Digging and mining: breaking the ground.

What you can dig

Soil, turf, sand, gravel, rock, ore, gems, salt and crystal can all be dug. Leaves, plants, wood and metal are broken in their own way (see below). Liquids cannot be broken, and some blocks are unbreakable, such as the Heartstone at the bottom of the planet. A few blocks you build or find, such as doors, lamps and crops, are never dug as ground.

The tool tiers

Every material has a hardness, and that sets the tool tier it needs. A tool breaks anything of its own tier or lower. Bare hands can only break the softest things.

Tier	Name	Breaks materials with hardness below	Typical materials
0	Bare hands	1.2	Soil, turf, leaves, gravel, plants
1	Flint	2.6	Stone, coal, malachite, galena, graphite, mica
2	Copper	3.6	Chalcopyrite, cassiterite, pyrite, flint, most gems
3	Bronze	4.3	Hematite, magnetite, rutile, nickel
4	Iron	5.3	Iron ore, olivine, emerald, cobaltite, topaz
5	Steel	6.8	Ruby, sapphire, molybdenum, tantalum, iridium
6	Tungsten	8.5	Tungsten, osmium
7	Plasma	10	Chromium, pyrrhonite
8	Coreforged	10 and above	Diamond, Stellarite

The ore table in Ores by depth gives the tool for every ore.

How long it takes

A block takes longer the harder it is. A better tool is quicker, and a tool is quicker on the kinds of material it is best at. Bare hands are a little quicker on soil and much quicker on plants. The best way to judge is to try one block and see how long it takes.

What the ground gives back

Every block gives itself back, so anything you dig can be built with again. Some blocks also drop small useful pieces:

• Leaves often give sticks, and sometimes plant fibre. Fibre is used for tools and rope.
• Gravel can give flint shards, which you need for your first stone tools. Flint turns up more often than it used to.
• Turf gives plant fibre, flint now and then, and seeds, which you can plant in tilled soil.
• Hard soil can also give a flint shard.
• Cactus gives plant fibre, and willow wood can give willow bark.
• Crops give their harvest and seeds. A hoe gives one more.

Getting started with bare hands

1. Dig turf and gravel with your hands. Pull up some leaves for sticks and fibre.
2. Look for flint in gravel and soil. Keep digging until you have enough shards.
3. Craft a flint pickaxe or axe, then move on to stone and ore. See Getting started.

Burst-outs and craters

Some great creatures live under the ground. When one of them breaks out (or dives back in) it leaves a crater and a shaft behind. The ground it tore out is thrown into the air and lands round the rim as real blocks you can pick up. A monster that bores through rock leaves its tunnel behind. Some of them throw lava that splashes where it lands and stays as a small pool, until it cools into basalt.

Falling rock and lava

Liquid and loose rock can change the ground around you. Iron and steel left beside water rust away over time. Blocks touching lava melt or burn away, unless their melting point is above the heat of the lava. Tin goes quickly, while tungsten holds out well. Wooden things, beds and lamps can catch fire if they are deep enough in the hot layers.

Tips

• Check the tier before you dig into a new layer. A block your tool cannot break will say what tier it needs.
• Keep spare flint. You will need it until you have a better pick.
• Dig with a plan. A tunnel is quicker than a pit, and you can see the ore veins from inside it.
• Use the controls page for the mine button: Controls.

← Back to the wiki · Last updated 25 October 2026. Mantlenaut is in alpha, so things change.