User:Thriplerex/Ores Galore!

Coal Ore is a mineral block that is a common sight on almost all maps. It is found at almost any elevation, from cliff faces, through underground caves and sea bottoms, down to bedrock. On average, there are about 134 coal ores per chunk. It is the only ore to appear well above sea level; coal ore comprises about 1% of all stone, regardless of altitude. Coal veins can vary greatly in size - mountaintop deposits are usually five blocks at most, but underground ones are generally at least ten blocks, and can range up to fifty or more. One can also acquire large amounts of experience by mining coal.

A piece of coal can be mined directly from Coal ore using a wooden pickaxe or better. Coal can be combined with sticks to make torches, or used as fuel in a furnace or Minecart. When burned in a furnace, it smelts 8 items for each coal lump.

Smelting
Note that the Coal Ore block can only be obtained with a Pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch. Also, smelting the ore instead of mining it is highly inefficient, since it would require fuel to acquire the Coal Lump

History
Coal ore was introduced in Classic before 0.0.14a.

In an early version of the game (Indev 0.31 January 29, 2010), when destroyed without any items, coal ore drops a single coal, and three when mined with a pickaxe.

In Survival Test, it gave the player 1 to 4 stone slabs. As of Classic 0.28, it could be placed by players in Creative mode.

In 1.3.1, Coal Ore drops experience orbs when mined.

Trivia

 * Coal ore can be obtained via silk touch and when smelted it gives coal.
 * Coal can come in veins of over 30 or even over 40-50 blocks.
 * There are rare chances when you can yield more than 64 coal in one vein.
 * The Fortune enchantment applies to coal ore blocks, i.e. mining coal with it may yield more than one lump per block.

Gallery
Gold ore is a mineral block commonly found beside stone blocks deep underground, usually in a vein of 2-10 blocks (sometimes up to 18 if two veins happen to spawn together, and as few as 1 if the block that was supposed to be gold ore is occupied by a generated structure). It only appears in the bottom 32 layers of the map. From levels 2-29, gold ore's occurrence underground is at 0.1437%. On average there are 7.5 gold ores per chunk. It can be mined using an iron or diamond pickaxe. Gold ore can be smelted in a furnace to create gold ingots.

History
Gold ore was introduced in Classic 0.0.14a. It could be placed in Classic since version 0.28, but is still usable if found using the "Copy Block" tool. In Classic it could be found at much higher elevations, sometimes even at the surface and being even more frequent than any other ore besides diamond. Gold ore (introduced in Classic 0.0.14a) could only be mined with an iron or diamond pickaxe (Not stone or wood), which is the same as it is now.

In Survival Test, mining gold ore would produce gold blocks.

As of 12w22a, smelting gold ore, along with other ores, blocks and items, gives the player experience orbs when taking the item out of the furnace. One stack of gold ore will give the player approximately 3 levels of experience.

Trivia

 * Gold Ore is the only ore that cannot be mined by a pickaxe of its own material; a gold pickaxe cannot be used to mine Gold Ore. Gold tools are only faster at mining than other tools; they are not stronger.
 * Gold Ore, along with Redstone Ore and Diamond Ore, can be found in Pocket Edition and, along with Diamond Ore but not Redstone, gold can be mined and made into gold tools, as smelting was added.

Gallery
Emerald ore is a rare mineral block that drops emeralds when mined with a diamond or iron pickaxe. It drops 1 Emerald from each ore block mined (1-4 if Fortune III is used). Emerald ore does not require smelting. It drops one experience orb when mined, unless mined by an iron or diamond pickaxe with the silk touch enchantment. It is only generated in Extreme Hills or Extreme Hills Edge biomes. It does not generate in veins as most ores do. Instead it is often encountered as a single block, unlike most ores, and tends to be very scattered around. It is also the only ore with a texture that looks to be small square gems embedded inside the ore, unlike the small, broken rectangles seen on the other ores.

Interesting Facts
Emerald ore is very rare, and is in fact 1/40 as common as diamond. That means Emerald ore is currently the rarest ore in minecraft, as only 3-8 blocks of stone in a chunk may be replaced by emerald ore. That means there may be only about 140 emerald ores per every 2000 chunks, compared to the 6000 diamond ores found for every 2000 chunks.

Ore distribution
Emerald ore is only generated in Extreme Hills (Edge) biomes. Due to the nature of the generation algorithm, it may be found a short distance into adjacent biomes, but always within the same chunk as an Extreme Hills (Edge) biome. It attempts to generate 3-8 times per each chunk, generating anywhere between layers 4 and 32, meaning it can occur as high up as gold can. It will only generate in locations which would have otherwise been stone - it is thus possible for as few as 2 to 0 emeralds to generate in a chunk. Found as individual blocks, rather than veins, it can be encountered more commonly than gold, which has a similar range.

Smelting
Note that the Emerald ore block can only be obtained with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch.

