Hello there, and welcome to the guide that will teach you all you need to know to choose the right tool when mining, for this very question will continue to haunt all aspiring miners as they delve deeper into the surface of Maria: Is the Shovel better than the Pickaxe?

First of all I would like to mention that I made this guide a good while ago as a post on the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Pathea forums, and several users suggested that it get a sticky or that I turned it into a guide, well neither of those happened, mostly due to my laziness. However, the question keeps arising and several misconceptions are still floating around so I feel it is time to make the actual guide available. In short: the Pickaxe is better than the Shovel when harvesting ores, the Shovel is better than the Pickaxe when tunneling through. If you want the technical details as to why that is, then that's what the rest of this guide is for. I hope you find it useful.

Let's first take a quick look at each tool according to the game's description:



We will be using the Gold tier tools in this research for two reasons, one of them being that they are currently the highest tier tools in Story and Adventure mode and as such the most commonly used over time.

So, how well does each tool really perform? To determine that, we must understand that each tool has a Collection Range measured in Voxels (also called blocks): 2x2 on the Pickaxe and 3x3 on the Shovel. Also, we have to take into account the speed at which each one completes the animation and gives us the resource. Following is a benchmark of both performed on a Coal deposit. Coal is a very middle-ground ore that gives us a more average performance from both tools. Note that each collection attempt here is done on a flat, 100% Ore surface:

Pickaxe vs. Shovel Yield Comparison


That's something we could figure out from the description too, noticed how it said "get amount / block:"? From this we get that each terrain voxel contains 2 raw ore per voxel and each tool adds to that depending on its tier (gold tools add more than iron tools, etc.). But what's clear is that the Pickaxe simply mines more ore/voxel than the Shovel.

"Big deal, the pickaxe is still slower anyway" you may think. That is partially true on a certain degree, but! Comparing the pickaxe vs. shovel, by the time the pickaxe mines those same 9 voxels we would get:
@7 Coal/vox * 9 vox = 63 Coal

Considering that the shovel only gets us 36 Coal, it makes a fairly big difference in yield. Now, why do we say that the Pickaxe is slower to a certain degree, and only partially?


Pickaxe vs. Shovel Collection Time Comparison


So, to mine 9 Voxels of Coal, the Gold Shovel takes around 2800 ms (2.8 seconds, because remember that it has to hit twice), with a yield of 36 coal. Those same 9 Voxels would take the Gold Pickaxe roughly 4500 ms (4.5 seconds), but the yield would be 63 coal. As you may notice it seems like either a pretty big difference, or it may seem like no difference at all depending on point of view, but the thing here is that in reality the Pickaxe wouldn't be able to mine 9 voxels without having to hit 3 times. So, let's apply all this data to a realistic scenario, shall we?

Let's say that you went on a mining trip and found our dear Coal deposit. You happily mine and mine with the Pickaxe and collect ore from 300 Voxels. You then stop and begin to think, "what if I dig it instead?". You again dig and dig and collect ore from another 300 Voxels. Now, how long did each mining attempt take? Well, assuming that you could mine or dig nonstop all 300 blocks:

Gold Pickaxe
300/4 = 75 hits to clear.
2000ms * 75 = 150000 ms = 150 seconds = 2 Minutes 30 seconds

Gold Shovel
300/9 = 33.3333 * 2 = 66.6666 hits to clear.
1400ms * 66.6666 = 93333.24 ms = 93.33 seconds = 1 Minute 33 Seconds

As we can see, the shovel was about a minute faster. Hmm... but how much ore did you get? The Shovel collected 1200 Coal. And the Pickaxe? 2100 Coal. To collect the same amount as the Pickaxe the Shovel would need, yep, you guessed it, about an extra minute. And a bigger deposit. In fact, the Shovel is a tiny bit less effective than the Pickaxe in this scenario. Why?

Well, in order for the Shovel to harvest the remaining 900 Coal, it would have to hit an extra 225 voxels because:

900/4 = 225 , then 225/9 = 25*2 = 50 hits
1400 ms * 50 = 70000 ms = 70 seconds (1 Minute 10 Seconds)

If we add the original 1 Minute 33 Seconds then we get that it took the Shovel 2 Minutes 43 Seconds for the same amount of Ore as the Pickaxe.

In conclusion to this section, collecting medium ores feels a little bit faster with the Shovel, but in reality it is slower and it is definitely much more wasteful than using the Pickaxe.

Whoa buddy, where are you going? Hang on a bit, we're not finished yet! We're almost done but we're just... not done. :D
Remember when we said that this was a "more average" test? Well, it's just that there are times when we definitely don't want to use the Shovel, and times when we definitely don't want to use the Pickaxe. Wanna know why? Let's see!

So, what was that mysterious second reason why we used Gold tools and Coal? Put simply, because of Attack (or Damage) to Resource.

AtR determines how effective a tool is against a specific material. Did you know that each voxel in the world terrain has its own "health" bar? It is what determines how many more hits it has before yielding resources. For example, Coal very likely has 90 Health. A Wood Pickaxe has +65 AtR, add to that your 10 base attack, then you hit it for 75 each time. Which means that you have to hit twice for a single block which gives you 3 Coal. Yuck. But... the Wood Shovel only has +23 AtR so it's 33 per hit, you have to hit 3 times for a single block, and to top it off it only gives 2 Coal. That's not much better!

