Gold Ore

Gold ore is a mineral block commonly found beside stone blocks deep underground, usually in a vein of 4-8 blocks (sometimes up to 16 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.

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
Gold (Erz) Gold (Ore)/es Or (minerai) Aranyérc 금 원석 Goud (erts) Złoto (ruda) pt-br:Gold (Ore)/ptbr Золото (руда) 金矿石