Lapis Lazuli Ore



Lapis Lazuli is an ore block that is used to make blue dyes and decorative blocks. Like coal, redstone, and diamond ore, the block yields the resource immediately after mining, requiring no crafting table or smelting. It drops 4-8 Lapis Lazuli shards, which can be used to create blue wool as a dye color, crafted into a Lapis Lazuli block, or mixed with other dyes.

Lapis lazuli is based on the real stone for which it is named and has historically been a prized and rare stone used in jewelry and as a dye.

Lapis Lazuli can be mined with a stone or better pickaxe. It is usually found at a depth of 32 and below, similar to Gold. The highest concentration of Lapis Lazuli Ore is found between levels 17 and 19. At this level the concentration is about 0.075%. The concentration drops linearly from this level to 0% at level 0 and level 35. Overall, Lapis Lazuli is around 1.5 times more common than Diamond ore, but is only found in the same concentration at level 20.

Initially, it only dropped one dye per block. Jens Bergensten acknowledged that the ore was too rare and increased the drop rate to 4-8 in the 1.2_02 update.

Trivia

 * Lapis Lazuli is the only ore block with a different pattern than the other ores.
 * Lapis Lazuli is most common at the depth of 17-19. (See graph on the left)
 * Just like with redstone, maps generated before lapis lazuli was added will have none of this ore unless new terrain is generated.
 * In the real world, Lapis Lazuli has been mined from mines in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan for over 6,000 years and there are sources that are found as far east as in the region around Lake Baikal in Siberia. Trade of the stone is ancient enough for lapis jewelry to have been found at Predynastic Egyptian sites, and as lapis beads at neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and even as far from Afghanistan as Mauritania.
 * With the Silk Touch enchantment, Lapis Lazuli Ore can be mined to obtain the block rather than the dye. However, it cannot be smelted to obtain the dye, so the block is only for decoration, and must be placed and mined without Silk Touch in order to obtain the dye.