How to Make a Pickaxe in Minecraft

To make a pickaxe in Minecraft, you will need:

1. Sticks
2. Relevant material (Wood planks, cobblestone, iron ingots, gold ingots, diamond, and netherite)
3. Crafting table
4. Smithing table (for netherite upgrades)

To make your first pickaxe in Minecraft you will need to start with wood. To continue up the chain you will need the best material your current pickaxe can mine. If you have wood you can mine up to stone; stone pickaxes can mine up to iron; iron can mine up to diamond; finally diamond can mine ancient debris which is used to make netherite.

Step-by-Step Guide(with Pictures):

Here is the step-by-step pictorial guide you need to follow to Make a Pickaxe in Minecraft:

The recipe for each pickaxe is identical to the last, simply replacing the material at the top with the next. To begin, start by gathering some wood logs with your hands. Turn the logs into wooden planks by placing them in your crafting menu.

Next make a crafting table. Grab four wooden planks and place them in your crafting menu.

Place your crafting table down and make some sticks. Split your planks into a column two high in the crafting menu.

With your sticks made, you can use the rest of your wood planks to make a pickaxe.

To craft a Pickaxe, place two sticks into the 2nd column as shown. Then place three wooden planks above the sticks in a row.

This pickaxe will get you on your way to mining just about everything in Minecraft. You can use this wooden pickaxe to gather stone. Stone can be used to make a stone pickaxe. Locate some exposed stone by a mountain or dig down below the dirt layer to find some stone. Mine it with your pickaxe and it will drop cobblestone. Grab at least three pieces.

Same arrangement as before but instead of wood use cobblestone

Now you are able to mine iron ore. Iron can be found in cave systems and are noticeable by their brown specks. Place your iron ore into a furnace and wait for it to smelt. To learn how to make a furnace refer to this guide. Link

To make an iron pickaxe, nothing has changed yet. Use your iron ingots in the same formation as the other two pickaxes and make an iron pickaxe.

Before we move onto diamond, let’s talk about gold for a moment. Gold only mines the same blocks that stone does. It does mine faster than iron but does not last for very long. Gold ore can be found below “Y” level 31 and is easily noticeable by its yellow specks.

Smelt your ore in a furnace, similar to iron to make gold ingots. You can use gold ingots to make a golden pickaxe.

It stands out because of its distinct icon, but it is relatively useless as iron lasts almost four times as long. Golden Pickaxes cannot mine diamonds so it is best to skip this one.

Next up is finding diamonds. This process can take a few hours, even days, as diamond is one of the rarest materials in the game. Diamonds will generate below “Y” layer 16 and personally, I have the best luck finding them next to lava.

Diamonds do not need to be smelted. Simply mine them with an iron pickaxe to retrieve them. Be careful, try to dig around them to ensure there is no lava they could fall into before committing to breaking the diamond.

Place your diamonds in a crafting table with some sticks to make the second-best pickaxe in the game.

Diamond pickaxes can mine everything in the game except for bedrock. You will also need a diamond pickaxe to mine ancient debris. If you want to make a netherite pickaxe you will need to have a diamond pickaxe first.

To get the netherite ingot you will need to find ancient debris in the nether. Ancient debris generates below “Y” level 22 and you can find one to four pieces at a time. To get to the nether you will need to build a nether portal. You can do so by placing obsidian four blocks wide and five blocks tall.

Next light the nether portal with some flint and steel. To make flint and steel you will need an iron and a flint. Simply place the flint and the iron ingot into your crafting menu in any of the nine crafting spaces and you can start traversing the nether.

To light your portal make sure you light one of the inside obsidian blocks, stand in the portal for a few seconds and be ready to face the fiery depths of the nether.

Ancient debris will spawn between “Y” level 8 and 22. The best place to find the most would be to mine around “Y” level 15. This will require you to dig below some lava lakes. Try to find where the ground sticks out of the lava and dig down from there.

Ancient debris has a rocky exterior and the top and bottom of the block have a swirl texture.

To make one netherite ingot you will need to find four ancient debris and four gold ingots. Mine the ancient debris with your diamond pickaxe. Smelt your ancient debris in a furnace to get netherite scrap.

After your scrap is done smelting combine it with four gold ingots in a crafting table. You can arrange the recipe however you would like.

Each ingot can upgrade any diamond tool or armor into netherite armor. To do so you will need a smithing table. To make a smithing table combine four planks of wood with two iron ingots above it to make your tool and armor upgrader.

Place your smithing table and right click to open it. Place your diamond pickaxe on the left and your netherite ingot on the right.

This will yield the best base pickaxe in the game. The smithing table will keep any enchantments you previously had on the pickaxe so do not worry about losing anything as you upgrade your pickaxe. Netherite has some special properties in that it cannot be melted by lava or destroyed by fire. It will simply float on top of lava.

Congratulations! You now know how to craft every pickaxe in Minecraft. Until you find diamonds, iron pickaxes will be your go-to pickaxe, but once you find diamond you ought to look for ancient debris as soon as you can. Upgrading your tools to netherite will take some time, but the insurance of preventing them from burning in lava can save you a lot of time if any accidents happen.