Minecraft wiki entry for Tips_and_tricks, associated text: For most of these, you technically can collect them with bare hands, it will just be slow, sometimes very slow. Mining with any item besides one of these tools, counts as "bare hands", and so does mining wood, stone, or dirt type blocks with a hoe. However, stone-type blocks in general absolutely require a pickaxe to get the actual block or mineral that you're looking for, and the pickaxe must also be of sufficient "tier" for the ore (or mineral block) in question. Common stone and rocks, and coal ore, can be mined with any pickaxe; copper, iron, and lapis lazuli require at least a stone pickaxe; gold, redstone, amethyst and diamond require at least iron, and obsidian or ancient debris/netherite require a diamond pickaxe. If you try to mine any of these without a pickaxe, or with a pickaxe that isn't strong enough, you will eventually break through the block, but it will drop nothing. This can be useful if you have no tools or wood to make more, and just need to get through some stone, but it doesn't let you collect resources. For normal business, you will want to always be carrying at least one each of pickaxe, axe, and shovel, to quickly deal with blocks of their type.