Ore

An ore is any uncommon rock-type block used to obtain specific resources.

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

Most ores drop their resource when mined, and require a Silk Touch pickaxe to drop themselves.
 * Coal, iron, gold, diamond, emerald, their respective deepslate variants, and nether quartz ores drop 1 unit of their corresponding raw material.
 * Copper and deepslate copper ores drop 2-3 raw copper.
 * Redstone and deepslate redstone ores drop 4–5 redstone dust.
 * Lapis lazuli and deepslate lapis lazuli ores drop 4–9 lapis lazuli.
 * Nether gold ore drops 2–6 gold nuggets.
 * Ancient debris is the exception; it drops itself when mined and must be smelted to obtain netherite scrap.

Smelting ingredient
Ores can be smelted faster using a blast furnace.

It is not efficient to mine with Silk Touch and then smelt an ore block that normally drops multiple pieces of its resource, because smelting these ores yields less experience and only 1 piece of the resource. Nether Gold Ore is the only exception. Did you know that if you turn the log your using for fuel into wooden planks and use those instead, you'll be able to smelt more items?

Further uses
Refined ore resources can be crafted into blocks for bulk storage, for crafting recipes or for decoration. Coal blocks and most mineral blocks are crafted by putting 9 of the refined material items in a square. Nether quartz is the only Mineral block that only needs 4 items to be crafted.

All of the above block recipes are reversible, excluding quartz and oxidized copper.

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.

Netherite scraps, obtained by smelting ancient debris, are used alongside gold ingots to create netherite ingots. This is the only mineral used alongside another mineral to create an alloy.

Netherite ingots can be used on a smithing table to upgrade diamond items to netherite items. Data such as durability, enchantments, and custom names are preserved.

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.

Overworld
As of Java Edition 1.17 and Bedrock Edition 1.17.0:

The second part of Caves & Cliffs will change the distribution of ores for the expanded world height.

Trivia

 * Ancient debris has two ways to generate, similar to gold ore.
 * Since it is exclusive to only one Overworld biome, Emerald ore is actually rarer than ancient debris per chunk.