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Electric Shovel

alaindustrial:electric_shovel

ItemsLVImplementeditemenergytoolshovelearthdigging

Summary

The Electric Shovel is the mod's third powered hand tool and the earth-side member of the line after the Electric Drill (stone) and the Electric Chainsaw (wood). It runs on EU/FE instead of durability: with charge it digs faster than a diamond shovel (speed 9.0 against 8.0) and spends 20 EU/FE per block. A full buffer is 10 000 EU/FE — about 500 blocks on one charge.

Mini-example: flatten a hillside, then right-click the grass you left to lay a dirt path — the shovel keeps every vanilla shovel interaction, and that part costs nothing. When it runs flat it doesn't stop; it just digs at hand speed until you recharge, with the same drops the whole time.

One tool rule is enough: dirt, sand, gravel, clay, snow, soul sand and concrete powder all already sit under #minecraft:mineable/shovel, so unlike the chainsaw this tool adds no tag of its own.

Like the mod's other EU/FE items, the shovel has no durability and never breaks: the bar under the icon shows EU/FE charge (gold), not wear. It charges where the Energy Pack does — in the Battery Box charge slot and from a worn pack.

Energy

Its own EU/FE buffer, outside the energy network. Charges in the Battery Box slot and from a worn pack; spends charge digging.

What	Value
Buffer	10 000 EU/FE
Charging	Battery Box slot / worn pack, fills in ~16 s
Cost	20 EU/FE per block broken
Passive drain	none

Instant-break blocks — snow layers, grass — are free, just as they never wear a vanilla shovel. In creative no EU/FE is spent.

How it behaves

Digging: with at least 20 EU/FE it digs #minecraft:mineable/shovel at speed 9.0. Each such block costs 20 EU/FE. Flat shovel: below 20 EU/FE it digs at hand speed (1.0) but keeps its mining level and drops, and spends nothing. Efficiency does not apply there — vanilla only grants it above speed 1.0. Dirt paths and campfire dousing work. Right-click grass, dirt, podzol, mycelium or rooted dirt to make a path; right-click a lit campfire to put it out — exactly like a vanilla shovel, and free of charge. Charging EU/FE for it would contradict the rule this whole line is built on: a flat tool still works. Charging: the Battery Box charge slot and a worn Energy Pack both accept it automatically, up to 32 EU/FE/t. Attack: hits like a diamond shovel (2.5 damage, 1.0 attack speed); attacking spends no EU/FE and causes no wear. Enchanting: it sits in #minecraft:shovels, so the table and anvil treat it as a shovel. Readout: the bar shows charge; the tooltip reads the exact numbers, or a red "Empty" at zero, and the texture switches to its unpowered variant.

Inventory

Not applicable — the shovel has no internal item storage (stack size 1).

Block Properties

Not applicable (item).

Recipes

The drill's frame with a diamond shovel in the middle: iron ingots on top, two batteries at the sides, two copper coils and an electronic circuit below. Charge held by the batteries carries over into the finished shovel. The recipe unlocks once you obtain a copper coil, an electronic circuit or a diamond shovel.

Repair is not applicable — there is no durability; "repair" means recharging.

Diamond tip (upgrade)

The Diamond-Tipped Electric Shovel (is the shovel's second tier and the line's fourth and last upgrade, after the diamond-tipped drill, the diamond-tipped chainsaw and the diamond-tipped hoe. Exactly two things differ from the base shovel; everything else is inherited unchanged.

1. It digs faster. Speed 10.5 against the base shovel's 9.0 — the same +1.5 step the drill (8.5 -> 10.0), the chainsaw (9.0 -> 10.5) and the hoe (9.0 -> 10.5) took. The mining tier does not change: it stays diamond, and the upgrade makes the work faster rather than unlocking new blocks.

2. Switchable Silk Touch. Sneak + right-click flips the drop mode:

normal mode (what a freshly crafted shovel starts in) — drops exactly like the base shovel; Silk Touch mode — the block drops as itself.

The toggle itself is free: it spends no EU/FE, so you can flip it as often as you like, and it works on a flat shovel too.

Why Silk Touch belongs on the shovel, when the hoe was deliberately denied it. On a hoe it would have been dead weight: every block in its domain already drops itself, so there is nothing to double and nothing to suppress. The shovel is the opposite case — its domain is full of blocks whose loot table deliberately substitutes the drop, and that substitution is exactly what gets in a builder's way:

grass block, podzol, mycelium drop dirt; with silk you get the block itself, which is the only way to relocate a finished lawn; clay drops 4 clay balls; with silk you get the clay block; gravel rolls flint by chance (the chance scales with Fortune); with silk you always get gravel; snow block and snow layers drop snowballs; with silk you get the block and the layers themselves; suspicious sand and suspicious gravel drop as the block itself under silk.

Why the mode is switchable rather than just an enchantment. The base shovel can already be given Silk Touch at a table, but a vanilla enchantment is one-way, and on a shovel it costs something concrete: Silk Touch and Fortune are mutually exclusive, and Fortune on a shovel is what multiplies flint out of gravel. Enchanting for silk gives up flint farming for good. The toggle removes the choice: Fortune stays on for flint, and silk goes on only when you want the block itself.

The mode is visible without guesswork: while it is on, the item carries the enchantment glint and lists "Silk Touch I" in its tooltip (the mode is the real vanilla enchantment, not a separate parallel flag), and a dedicated tooltip line shows the state and reminds you of the sneak + right-click control. Switching plays a click and prints a line above the hotbar.

Paths and campfires stay on the plain right-click. The one control difference: sneak + right-click on a block switches the mode and makes no path. A plain right-click without sneaking still lays a dirt path and douses a campfire, exactly as on the base shovel and just as free of charge.

Inherited unchanged: the 10 000 EU/FE buffer, 20 EU/FE per block, 32 EU/FE/t intake, the same charging spots, no durability, hand-speed digging (1.0) on an empty buffer with drops preserved, creative behaviour, and the attack profile of a diamond shovel. The upgrade has no config keys of its own: the energy layer tells tools apart by their base class, so all three numbers are shared with the base shovel.

Crafting: — the base shovel in the centre, a row of three diamond dusts on top (the "tip" itself), two cupronickel ingots at the sides, and lapis dust below. The pattern and the materials are the hoe upgrade's; both branches deliberately steer clear of the drill's (invar, silver gear) and the chainsaw's (bronze, gold gear) so the four upgrade branches do not compete for the same bottleneck. The recipe unlocks once you obtain a base electric shovel, diamond dust or a cupronickel ingot.

The charge survives the upgrade. The recipe uses the type, so the EU/FE inside the base shovel moves into the result rather than burning away. Both share the same 10 000 EU/FE buffer, so nothing is lost on the way. The drill's, the chainsaw's and the hoe's recipes work the same way.

You have to lay the recipe out by hand. The recipe book's auto-fill button will not pick up a charged shovel: vanilla's ingredient lookup compares item components, and a charged shovel carries pouch_energy, which the showcase reference does not. This is a vanilla limitation shared by all four upgrades — details in task.

Progression

The third powered tool: the drill covers stone, the chainsaw covers wood, the shovel covers earth — the LV line now spans all three basic materials. Needs LV infrastructure first — without the Battery Box and a battery it can be neither crafted nor charged. LV tier. The remaining electric tools (hoe/saber/nano bow) are future work.

Electric Drill — the stone part of the line. Electric Chainsaw — the wood part of the line. Electric Hoe — the farmland part of the line. Battery Box — charges the shovel (charge slot).