Ore

Ores are a block type in Minecraft.

Purpose
Ores are primarily collected for crafting purposes, such as for tools and armor. Redstone is obtained from redstone ore, which can be used to create redstone circuits. Ore can also be combined to create a block of the material's type.

Availability


The following is the distribution of ores according to the altitude (layers are number of blocks above the lowest layer of bedrock). The highest layers that gold, redstone, diamond, and lapis lazuli can be found on are two layers lower. The graph on the right shows the ore distribution.

Redstone has the same layer and line-size statistics as Diamond, but is generated 8 times per chunk as opposed to 1.

Trivia

 * Iron and Gold drop the actual ore block when mined without the Silk Touch Enchantment. All of the other ores drop the usable item when mined.
 * Lapis Lazuli, Nether Quartz, and Emerald do not have the same texture as the other ores. All of the other ores have the same texture, but with a different color.
 * Gold ore is the only ore that can't be mined by its own pickaxe.
 * Only Iron, Gold and Diamond can be used to make tools.