
While its horizontal recovery potential is almost unrivaled, it renders him vulnerable after the initial startup. Elytra requires no materials on Steve's part to use, has a hitbox upon startup, and its Brawl-like gliding mechanic allows Steve to mix up his recovery path, thwarting attempts at opposing edgeguards. Additionally, Steve can safely detonate TNT if he uses down smash and properly times a buffered air dodge. However, it acts as a double-edged sword, as the explosion affects everyone including Steve, and the person who triggers the pressure plate takes reduced knockback from the explosion, which can be used in Steve's advantage for mind games, or against him by a crafty opponent. TNT is Steve's explosive down special, and can be set off from afar by the minecart or by a redstone trail to a wooden pressure plate of Steve's creation, which is extremely useful for ledge trapping. Additionally, he can recover the iron used up from creating the minecart if he is the one to break it afterwards. By using up gold and redstone, Steve can use powered rails to accelerate his minecart and catch foes off-guard with the sudden burst of speed. This lets Steve follow up with attacks or edgeguard/gimp recovering opponents. Uniquely, Steve can jump out of a moving minecart, turning it into a grabbing projectile that can scoop up a foe, forcing them to struggle out of it. Minecart is a powerful side special: by itself, it is a capable KO option, and can be used as a horizontal recovery tool. Create Block is thus one of Steve's essential techniques, though due to the difficulty of building and managing his resources in combat, it can take much experience to truly master. Steve can even use the short longevity of Create Block to immediately cancel some of the lag in his grounded moves while in the air such as up smash and down smash, leading to some of the most dangerous and diverse aerial combos in the game should he be able to set it up. Create Block is the most potent out of Steve's options and has a myriad of uses this includes building temporary walls to interrupt opponents, stalling his recovery or his opponent's followups by standing on a floating block making it arguably one of the best recoveries in the entire series, blocking projectiles, mindgames, and extremely deep edgeguarding and gimping opportunities. Craft is also fast, and in conjunction with the ability to teleport his crafting table to his current position, makes camping Steve's crafting table an ineffective strategy. Mine can take a lot of time to get the desired materials, but Steve starts each stock with a set amount of materials for him to use, so he's not completely defenseless at the start of a fight. These three attributes appear as his neutral special, Mine / Craft / Create Block. His battle strategy almost completely revolves around mining materials from the stage itself for several of his attacks, alongside crafting stronger weapons and the ability to place blocks almost everywhere within the fighting boundaries.

Taking many attributes from his home game, Steve is one of the most unique fighters on the roster. In addition to this, his walk speed, initial dash, running speed, and air speed are all among the bottom 10 of the respective stats, with his initial dash in particular being the worst in the game. He has the shortest jump out of the entire roster, in addition to a peculiar crouch and crawl based on Minecraft's "sneaking" mechanic where he simply hunches over, neither of which are very useful in battle. Steve is a fighter who possesses slightly below-average weight and unremarkable mobility. 5 Classic Mode: Journey to the Far Lands.4.1 Most historically significant players.
