All of the current ores as of the Caves & Cliffs update
Ores isolated down to bedrock
This graph shows the actual amount of ores found in a relatively small but untapped world as of Java Edition 1.17.1
This graph shows the actual amount of ancient debris found in a relatively small but untapped world as of Java Edition 20w06a
The generation of ores in 1.18.
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, diamond, emerald, their respective deepslate variants, and nether quartz ores drop 1 unit of their corresponding material.
- Iron, gold, and their respective deepslate variants drop 1 unit of their raw form.
- 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
| Ingredients | Smelting recipe |
|---|---|
| Any ore + Any fuel | |
| Raw Iron or Raw Copper or Raw Gold + Any fuel |
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, as each ore block drops an average of 8.8 gold nuggets even when mined with Fortune III, which is less than a guaranteed gold ingot obtained from smelting the ore obtained using Silk Touch.
Note Blocks
All types of ores can be placed under note blocks to produce "bass drum" sounds.
Further uses
Refined ore resources can be crafted into blocks for bulk storage, for crafting recipes or for decoration. Raw ore can also be crafted into blocks for bulk storage or 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.
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Any processed ore | |
| Any raw ore |
All of the above block recipes are reversible, excluding quartz and oxidized copper.
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Most mineral blocks | |
| Any raw ore blocks |
Iron and Gold ingots can be converted into nuggets and vice-versa.
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Metal Ingots |
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Metal Nuggets |
Lapis Lazuli can be crafted into a dye, or even used as one.
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Lapis Lazuli |
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.
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Gold Ingot, Netherite Scrap |
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.
Diamond items +
Netherite Ingot
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.[1]
Overworld
As of Java Edition 1.17 and Bedrock Edition 1.17.0:
| Coal[a] | Copper | Lapis Lazuli | Iron | Gold | Redstone | Diamond | Emerald[b] | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ore block | ![]() |
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| Deepslate variant[c] | ![]() |
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| Raw resource | ![]() |
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| |
| Refined resource |
|
|
| ||||||
| Manufactured | - | - |
|
|
|
- | - | - | |
| Mineral block | ![]() |
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| |
| Raw mineral block |
|
|
| ||||||
| Minimal pickaxe for drop | Wooden | Stone | Iron | ||||||
| Found in biome... | Any | Badlands | Any | Mountains | |||||
| Abundance | Very Common | Common | Rare | Common | Uncommon | Common | Uncommon | Rare | Very Rare |
| Most found in layers... | 5-52 | 5-192 | 13-17[d] | 5-54 | 5-29 | 5-12 | 5-29 | ||
| Commonly up to layers... | 128 | 96 | 23 | 61 | 29 | 76 | 5-12 | 29 | |
| Rare on layers... | 129-131 | [more information needed] | 31-33 | 62-63 | 31-33 | 77-79 | 13-15 | 30-32 | |
| None at or above... | 132 | 193 | 34 | 64 | 34 | 80 | 16 | 33 | |
| Can replace [e] | Stone | ||||||||
The second part of Caves & Cliffs will change the distribution of ores for the expanded world height.[upcoming: Lua error in Module:Version_link at line 112: attempt to concatenate local 'text' (a nil value).]
| Badlands | Mountains | |
|---|---|---|
| Coal | Coal Distribution (Badlands) Sample Size x:100 y:320 z:150 | |
| Iron | Iron Distribution (Badlands) Sample Size x:100 y:320 z:150 | |
| Gold | Gold Distribution (Badlands) Sample Size x:100 y:320 z:150 | |
| Diamond | Diamond Distribution (Badlands) Sample Size x:100 y:320 z:150 | |
| Emerald | Emerald Distribution (Stony Peaks) Sample Size x:100 y:320 z:150 |
The Nether
| Nether Quartz | Nether Gold | Ancient Debris | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ore block |
|
|
|
| Raw resource |
|
|
- |
| Refined resource |
|
| |
| Manufactured | - |
|
|
| Mineral block |
|
|
|
| Minimal pickaxe for drop | Wooden | Diamond | |
| Found in biome... | Any Nether | ||
| Abundance | Very Common | Common | Very Rare |
| Most found in layers... | 10-114 | 15 | 13-17[f] |
| Commonly up to layers... | 120 | 95 | 23 |
| Rare on layers... | 123-125 | 96-116 | 22-119 |
| None at or above... | 128 | 117 | 120 |
| Can Replace | Netherrack | ||
- ↑ This refers to coal ore blocks spawned in blobs and not as parts of fossils or mansion forges.
- ↑ Instead of multi-block blobs, emerald ore is placed in scattered blocks.
- ↑ Deepslate variants only generate in deepslate blobs between layers 0 and 16.
- ↑ Unlike most other ores, lapis lazuli's frequency peaks around layer 15, and slowly tapers off above and below.
- ↑ Deepslate variants replace only Deepslate and Tuff.
- ↑ Unlike most other ores, ancient debris' frequency peaks at layer 15, and quickly tapers off above and below.
