Mining

Mining is one of the most basic activities in Minetest. Mining is the activity of removing a node with a mining tool.

Mining requires the “interact” privilege (which is a default privilege).

Mining is done by pointing on the desired node and holding the attack button (Left mouse button by default). Most nodes drop something after being mined and the drop is immediately transferred into your player inventory. If there is no more free space, the node drops as item on the floor instead. Some nodes drop something different than themselves.

Not everything can be mined with all mining tools. Some tools are better for certain materials. Also, Mining often takes some time to finish. The mining speed depends on your tool and the node you want to mine.

Mining speed

The mining speed is determined by groups.

Mining in the vanilla Minetest game

You start with a hand which is itself able to mine a lot of nodes already, but at the worst speed. Axes are good to mine wooden nodes. Pickaxes are good to mine stone-like nodes. Shovels are very fast at mining dirt, sand, and gravel. Axes, pickaxes and shovels come in 6 variants: Wooden, stone, steel, bronze, mese and diamond. In this order, the tools become stronger and stronger and therefore mine faster.

Notable examples for nodes which don’t drop themselves exactly:

• Stone (drops 1 Cobblestone)
• Clay (drops 4 Clay Lumps)
• basicly all ores

Mining in other games

Mining basicly works the same in all Minetest games. The tools and digging times are probably different, but the concept stays the same.