Trivia

 * Ruby and ruby ore can be found in the lang files, which indicates that the gem and ore were originally supposed to be rubies. This is supported by the fact that the first screenshot of the trading system released by Jeb featured red gems rather than green ones and that one of the snapshots had ruby ore texture instead of the correct texture(emerald).
 * Lapis lazuli and emeralds are the only ore blocks with unique textures.
 * Emerald is the only biome-specific ore.
 * In Minecraft 1.3, mining emerald ore, along with other ores, gives you experience orbs, allowing for a different way to get enchantments. One stack of emerald ore will give roughly 18 lvl.
 * The ore itself is considered one of the hardest blocks in the game to obtain, besides the Dragon Egg.

Smelting
The ore blocks can only be mined with a pickaxe enchanted with silk touch. While they can be smelted, this is wasteful: Placing the ore and mining it with a normal pickaxe will yield more Lapis Lazuli, and more experience as well.

History
Lapis lazuli was introduced in Beta 1.2. Initially, it only dropped one shard per block. Jeb acknowledged that the ore was too rare and increased the drop rate to 4-8 in the Beta 1.2_02 update.

Prior to 1.9 prerelease 6, it could not be smelted to obtain the dye. The introduction to enchantment has lead to the mining of lapis lazuli ore using a pickaxe with the "silk touch" enchantment. During this time the ore could have then been smelted to obtain lapis blocks.

Trivia

 * Lapis lazuli and emeralds are the only ore blocks with a different pattern from the other ores.
 * 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.
 * Lapis lazuli is the only ore that spawns exclusively below level thirty that can be mined with a stone pickaxe.
 * When you use the Pick Block function in creative mode when looking at this block, you get an ink sac in return. This is because lapis lazuli is considered a dye, along with bone meal and ink sacs.
 * In Minecraft 1.3, mining lapis lazuli ore, along with other ores, gives you experience orbs, allowing for a different way to get enchantments. One stack of lapis lazuli ore will give roughly 13 lvl.

Smelting
Note that the redstone ore block can only be obtained with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch. Also, smelting the ore instead of mining it is highly inefficient, as mining the ore block yields 4-5 redstone dust rather than the single dust that smelting yields.

Power
Coming in contact with redstone ore or hitting it will cause it to emit the same amount of light as a redstone torch as well as red particles for a few seconds. Redstone ore can also become powered by a mob in contact with it. This can be used as a substitute for pressure plates, when combined with a block update detector, as it can be used also on a wall or a ceiling. However, the ore can be hard to blend in as a trap as it does not blend in with some building materials such as wooden planks, bricks, or cobblestone. Redstone ore also does not power if the player sneaks while standing on it, which can ruin traps.

History
The block was added on Alpha version 1.0.1 in Seecret Friday Update 3 on July 3, 2010.

Before 1.9 Prerelease 6, redstone ore took far longer to mine compared to other ores (4.5 seconds with iron pickaxe). As of 1.9 Prerelease 6, it now has the same mining time as other ores.

Mining redstone ore, along with other ores, gives the player experience orbs. One stack of redstone ore will give roughly 10 levels of enchantment.

Trivia

 * When added to the game, all redstone related blocks had no official name. In Alpha 1.0.4, July 9, 2010, the name redstone was given by Notch after demands from the community.
 * With the Silk Touch enchantment, this ore can be collected as an item. It can be smelted into a single redstone dust, but it is much more useful for decoration, especially for its unique glowing trait.
 * The block updates when stepped on, making it useful for traps and secret entrances. The block is also updated whenever the player either hits or right-clicks the block.
 * Coal is more common as an ore when mining, but technically, redstone is more plentiful since when deep enough, it's as common as iron, and yields 4-5 redstone dust for every ore.
 * Like all ores, redstone ore is fairly evenly distributed horizontally. It is not more common near lava pools but may appear more common near deep lava pools because more blocks are pre-exposed by the world generator boring out the cave.
 * Redstone ore can be found in Pocket Edition but has no use and is currently unobtainable even with a diamond pickaxe.
 * Redstone, coal, Lapis Lazuli and Emerald ores are the only ore blocks that require a silk touch tool to obtain the ore block in survival.
 * In creative, if you use the pick block button and already have redstone ore in your hotbar, it will still copy it.
 * Redstone is the only ore that does not exist in real life.

Uses
Diamonds can be used to make shovels, pickaxes (diamond pickaxes can be used to mine obsidian), axes, swords, hoes, and armor of the highest quality. It is also a prerequisite ingredient in Jukeboxes, solid diamond blocks, and enchantment tables. If you want to mine and correctly gather the diamond, use either an iron or diamond pickaxe.