History
| Java Edition Classic | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 21, 2009 | Notch shows interest in adding ores. | ||||
| 0.0.14a | |||||
| These ores could be found exposed only in amounts ranging from roughly 10 to 30 in a blob. | |||||
| October 24, 2009 | |||||
| 0.26 SURVIVAL TEST | |||||
| Mining an ore now gives the corresponding block of it. | |||||
| Java Edition Indev | |||||
| 0.31 | 20100128 | ||||
| 20100201-2 | Ores can no longer be mined without a pickaxe. | ||||
| Java Edition Infdev | |||||
| 20100320 | Random ore is now placed randomly around the terrain. | ||||
| 20100327 | Ores now replace stone upon a world reload. | ||||
| 20100330 | The ore change of replacing stone upon a world reload has been reverted. | ||||
| Java Edition Alpha | |||||
| v1.0.1 | |||||
| Java Edition Beta | |||||
| 1.2 | |||||
| Increased the sizes of iron and diamond ore blobs. | |||||
| Java Edition | |||||
| 1.0.0 | Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4 | Coal, lapis lazuli, redstone, and diamond ore now also drop as ore blocks with Silk Touch. | |||
| May 21, 2012 | |||||
| 1.3.1 | 12w21a | ||||
| 12w21b | |||||
| 12w22a | All ores except iron and gold (which give experience when smelted) now drop experience points when mined. | ||||
| 1.5 | 13w01a | ||||
| Texture Update | ? | ||||
| 1.14 | 18w43a | ||||
| 18w50a | |||||
| 19w08a | |||||
| 1.14.1 | Pre-Release 1 | ||||
| 1.16 | 20w06a | ||||
| 20w11a | |||||
| March 11, 2020 | |||||
| 20w12a | Nether gold ore now drops gold nuggets instead of itself. | ||||
| 20w13a | |||||
| October 3, 2020 | |||||
| 1.17 | 20w45a | ||||
| 21w07a | |||||
| Changed ore distribution. See Ore/Pre-1.17 distribution for the old distribution. | |||||
| February 17, 2021 | |||||
| February 18, 2021 | |||||
| February 18, 2021 | |||||
| February 22, 2021 | |||||
| 21w08a | |||||
| The new ore distribution has been tweaked. | |||||
| March 2, 2021 | |||||
| March 4, 2021 | |||||
| 21w10a | |||||
| Fossils that generate below Y=0 now generate with deepslate diamond ore instead of coal ore. | |||||
| Tweaked again the ore distribution. | |||||
| 21w13a | Iron ore and diamond ore distribution has been slightly tweaked. | ||||
| Copper ore now generates uniformly between levels 0 and 63 instead of generating with a normal curve from 0 to 96. | |||||
| 21w14a | If Iron Ore, Gold Ore and Copper Ore are broke without silk-touch, they will drop Raw Metal instead. | ||||
| April 13, 2021 | |||||
| 21w15a | |||||
| All of the changes to Ore distribution made in the last few snapshots have been reverted and moved to the prototype data pack. | |||||
| 21w16a | Deepslate emerald ore now generates naturally. | ||||
| Added ore veins in the prototype data pack, which contain copper ore and deepslate iron ore. | |||||
| 21w17a | Deepslate coal ore and Deepslate copper ore now generate naturally. | ||||
| Upcoming Java Edition | |||||
| 1.18 | Experimental Snapshot 1 | All changes to ore distribution from the prototype data pack have now been implemented into the base game. | |||
| Deepslate emerald ore no longer naturally generates. | |||||
| experimental snapshot 4 | Increased the size of copper ore blobs in dripstone caves. | ||||
| Increased the amount of iron ore in mountains. | |||||
| Pocket Edition Alpha | |||||
| v0.1.0 | |||||
| v0.3.0 | Coal ore now drops coal. | ||||
| v0.3.2 | Diamond ore now drops a diamond. | ||||
| Iron and gold ores are now smeltable into ingots. | |||||
| v0.4.0 | Lapis lazuli ore now drops lapis lazuli . | ||||
| v0.8.0 | build 2 | Redstone ore now drops redstone dust. | |||
| v0.9.0 | build 1 | ||||
| v0.12.1 | build 1 | ||||
| Mining ores now gives experience. | |||||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.10.0 | beta 1.10.0.3 | ||||
| 1.11.0 | beta 1.11.0.5 | ||||
| 1.16.0 | beta 1.16.0.51 | ||||
| beta 1.16.0.57 | |||||
| Caves & Cliffs (experimental) | beta 1.16.210.57 | ||||
| beta 1.16.220.50 | |||||
| beta 1.16.220.52 | Copper ore can no longer be randomly rotated. | ||||
| 1.17.0 | beta 1.16.230.52 | ||||
| Ore is generated as normal, when the ore is generated where Deepslate has been generated, deepslate ore is generated instead. | |||||
| beta 1.16.230.54 | |||||
| beta 1.17.0.50 | |||||
| If Iron Ore, Gold Ore and Copper Ore are broke without silk-touch, they will drop Raw Metal instead. | |||||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU1 | CU1 | 1.00 | Patch 1 | 1.0.1 | |
| TU7 | All ores except iron and gold (which give experience when smelted) now drops experience points when mined. | ||||
| TU14 | 1.04 | ||||
| 1.90 | |||||
| New Nintendo 3DS Edition | |||||
| 0.1.0 | |||||
Gallery
Naturally generated Diamond Ore, Redstone Ore and Lapis Lazuli Ore found in a canyon. Check the image for seed and cords.
This graph shows the actual amount of ores found in a relatively small but untapped world as of Java Edition 1.12.2
Caves and Cliffs development
An image showing another texture for deepslate Diamond Ore which improves on blending the ore texture with the base deepslate.
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.
References
- ↑ http://i.imgur.com/djSvZ.png
- ↑ https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/204619936616808451
- ↑ snapshot 12w21a/b lang/en_US.lang: tile.oreRuby.name=Ruby Ore
- ↑ https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/205641953742819328




































































