Ores

''This article is about the block. For the terrain feature, see Mineral vein. For the blackstone block mistakenly called an ore, see Gilded Blackstone.''

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

There are two ways to obtain a resource from an ore block, depending on the type of ore:


 * Mining: The indicated yield can be increased by mining the ore with a pickaxe enchanted with Fortune. Ores that drop their resource when mined require a Silk Touch pickaxe to drop themselves.
 * Coal, diamond, deepslate diamond‌[upcoming: JE 1.17], emerald, and nether quartz ores drop 1 unit of corresponding raw material.
 * Redstone and deepslate redstone‌[upcoming: JE 1.17] ores drop 4–5 redstone dust.
 * Lapis lazuli and deepslate lapis lazuli‌[upcoming: JE 1.17] ores drop 4–9 lapis lazuli.
 * Smelting: Iron ore, deepslate iron ore‌[upcoming: JE 1.17], copper ore‌[upcoming: JE 1.17], gold ore, deepslate gold ore ‌[upcoming: JE 1.17], and ancient debris all drop themselves when mined. They must be smelted to obtain the corresponding resource (iron, copper, gold, and netherite scraps, respectively).

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.