Craft Your First Iron Excavator

Gather Your Materials

Before you can craft an iron excavator, you'll need to collect a significant amount of resources. The recipe requires full blocks of material rather than individual items, so plan your mining accordingly. You'll need multiple blocks of iron, and the datapack also requires additional materials like diamonds and copper to balance the early-game cost.

Arrange the Crafting Grid

Once you have all required materials, open your crafting table. Place the material blocks in the pattern specified by the datapack—this will differ from the vanilla Only Excavators recipe. The exact grid layout depends on your datapack version, but expect the blocks to occupy most of the 3×3 crafting space.

Make sure you have the diamonds or copper pieces ready as well, as these are mandatory additions to prevent the iron excavator from being too cheap to obtain.

Complete the Craft

Arrange everything correctly and the excavator will appear in the output slot. If nothing appears, double-check that you're using full blocks (not ore or raw materials) and that all secondary materials like diamonds are included. This higher cost means you've earned a powerful tool—use it wisely.