Prospecting
Diamond ore can be found in veins of 1-10 blocks (sometimes even more if multiple veins happen to spawn together, and down to 1 if the block that was supposed to be diamond ore is occupied by a dungeon, ravine, stronghold, lake, lava pool, other ores, patches of dirt and gravel etc.) Diamond only appears in the bottom 16 layers of the map.
 * Diamond ore occurs in roughly 0.0846% of stone from levels 2-15.
 * There is an average of 3.097 diamond ore per chunk.
 * It is a good idea to dig around a diamond block before mining it to ensure that the gem won't fall into a cave, lava, etc. (This is especially necessary if you happened to stumble upon a lava lake nearby)
 * It is recommended to use a pickaxe with the fortune enchantment when mining diamond. This can yield up to 4 diamonds per ore block (with Fortune III).
 * There is no evidence that lava pools enhance chances of finding diamond. They merely spawn at about the same altitude. If you see lava, it doesn't necessarily mean there's diamond nearby, it only means you're in the bottom 15 layers of the world, the altitude where diamond also spawns. Indeed, lava pools may replace nearby ore, leaving you with "short" veins.

Mining strategies
There are extensive discussions about the best ways to find diamonds. Good places to start would be the "Diamonds Tutorial", and the tutorial on branch mining. One basic strategy for diamond mining is to build branch mines on levels 6 and 10, thus covering the 8 layers with the highest concentration.

This is a video tutorial about this strategies

A real case example of diamond ore distribution


For this example, a new world was created in Minecraft 1.2. The data from the save file was then extracted for 416,342 chunks, and the number of diamond ore blocks occurring at each layer was then counted. Although diamond starts to appear from level 15 downwards, it is pointless to mine on that level; you should instead focus on the layers with the highest concentration of diamond, between levels 5-12. Because of the lava lakes there is slightly less diamond ore in the middle of that range (around layer 9, but 11 is much safer).

Trivia

 * Diamond ore can be smelted into a diamond gem, although the only way to obtain the ore is with the silk touch enchantment. Mining it normally produces a diamond rather than the intact ore. However, it could be smelted even before the then-unobtainable Redstone and Lapis Lazuli ores could be smelted.
 * In some vein formations, ores connect diagonally. Therefore it is recommended to mine around diamond ore. This also permits checking for lava.
 * Diamond ore, along with other ore, appear in the background on the achievement page.
 * Diamond ore is considered to be one of the rarest natural blocks in the game, second to Emerald Ore. However, during Beta 1.6, Clay was actually rarer due to a bug. Likewise, in 1.0.0, End Portal Frames are purposefully rarer, but finding them is more controllable.
 * Diamond ore always occurs in groups of two or more, unless some of it was replaced with a cave, stronghold, dirt lode, or an abandoned mineshaft.
 * In Minecraft 1.3, mining diamond ore, along with other ores, gives you experience orbs, allowing for a different way to get enchantments. One stack of diamond ore will give roughly 18 levels.

Natural Occurrence
Iron occurs only at or below sea level (layers 1-64). It is found in approximately 0.72% of stone from rows 2-61. On average, there are about 77 iron ores per chunk. Due to being extremely common, iron veins are frequently seen at the boundaries of any hollow space such as caves and lava lakes, but they are no more common there than in any other volume of stone.

Veins can vary in size, though most common size is 2x2x2. Iron can come in veins of one. Each block in the vein which otherwise would be stone has a random chance of being iron ore instead. (Therefore, it is good practice to check around a located ore block for more ore, as ore blocks may be only diagonally adjacent rather than face-to-face.) If the vein intersects a cave or other structure, part of it may be replaced with empty air.

Iron also has a tendency to appear near coal ores - it isn't at all rare for a vein of coal to lead right to one of iron. It would be wise to mine coal in search of iron.

History
Iron ore was introduced in Classic 0.0.14a. Iron in Classic spawns in huge veins, sometimes big enough to protrude into 3 caverns, and could be as big as 167 ores.

In Survival Test, breaking iron ore gave the player 1 - 3 blocks of iron when mined. In a later version(which?), it began dropping iron ingots.

In Indev(January 29, 2010) before the furnace was added, The Player smelted ore by dropping ore blocks onto fire.

As of Indev(Febuary 1, 2010), iron ore requires a stone, iron, or diamond pickaxe to successfully extract.

As of 1.2.1, iron is a renewable resource because Iron Golems will drop 3-5 iron ingots upon death and zombies have a rare chance of dropping iron ingots upon death as well.

Trivia

 * In third person view, all ores being held by the player such as Diamond Ore, Gold Ore, or Redstone Ore, seem to look like the texture is reversed, like TNT.
 * In Minecraft 1.3, smelting iron ore, along with other ores, blocks and items, gives you experience orbs when taking the item out of the furnace, allowing for a different way to get enchantments. One stack of iron ore will give roughly 2 lvl.

A Nether Quartz Ore is an ore you can only find in the Nether. This ore has been added in snapshot 13w01a. If you mine it you will get a Nether Quartz, which can be used to make a Comparator and a Daylight Sensor. You can mine it with any pickaxe but not by hand.

Trivia

 * Unlike other ores, it has large thick strips on it, rather than dots or small strips. This is similar to ice, but ice has strips more thin than this ore.
 * Unlike any other ores, this ore only spawns in the Nether.