Take the iron shovel from your starting kit, look at open ground just in front of you and swing. The blade bites out a scoop of whatever it meets and carries it, a crumbly heap of that ground’s own soil sitting on the blade. Your next swing throws the load a few steps away, wherever you look, where it lands as a loose pile that slumps to a natural slope.
Keep digging and the pit deepens the way real ground does. Forest soil comes away easily, the gravelly weathered granite under it only scrapes off a little at a time, and bare granite stops the blade with a clank. Close to a tree, its roots stop the blade. The pit and the pile are real ground you walk down into and up onto, grass and pebbles go where the ground moved, and both are still there after you save and load.
A test with two connected players digs one pit from both sides across the edge between two pieces of the world, and each player sees and stands on the other’s digging. A friend who joins your world cannot use the shovel properly yet.
