An Exhaustive List of Minecraft Ores and Where to Find Them

Minecraft has two kinds of miners: the “I’ll just grab some iron real quick” optimists, and the people who
emerge three hours later with 17 stacks of cobbled deepslate, a new phobia of lava, and exactly one diamond.
If you’d like to be a little more like the first person (while still hoarding shiny rocks like a responsible adult),
this guide is your one-stop, pickaxe-friendly breakdown of every ore in modern Minecraft and where to mine it.

This article focuses on the post–Caves & Cliffs world height (1.18+), where the Overworld runs from
Y=-64 up to Y=320. That means “best level” is no longer one magical number for everything.
Different ores have different sweet spots, and some even reward you for climbing mountains instead of digging holes
that look like a subway system designed by chaos.

Before You Mine: What “Ore” Means (and How to Read Y-Levels)

In Minecraft, an ore block is a naturally generating block you mine for a resource (coal, iron, diamonds, etc.).
Many ores have variants (like deepslate versions) that appear deeper undergroundsame loot, tougher block.

• Java Edition: Press F3 to see your coordinates (look for “Y”).
• Bedrock Edition: Enable Show Coordinates in settings (your Y will display on-screen).

Quick Reference: All Minecraft Ores at a Glance

Use this table for fast planning, then jump to each ore’s section for biome bonuses, mining methods, and practical tips.

Overworld Ores

Nether Ores

Overworld Ores: The Complete List (With Where-to-Find Details)

1) Coal Ore

Coal is your early-game MVP: torches, smelting fuel, campfires, and the reason you can see what you’re doing in a cave.
In modern worlds, coal generates above Y=0 and becomes more common as you go higherespecially in elevated terrain.
One catch: coal has reduced “open air” exposure, so you’ll often find more of it buried in stone than sparkling on cave walls.

• Best place to look: Mountain slopes, high hills, and high-elevation caves.
• Mining tip: If you’re caving and seeing less coal than expected, switch to short branch tunnels in stone at higher Y.
• Tool requirement: Any pickaxe.

2) Copper Ore

Copper is the “I didn’t know I needed this until I did” ore. It’s used for building (cut copper, copper blocks), redstone-adjacent gear
(lightning rod), and the spyglass. Copper generates between Y=0 and Y=96 with a strong sweet spot around Y=48.
It’s also notably more plentiful in Dripstone Caves, which makes those pointy cave biomes great for copper runs.

• Best Y-level: Around Y=48.
• Biome bonus: Dripstone Caves.
• Tool requirement: Stone pickaxe or better.
• Pro move: Bring Fortune once you’re enchantedraw copper drops scale nicely with Fortune.

3) Iron Ore

Iron is the backbone of survival mode: tools, armor, buckets, hoppers, rails, anvil lifebasically the entire “I’m now competent” phase.
Iron primarily generates below Y=72 with a strong bias around Y=16, but it also generates
above Y=80 and increases as you go higher. Translation: iron has two personalitiesunderground practical and
mountain billionaire.

• Best underground Y-level: Around Y=16 (great for branch mining).
• Best surface strategy: Mine high mountains (iron gets more common as elevation increases).
• Tool requirement: Stone pickaxe or better.

Bonus: Large Ore Veins (Iron & Copper)

If you want that “I just hit the jackpot” feeling, keep an eye out for large ore veins:

• Copper ore veins: Form between Y=0 and Y=50 and are mixed with granite.
• Iron ore veins: Form deep (below roughly Y=-8 down toward Y=-60) and are mixed with tuff.

Seeing long stretches of granite or tuff underground? That’s not just geology cosplayit can be a sign you’re near a vein.

4) Gold Ore

Gold in the Overworld generates below Y=32 with a strong bias around Y=-16. It also has special behavior:
you’ll find extra gold below Y=-48, and in Badlands biomes you can find extra gold
above Y=32. Badlands are basically nature’s way of saying, “Would you like your gold with a side of terracotta?”

• Best general Y-level: Around Y=-16.
• Best biome: Badlands (especially for higher-elevation gold).
• Tool requirement: Iron pickaxe or better.
• Use case: Powered rails, golden apples/carrots, Piglin bartering prep, and certain redstone builds.

