Ore

Ore is a block type in Minecraft. Ores are primarily collected for crafting purposes, such as for tools and armor. Redstone Ore is used as a type of "wiring" that can be used to create Redstone circuits, compasses, clocks, and other items. Ore can also be combined to create a block of the material's type. Blocks are hard to make, as they require nine pieces of material to create (blocks of quartz, however, require 4 Nether quartz crystals).

Availability


In Minecraft, the following is the distribution of ores according to the altitude (layers are number of blocks above the lowest layer of bedrock). As of Beta 1.8, 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 in 1.1. The change to the 256-block worlds in the weekly releases before 1.2 did not affect world generation, as seen in this interactive chart. Redstone has the same layer and line-size statistics as Diamond, but is generated 8 times per chunk as opposed to 1.

In chunks generated prior to Beta 1.6, ore also varies depending on the section of the map it is generated in due to a bug (fixed in 1.6) in the spawning algorithm. In the quadrant southwest of the point (0,0), ore spawned approximately 50% more than in the quadrant northeast of the point (0,0). The quadrants northwest and southeast of the point (0,0) split the difference between the extremes. (See image below) Any chunks generated after Beta 1.6 do not show this disparity as the spawning algorithm has been fixed. The bug fix did not modify any already existing chunks.

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.
 * Nether Quartz is the only ore whose texture is not stone-based but resembles netherrack, as it is the only ore found in the Nether.
 * It is also the only ore where 4 of the raw material make a resource block instead of 9, and it is the only ore where its resource block can't be crafted back into the raw material.
 * Dirt, gravel, granite, diorite and andesite spawn in the same way as normal ores.
 * Fortune adds drops to Redstone Ore, but multiplies Lapis Lazuli drops.
 * Emerald were Rubies in the snapshot 12w21a. There was also a Ruby Ore.
 * Lapis Lazuli Ore actually uses the texture of the Lapis Lazuli Block, splattered across the stone.