Groups

Groups is a concept for items in Minetest. Any item may be a member of a group or multiple groups, or none at all. Groups are used mainly for crafting recipes, to determine damage, to determine digging time and lots of other stuff as well.

List of ordinary groups used by crafting recipes

Also mentioned are the members in the groups as seen in the vanilla Minetest game. Mods may add other items which become members of these groups, so this list is neccessarily incomplete.

• wood: processed wood: Wooden Planks and Junglewood Planks
• stone: Stone, Cobblestone, Stone Brick, Desert Stone, Desert Stone Brick
• sand: Sand, Desert Sand
• wheat: Wheat
• flora: Flowers (White Dandelion, Yellow Dandelion, Blue Geranium, Rose, Tulip, Viola)
• leaves: Leaves and Jungle Leaves

List of known groups that determine damage and digging time

• oddly_breakable_by_hand: Can be broken by hand.
• crumbly: Stuff like dirt and sand. Shovels are great to break nodes in this group.
• cracky: tough but crackable stuff like stone. Pickaxes are great to break nodes in this group.
• choppy: something that can be cut using force; eg. trees, wooden planks. Axes are great chopping these down.
• fleshy: Living things like animals and players. Swords deal great damage to them.
• snappy: Something that can be cut using fine tools; eg. leaves, small plants, wire, sheets of metal. There is currently no tool in the vanilla Minetest game breaking stuff like this efficiently.
• explody: Especially prone to explosions. The vanilla Minetest game doesn’t have explosions yet.

List of special groups (excerpt)

• immortal: Node takes no damage whatsoever and can not be broken by ordinary tools
• dig_immediate: Node can be immediately or almost immediately be dug
• soil: saplings will grow on nodes in this group

See also

Category:Groups is an alternative and automaticall generated listing of groups in this wiki.

The Minetest developer wiki on groups has a more complete (and technical) list of important groups.