"Oh, but that's fine, I stopped using Wood long ago :)"
Wonderful, we only have to keep in mind that all this scales just the same for the higher tier materials, like the hardy Aluminum. Just like with Wood tools to Coal, the health of Aluminum requires two hits from the Gold Pickaxe and four hits from the Gold Shovel. Not only we would waste a lot of valuable Aluminum while spending a similar amount of time, but we'd also wear down our Shovel much more quickly.

Let us now flip the coin though. Since the Pickaxe sounds so far so good, is it better at everything? Absolutely not. If speed is the only thing you need and care about, then you need the Shovel. This is especially true for the softer materials with low health, if you are already hitting only once with the shovel to gather a block, you don't need to use a Pickaxe. Would you hit a Holoa Vulpes with 4 Controlled Turrets? Of course not! Not only you'd get punched in the face, it is simply unnecessary overkill. As we saw before two hits of the Shovel per voxel starts wasting time and resources. The key is weighing how much ore would be wasted versus how long it would take to gather it, so you may end up deciding that the Pickaxe is not what you need for the task at hand.

Those are the basics of how to choose the tool fit for the job. There is of course still more to it, but hopefully this helps in deciding what to use in your next mining spree. Just one final note: Next time you have access to an Enhance Machine in your Colony, drop your tools on it, they will appreciate it and you will enjoy the faster mining. Good tunneling to you. :)

The Enhance Machine

Enhancing is the process of taking an Item and improving its stats via the use of machinery known as the Enhance Machine. This way a defensive item could have an improved durability and defense, a weapon could have better attack rate, tools can perform better, etc. But how exactly does it all work? Let's check it out.

A custom Sword about to be enhanced.

When you place an item in the EM, it will list the different attributes and how much they will increase. For example, if you place a custom sword like the Dark Slayer Sword that has +220 Attack, the first time you enhance it it will receive +110 Attack, making it have a total of +330 Attack. Sounds great doesn't it? It goes the same for Armor/Shield for Defense, and Tools for Attack to Resource (AtR), and everything for Durability. So, let's try enhancing our Gold Pickaxe. When you place it, you will see that it would have an increase of +77 AtR. Notice a pattern here? Yep, both for the weapon and the tool, the amount of increase is half the item's base attribute (rounded up). If we enhance it it will bring its AtR up to a total of +232, pretty cool. Subsequent enhancements will improve it further.

"Awesome, I'm gonna get my Pick to over +1000 then!"
Well, not quite. What happens with enhancements is that each time you do it, its effective improvement decays exponentially. The initial number we got for the first enhancement (77) will get cut in half for the second enhancement, so now we would only get +39 AtR (77/2 = 38.5 , remember that we round it up), then 20 on the third, 10 on the fourth and so on... when the enhancement reaches only +1 then that's it, that's the last enhancement you can make for that attribute. (Durability will generally still allow for a few more enhancements at that point, but only that attribute will improve)

If you are decided to improve your item to the max no matter the cost and want to know what its limit will be, then to get an approximate the formula is really simple: Just take the Base attribute*2 and then subtract 1 from it (some larger values vary a little, but the margin is very small). The +220 Dark Slayer Sword caps at +439 Attack, and the Gold Pickaxe caps at +309 AtR as a result. In other words, there is a limit to how much an item can be improved, and each time the benefit is less while still costing the same every time.

Now that we know this, we can make our comparison between an Enhanced Shovel, and a regular Pickaxe. Again we will focus on the Gold tier.

Shovel vs. Pickaxe Enhancement Comparison

Gold Shovel

Gold Pickaxe

You probably notice: The cap AtR enhancement for the Shovel is still less than even just the base of the Pickaxe.
With this result in mind, some materials will still pose a challenge for the Shovel when it comes to effectiveness, even at max enhancement. This is because it simply can't reach the same AtR as a normal Gold Pickaxe. Aluminum's health, as we learned before, is pretty high for both Tools, likely being 240. The Gold Pickaxe only requires being enhanced once to be able to clear Aluminum in one hit, whereas the Shovel would still need 2 hits even at max enhancement. And as we know, two hits from the Shovel versus one of the Pickaxe is not very effective.

To sum it up, enhancement is very useful and can make your life a lot easier, but it's important to know where the limit lies to get the most out of your resources. :)


Note: Durability enhancement on the current build at the time of writing this section (a0.764) is either broken or (unlikely) not supposed to show on the list. Either way, the actual item's durability won't improve. This was tested in Build Mode so it may work on other modes, as I remember it working properly before.

This guide was made for an earlier version of Planet Explorers, however the information should remain accurate for the current version at the moment of posting (a0.85). Of course, due to the game being in alpha parts of this guide may become inaccurate or obsolete over time, so please keep that in mind. If you notice anything wrong or have any questions feel free to mention it, all feedback is appreciated.