Iron Ore

Iron is a mineral of middling rarity - not too common, but not too rare. Most players prefer using iron tools, since iron is far more common than Diamond and more durable than Stone. It only appears in the bottom quarter of the map (rows 1-64). It is found in approximately 0.72% of stone from rows 2-61. On average, there are 84 iron ores per chunk. Oddly, instead of taking a more grey-ish look like the ingot it produces, the ore inside the stone has a brown-ish colour.

In Indev, Alpha and Beta, iron ore can be smelted in a furnace to make an iron ingot; iron ingots are used to make all the medium quality tools, armor, buckets, Flint and Steel and shears.

Iron ore requires a stone, iron, or diamond pickaxe to successfully extract. Iron Ore is found commonly in caverns. A player created mine rarely picks up iron ore. Iron Ore is also found near subterranean lava lakes, together with Redstone Ore, Gold Ore, and Diamond Ore.

Iron ore is often used in player traps as it can be mined and replaced in its raw form.

A list of craftable items can be found here.

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 an early version of the game(need version number), before the furnace was added, Fire was used to smelt iron ore into ingots. The Player smelted ore by dropping ore blocks onto fire.

In Survival Test, breaking iron ore gave the player 1 - 3 blocks of Iron if mined.

As of Beta, iron ore requires a stone, iron, or diamond pickaxe to successfully extract.

Trivia

 * Iron ore veins can move diagonally and are sometimes unconnected.
 * 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.

Eisen (Erz) Iron (Ore)/es Fer (minerai) 철 원석 IJzer (erts) Ruda żelaza pt-br:Iron (Ore)/ptbr Железо (руда) 铁矿石