5) Redstone Ore

Redstone is what turns Minecraft from “cute survival sandbox” into “I accidentally invented a calculator.” Redstone generates below
Y=16 and becomes more common as you go downespecially below Y=-32. If you’re hunting redstone,
deep mining is your friend, and so is a good pickaxe because deepslate is not here to support your time management.

• Best zone: Deep layers (below Y=-32, continuing down).
• Tool requirement: Iron pickaxe or better.
• Tip: Pair redstone hunts with diamond hunts (their best depths overlap nicely).

6) Lapis Lazuli Ore

Lapis is the enchanting sidekick: you can’t do serious enchanting without it, and it’s also a dye ingredient. It generates below
Y=64 with a strong bias around Y=0. The weird-but-useful detail: lapis has a special exposure rule
below Y=-32 or above Y=32, it generally won’t generate exposed to air (it’ll be buried or inside water).
So if you’re only scanning giant open caves at extreme depths and wondering where the lapis went… it’s playing hide-and-seek correctly.

• Best Y-level: Around Y=0.
• Tool requirement: Stone pickaxe or better.
• Tip: Short branch mines around Y=0 can outperform pure “big cave sightseeing.”

7) Diamond Ore

Diamonds are still the iconic flex, but the strategy changed in 1.18+. Diamond ore generates below Y=16, with
more diamonds the lower you go. The best hunting is deepmany miners target around Y=-59
as a practical “near the bottom but not constant bedrock” level. Diamonds also have reduced air exposure,
meaning they’re less likely to generate right on open cave surfaces. So yes, your friend who “just found 12 diamonds in a cave”
might be telling the truth… but branch mining still wins for consistency.

• Best Y-level: Very deep (commonly around Y=-59).
• Tool requirement: Iron pickaxe or better.
• Enchant tip: Fortune III is the difference between “nice” and “I can finally afford to be reckless.”
• Efficiency tip: Branch mine in deepslate with a fast pick (Efficiency helps a lot).

8) Emerald Ore

Emerald ore is the only Overworld ore with a strong biome identity: it primarily generates in mountainous biomes,
above Y=-16, and becomes more common as you go higher. Emerald ore below Y=0 is very rare.
If you need emeralds for villager trading, you can mine them… but in practice, villagers are still the real emerald factory.
Mining emerald ore is more like finding “bonus emeralds” while you’re up in the mountains collecting iron and coal.

• Best place: Mountain biomes at high elevation.
• Tool requirement: Iron pickaxe or better.
• Reality check: For bulk emeralds, trading beats mining. For fun, mining is great. (Both can be true.)

Nether Ores: The Complete List (And How Not to Become Lava Confetti)

The Nether is where ores come with emotional damage. Bring fire resistance if you can, blocks for bridging,
and a plan that does not include sprinting into lava while screaming “I can make it.”

9) Nether Quartz Ore

Nether quartz ore is abundant and spawns widely through the Nether, generally between Y=10 and Y=117.
Quartz is useful for building (quartz blocks), redstone components (comparators), and getting experience quickly.
If you need levels for enchanting, quartz mining can be a surprisingly efficient XP routinejust don’t anger Piglins
while you’re doing interpretive mining dances.

• Best strategy: Mine it wherever you can do so safely.
• Tool requirement: Any pickaxe.
• Tip: Silk Touch lets you bring ore blocks home for “stored XP” vibes if you later mine them normally.

10) Nether Gold Ore

Nether gold ore is your shortcut to gold nuggets (and therefore gold ingots) without hauling ore back to a furnace.
It generally spawns in the same vertical neighborhood as quartzroughly Y=10 to Y=117and is common enough
that a good Nether run can stockpile nuggets fast. This is especially useful if you’re bartering with Piglins for
fire resistance potions, obsidian, crying obsidian, and other Nether-adjacent goodies.

• Best strategy: Mine it as you explore; it’s abundant enough that “efficient pathing” matters more than a single Y-level.
• Tool requirement: Any pickaxe.
• Piglin tip: Wear one piece of gold armor, always. It’s the Nether’s version of “business casual.”

