A large part of any Minecraft players life is searching for the valuable ores that open up a whole new world of tools, weapons, and resources. Whether its as simple as powering your furnace, or supplying an entire house with automatic doors and lanterns, being able to know where to find these ores (and how to get them) is essential to mastering this creative game. Its okay. We did the searching for you. So heres our guide on where to find all the valuable ores in Minecraft.
| Ore type | Commonly found up to… | Rarity |
|---|---|---|
| Coal | Layer 128 | 1.25% of all stone average 124 per chunk |
| Iron | Layer 64 | 0.72% of stone from rows 2-61 average 72 per chunk |
| Lapis Lazuli | Layer 23 | 0.083% of all blocks / 0.1013% of stone (levels 13-16) average 3.43 per chunk |
| Gold | Layer 29 | 0.1437% (levels 2-28) average 7.5 per chunk |
COMPLETE MINECRAFT ORE TIER LIST!
Note Blocks[]
All types of ores can be placed under note blocks to produce “bass drum” sounds.
Minecraft 18: Ore generation and distribution explained
Ore distribution in Minecraft 1.18 ( via Minecraft)
In Minecraft 1.18, each ore has its own height level, which makes every mining trip unique and gives each excursion an objective. Additionally, a rare new terrain feature called “ore veins” has been introduced into the game.
Ore veins consist of many ore blocks with stone and other rock material being used as fillers between them. In some instances, over 2000 of one particular ore can be found within the same ore vein, making these structures infinitely profitable for gathering useful ores and other resources.
The Minecraft 1.18 update also changes which ores are more exposed to air. Ores like diamond, Lapis Lazuli, coal, and gold are now less likely to be exposed on a cave wall. Another change is that players are more likely to find large numbers of particular ores at higher altitudes than in caves. Ores that exhibit this pattern are emeralds, coal, and iron.
Where to find all the ores in Minecraft
There are a total of 8 different ores currently available in Minecraft, all with varying levels of rarity. These ores appear in veins of different sizes, and some of these ores can only be found in specific locations. Knowing where to look to find your ores and how to mine them efficiently is most of the battle.
Minecraft generates worlds by numbering each block, with the bottommost level of bedrock being labeled as block 0, and each subsequent block afterward raising that number by one. This includes bedrock, air, and basically everything in between. Knowing this, it becomes much easier to know where to go to find ores. Minecraft considers sea level to be at block 62, and clouds start generating at block 128. Most ores are found below sea level, and no ores will be found above cloud level.
Coal is by far the most common ore, to the point that most veteran Minecraft players will genuinely ignore coal after a certain point in the game. While extremely useful, it is very easy to build up a large amount of coal relatively quickly. Coal is used primarily to power furnaces and to craft torches, so its handy to find early on in the game. Coal is prevalent in every biome in the Overworld and is the only ore that can be regularly found above sea level, meaning youll even find this common resource inside mountains. It also generates in huge veins, so players can often get nearly entire stacks of coal from a single spot.
Iron is arguably the most useful of all the ores in Minecraft, because of its importance early on in the game, its accessibility, its many varied uses, and the fact that it cant be substituted like coal can with charcoal. It is used to make anything from weapons, tools, armor, rails, buckets, and much more. Iron is the second most numerous ore found in Minecraft, so players later in the game will likely have chests full of the stuff. You can never have too much iron, though, since it never entirely ceases to be useful to build cost-efficient tools that still get the job done every time. Iron can generate in veins as much as 12 to 20 blocks of ore in a vein but more commonly generates in groups of 4 to 6.
Gold has limited use to players early on in the game due to is frailty in use in weapons, tools, and armor. However, late-game players will recognize its value in redstone contraptions, clocks, and the crafting of powerful food items like golden apples. Gold is a frequent reward in chests found in strongholds, dungeons, abandoned mines, and the Nether, but can also be mined. Its definitely worth grabbing when you see it because gold is relatively rare in the game. Minecraft is also planning a major update to the Nether that will add new mobs and a new trading system heavily involving gold. In a badlands biome, gold can actually be found above ground and in exposed abandoned mineshafts, up to blocks 80. Its one of the rarer ores in the game, found typically in veins ranging from 2 to 4 ore blocks.
Redstone is an ore that very quickly takes up inventory space for players who werent looking for it but is invaluable to Minecraft players who are invested in its use. Used in a nearly infinite number of machines, contraptions, and more, redstone is the equivalent of electrical wiring in Minecraft. Its necessary for almost anything that moves and is important for any player looking to make their operations more efficient or their builds more advanced. Redstone spawns in relatively large veins, and a single block of redstone ore drops multiple bits of redstone at a time, rather than just one.
Lapis lazuli has a strange name and a rather limited number of uses but is still valuable to have around and a necessity if you want to power up in Minecraft. Its more mundane use is in crafting blue dye, but more importantly, lapis lazuli is a crucial ingredient in enchanting all of your equipment. Every enchantment requires a bit of lapis lazuli to finalize, so this ore is one you wont want to pass by lightly. Lapis lazuli actually generates in a similar fashion to redstone, in decently sized veins that drop multiple bits of lapis lazuli with each block mined. That also means you can find your inventory taken up predominantly by lapis lazuli in a moment, so condensing it down as you go is never a bad idea.
Ah, diamond. The search for diamonds in Minecraft has occupied a special place on the internet for many years, be it in the form of memes, songs, or articles just like this one. Possessing diamonds is like being inducted into the elite in Minecraft, and means you can finally think about things like the Nether and the ender dragon. Diamond can be used to craft all manner of tools, weapons, and armor, in addition to being used to craft enchantment tables and a handful of other things. Its incredibly rare, very special, and a must-have for any longterm Minecraft player. Diamond veins are far more infrequent, are typically smaller, and drop less than redstone, despite spawning in a similar area. Diamond veins are usually 2 to 4 blocks, and each block of diamond ore will only drop a single diamond. This makes them a fair sight harder to find and makes it doubly important to use diamonds sparingly.
When asked what the rarest ore in Minecraft is, many people may be tempted to say “diamond.” Those people would be wrong. While diamonds are rare for sure, there is one ore that is even more so: emeralds. Emeralds are the newest ore on this list and are only used when trading with villagers. This makes their value subjective to the player since how important they are depends on how important trading is to you. Either way, emeralds can be gained by trading, finding them in chests, or mining them. Before you go off to search for them, however, there is a huge limitation on where emeralds generate. The mountains biome is the only biome in which emeralds will spawn, drastically reducing how common they can be. Emerald veins are also infrequent, and they are never larger than a single block of ore at a time. Even in optimal conditions, a single cave in a mountain biome is still more likely to have higher numbers of diamonds than emeralds.
Quartz may be at the bottom of this list, but that does not mean its the rarest ore in Minecraft. Far from it, in fact, quartz is extremely common in the places that it can be found. The issue is that quartz can only be found in the Nether, making them a late-game resource for players who have already found diamond or have tricked their way into the Nether. Quartz is used mostly for building but is also used in a handful of crafting recipes, usually involving redstone. It can be condensed into quartz blocks with four bits of quartz, meaning it can be done without a crafting table. This move cannot be reversed, though, so its not useful for storage. Quartz veins are pretty common and can sometimes rival those of coal in terms of size and depth. Quartz also drops experience points more frequently than coal, so it can be quite useful for players who need to accumulate levels for enchanting.
FAQ
What is the 2 rarest ore in Minecraft?
Which ore is the rarest?
Hopefully the change from rare to uncommon makes emerald ore much easier to find.