, the tool speed is further increased by the Efficiency enchantment. If the level of Efficiency is not 0, then the level squared plus 1 is added to the tool speed. For example, Efficiency I adds 2 to the value, while Efficiency V adds 26. The speed is also increased by (20×level)% of Haste in Java Edition or multiplied by (0.2×level+1)×(1.2^level) in Bedrock Edition.

Mining Fatigue decreases the speed by multiplying by (0.3^min(level,4)) in Java Edition or by (0.3^level)×(0.7^level) in Bedrock Edition. In Java Edition, increasing the effect level from II to III reduces the mining speed by a factor of 0.03 rather than 0.3.^[1] Therefore, with level III the speed is reduced to 0.0027× of normal speed instead.

If the player's head is underwater and they are not wearing a helmet with the Aqua Affinity enchantment, breaking a block takes 5 times as long. If the player's feet are not touching the ground, an additional 5× penalty is added; this causes players floating in water to break blocks 25× slower than if they had been standing on land.

The total time to break a block is always a multiple of ¹⁄₂₀ of a second, or 1 game tick; any remainder is rounded up to the next tick.

When breaking a block, a tool and its enchantments do its speed value as "damage" to a block every game tick, and when that value exceeds the block's hardness times 30, the block breaks. If the tool and enchantments immediately exceed the hardness times 30, the block breaks with no delay; otherwise a 6 tick (³⁄₁₀ second) delay occurs before the next block begins to break.

For example, a player with Haste II holding an Efficiency V diamond pickaxe (or netherite pickaxe) can break stone instantly, as the damage is (8+26)×(1+0.4)=47.6, which is greater than the base hardness of stone (1.5) times 30 (which is 45). Players in Creative mode always break blocks instantly regardless of tools or status effects, except for when wielding a sword, spear, debug stick, trident or a mace, in which case the player is unable to break anything.

Combining all of the information above yields the following pseudo-code to calculate how long in seconds a player takes to mine a certain block. All operations are floating-point, not integer.

if (isBedrockEdition):
 if (isBestTool):
 speedMultiplier = toolMultiplier
 if (not canHarvest):
 speedMultiplier = 1
 else if (toolEfficiency):
 speedMultiplier += efficiencyLevel ^ 2 + 1
 else:
 speedMultiplier = 1
else:
 speedMultiplier = mining speed for block determined by the tool item component
 if (speedMultiplier > 1):
 speedMultiplier += attribute(mining_efficiency) # normally efficiencyLevel ^ 2 + 1

if (haste or conduitPower):
 speedMultiplier *= 0.2 * max(hasteLevel, conduitPowerLevel) + 1

if (miningFatigue):
 # In Java Edition, Mining Fatigue actually follows hardcoded values for levels I, II, III, and IV. They are 0.3, 0.09, 0.0027, and 0.00081 respectively.[1]
 speedMultiplier *= 0.3 ^ min(miningFatigueLevel, 4)‌[Java Edition only]
 speedMultiplier *= 0.3 ^ miningFatigueLevel‌[Bedrock Edition only]

speedMultiplier *= attribute(block_break_speed)‌[Java Edition only] # normally 1

if (inWater):
 speedMultiplier *= attribute(submerged_mining_speed)‌[Java Edition only] # normally 0.2, or 1 with aqua affinity
 if (not hasAquaAffinity):
 speedMultiplier /= 5‌[Bedrock Edition only]

if (not onGround):
 speedMultiplier /= 5

damage = speedMultiplier / blockHardness

if (canHarvest):
 damage /= 30
else:
 damage /= 100

if (haste or conduitPower):
 damage *= 1.2 ^ max(hasteLevel, conduitPowerLevel)‌[Bedrock Edition only]

if (miningFatigue):
 damage *= 0.7 ^ miningFatigueLevel‌[Bedrock Edition only]

# Instant breaking
if (damage >= 1):
 return 0

ticks = roundup(1 / damage)

seconds = ticks / 20

return seconds

The Java Edition values follow hardcoded values for levels I, II, III, and IV.^[1]

The following table shows the most efficient tools to break specific blocks.

The following table shows the time it takes to break each type of block. If there is no tool that helps speed up mining that block, the "tool" column is left empty. A few blocks are harvested faster with shears or a sword; these speeds are listed in the last two columns if different than "nothing". Any blocks with a breaking time of 0.05 seconds or less can be broken without the ³⁄₁₀ second (or 6 ticks) delay that occurs between each broken block; see instant breaking above. Any block that has a hardness of infinity ∞ actually has a hardness of -1. However, the breaking ticks start from 0, which means that effectively it can never break.

Legend:

• incorrect tool, drops nothing
• correct tool, drops nothing or something other than the block itself
• correct tool, drops the block itself
• italicized can be instant mined

[edit values]