Overview
An Iron Hoe is the version that survives a season of farming: 250 uses, an attack speed of 3.0 that makes hoe-preferred blocks noticeably quicker to break, and a repair cost of a single ingot. For anyone running a real crop operation — a wheat farm for a villager trading hall, a potato farm for food, a beetroot patch for dye — this is the tier where you stop thinking about the tool at all. It is also the first hoe worth enchanting. Unbreaking III alone roughly quadruples its working life, and Efficiency makes tilling and hay-bale breaking near-instant, which is worth it if your farm is measured in hundreds of blocks. The other thing an iron hoe unlocks is comfortable ancient city looting: sculk, sculk veins and sculk sensors all break fastest with a hoe, and clearing a path quietly through sculk is exactly what you want to be doing down there. Silk Touch on a hoe collects sculk and moss intact for building, which is a genuinely useful and rarely used combination. Enchant it once, and farming stops being something you maintain equipment for.
Running a serious farm without re-crafting, and clearing sculk, moss and hay in bulk — the tool most players underestimate until they build an ancient city base.
Iron Hoe is one of the 6 variants of this shape in the game. What changes between them is the material, and with it the hardness, the drops, the durability and the recipe — so every figure on this page is this variant's own. Stone Hoe is the same shape in a different material.
Iron Hoe is a tool item in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. Durability is 250. An anvil plus Iron Ingot restores it; two worn copies can also be merged.
It can be enchanted, which is usually worth doing before heavy use. It is unstackable. The recipe calls for Iron Ingot and Stick.
Its only crafting use is Iron Nugget.
About the iron tool set
How to get it
Craft 1 from 2 Iron Ingots and 2 Sticks. Its 250 uses cover a large multi-crop farm, and 1 ingot on an anvil restores roughly a quarter of the bar.
Tips
- Silk Touch on a hoe collects sculk and moss blocks intact, which no other tool will do for those blocks.
- Efficiency plus Unbreaking III on iron gives a farm tool that lasts longer than most worlds do.
- Use it to break sculk quietly around a Warden — hoes are the fastest tool for every sculk block.
- Automatic farms still need a hoe for the initial tilling; see automatic crop farms for the layouts.
Damage and attack speed
Iron Hoe deals 1 damage per hit and swings 3 times a second, which works out at 3 damage per second when every swing is fully charged.
A swing that lands before the cooldown bar refills deals a fraction of that, so waiting for the bar is worth more than clicking faster.
That is 20 hits to kill a zombie or a creeper, the same for a skeleton, and 16 hits for a spider.
Properties
Iron Hoe lasts 250 uses before it breaks, and Iron Ingot repairs it on an anvil. Two worn copies can also be merged, on an anvil or a grindstone. Unbreaking III roughly quadruples the lifespan, and Mending replaces the repair cost with experience. Its enchantability of 14 decides how good the enchanting table's offers are: the higher the number, the more often a level-30 table offers the top-tier enchantment rather than a weak one. Iron Hoe does not stack — each one occupies an inventory slot of its own.
- Damage per second
- 3
- Enchantability
- 14
- Repaired with
- Iron Ingot
- Category
- Tools
How it compares to the rest of the set
Every tier of hoe in the game, side by side, so the trade-off is visible in one place: Iron Hoe sits 3 of 6.
Gold is the outlier: it enchants better than anything else (enchantability 22) and breaks almost immediately, which is why gold gear is enchanted and then upgraded rather than used.
| Item | Durability | Attack damage | Attack speed | Enchantability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden Hoe | 59 | 1 | 1 | 15 |
| Stone Hoe | 131 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Iron Hoe | 250 | 1 | 3 | 14 |
| Golden Hoe | 32 | 1 | 1 | 22 |
| Diamond Hoe | 1,561 | 1 | 4 | 10 |
| Netherite Hoe | 2,031 | 1 | 4 | 15 |
Crafting recipe
Crafting Table
Iron Hoe
Used to craft
Iron Hoe is an ingredient in 1 recipes, producing Iron Nugget.
Enchantments it can take
5 enchantments can be applied to Iron Hoe: Efficiency, Fortune, Mending, Silk Touch, and Unbreaking.
Mending is a treasure enchantment and never appears at an enchanting table — they come from loot chests, fishing or villager trades only.
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
How do you make Iron Hoe in Minecraft?
Iron Hoe is crafted from Iron Ingot and Stick.
What is the stack size of Iron Hoe?
Iron Hoe does not stack at all. Every one you carry takes an inventory slot of its own, which is the practical limit on how many you take on a trip.
How much damage does Iron Hoe do?
1 damage per fully charged hit, at 3 attacks per second — 3 damage per second. Strength II adds 6 damage on top of that.
How much durability does Iron Hoe have?
Iron Hoe has 250 durability, and can be repaired on an anvil with Iron Ingot.
Can Iron Hoe be enchanted?
Yes — 5 enchantments apply to it, at an enchanting table with fifteen bookshelves, or from an enchanted book on an anvil. Mending is usually the one worth hunting for, because it removes the repair cost entirely.
The rest of the set
Iron Hoe is one of 6 variants of the same shape. The others are made from different materials, so their numbers differ:
