Block Strength

Hardness is a vanilla mechanic that determines how fast a block can be broken by the player, it is affected by Tool Speed and Haste on a private island and by on a public island.

For more information on how it works in the vanilla game and on private islands, see the official page on the Minecraft Wiki.

Skyblock Behavior
While mining, is dealt as damage to the block every tick. When that value is higher than the block's HP, the block will break, dropping an item and turning into bedrock for a few seconds.

If is higher than the block's instant breaking HP, the block will be mined instantly.

Otherwise, damage is limited to a sixth ($$1 \times 6$$) of a block's breaking HP, limiting the break time to 6 ticks (or 0.3s). This is known as a block's Softcap.

Every mineable block has a breaking HP and an instant breaking HP which control how fast the block can be broken and what mining speed is needed to instantly break it.

Formula
To determine the time to break a block we can use this formula. $$miningTime$$ is measured in ticks, where 1 tick is 0.05s.

$$miningTime = \left \lceil{\frac{blockHP}{miningSpeed}}\right \rceil$$

To get the time in seconds, divide the result by 20.

Softcap
Softcap limits how fast a block can be mined to at least 6 ticks (or 0.3s). To determine the mining speed needed to hit the softcap of a given block, use the following formula:

$$softCap = blockHP \times 6$$

The softcap can be bypassed by breaking a block instantly.

Instant Mining
The softcap can be bypassed if the block is mined within a single Minecraft tick (0.05s). In this case, the block will break instantly.

To instantly break a block, mining speed needs to be higher or equal to that block's instant break hardness.