Ore

Ores are uncommon rock-type blocks used to obtain specific resources.

Usage
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. Obtaining resources from ores is as simple as mining them (this is not the case for iron, ancient debris, and gold ores, which must be smelted). Coal, diamond, emerald, and nether quartz ores drop 1 unit corresponding raw materials. Redstone ore drops 4-5 redstone dust, and lapis lazuli ore drops 4-9 lapis lazuli. Note this can be increased greatly with Fortune. All ore blocks except iron, ancient debris and gold require a Silk Touch pickaxe to drop themselves.

As a smelting ingredient
Ores can be smelted faster using a blast furnace.

Note: Smelting ores that still drop their resources when directly mined is not as efficient, since smelting gives less experience and only 1 piece of the resource, especially the ones that drop multiple pieces when mined.

Further uses
All mineral blocks except quartz are crafted by putting 9 of the raw material items in a square. Quartz blocks are irreversibly crafted with 4 nether quartz and thus can be crafted in the inventory.

All raw materials except quartz can be crafted from their mineral blocks.

Iron and Gold ingots can be converted into nuggets and vice-versa.

Lapis Lazuli can be crafted into a dye, or even used as one in Bedrock Edition.

Netherite scraps, obtained by smelting ancient debris, is used alongside gold ingots to create netherite ingots. This is the only mineral used alongside another mineral to create an alloy. Netherite tools and armor also require you to first have diamond tools and armor.

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

Trivia

 * Ancient debris has two ways to generate, similar to gold ore.
 * Emerald ore is actually rarer than ancient debris.