11) Ancient Debris

Ancient debris is the Nether’s prize ore and the gateway to netherite. It generates most meaningfully between
Y=8 and Y=22, with the classic “best density” target around Y=15. It’s also
blast-resistant, which is why people use controlled explosions to clear netherrack while leaving ancient debris intact.
(Controlled is doing a lot of work in that sentence.)

• Best Y-level: Y=15 is the traditional sweet spot.
• Tool requirement: Diamond or netherite pickaxe.
• Safety tip: Bring fire resistance, blocks, and a calm attitude toward surprise lava pockets.
• Efficiency tip: Mine long, straight tunnels at Y=15, or use safe explosive methods if you’re experienced and prepared.

Mining Methods That Actually Match Ore Behavior

If you’ve ever felt like “caving used to be better,” you’re not imagining thingssome ores have reduced air exposure,
meaning they’re less likely to generate right on open cave walls. That doesn’t make caving bad; it just means your method
should match your target.

When to Cave

• Great for: Iron (mid depths), copper, coal at higher elevations, quick mixed loot, and discovering large structures.
• Also good for: Redstone and diamonds if you’re exploring deep aquifer caves (and you’re careful).

When to Branch Mine

• Best for consistency: Diamonds and lapis (especially due to exposure rules), plus steady redstone deep down.
• How: Pick a target Y-level, dig a main corridor, then side tunnels spaced out to cover more blocks efficiently.

Biome Targeting (The “Work Smarter” Approach)

• Need lots of iron? Mountains.
• Need gold without going Nether? Badlands.
• Need copper fast? Dripstone Caves.
• Need emerald ore? Mountains again (but villagers are still your best bulk option).

of Real Minecraft Ore-Hunting “Experience” (a.k.a. The Mining Diary)

The first time I tried to “seriously” mine in a 1.18+ world, I did what every confident-but-underinformed miner does:
I picked a random Y-level, dug a beautiful hallway, and waited for diamonds to respectfully appear on schedule.
They did not. Instead, I got a museum-quality collection of deepslate, a small fortune in gravel, and the creeping suspicion
that the game had quietly removed diamonds and nobody told me.

The breakthrough came when I stopped treating mining like a ritual and started treating it like a map. Diamonds were deeper now,
and caving wasn’t always the jackpot it used to be because some ores prefer to be buried. Once I aimed my branch mine around the
deep levels people recommend (the kind of depth where lava feels like a roommate), diamonds became less “legend” and more “eventually, yes.”
Not instantlythis is still Minecraftbut consistently enough that it felt like a system instead of a lottery.

Iron had its own plot twist. I used to think iron was a “dig down to a normal level and you’ll see it” resource.
Then I wandered into a mountain range and realized the game was basically offering iron in bulk if I was willing to do my mining
in the open air like a well-adjusted person. I spent an in-game day mining mountain stone and walked away with stacks of iron,
enough coal to power a small nation, and a brand-new appreciation for stairs. (Also: goats. So many goats.)

Gold was the funniest lesson because I kept trying to find it the hard way, deep underground, while standing on a Badlands biome
that was practically sparkling with opportunity. Once I finally mined Badlands gold properly, it felt like discovering a cheat code
that had been sitting in the world generation all along. And then, of course, I went to the Nether for quartz XP and left with
enough gold nuggets to start a Piglin bartering side hustlebecause the Nether always turns into “one more thing” the moment you arrive.

Ancient debris hunting deserves its own paragraph of emotional honesty. It’s the only mining trip where I pack like I’m moving apartments:
extra pickaxes, fire resistance supplies, blocks, and the kind of patience you usually reserve for slow internet.
The first time I found ancient debris, it was one lonely block in a tunnellike the game was politely testing whether I’d scream.
By the time I had enough netherite scraps for my first ingot, I understood why people celebrate it like a holiday. It’s rare, it’s earned,
and it makes you feel like you outsmarted the Nether… at least until a ghast reminds you who owns the place.

Conclusion

If you remember only three things: (1) different ores have different best Y-levels now, (2) biomes can massively boost certain ores,
and (3) deep mining is a commitmentbring the right tools, enchantments, and safety gear. With a target depth and a plan, “mining trip”
stops being a random walk and starts being a reliable supply run. And sure, you’ll still occasionally dig a 200-block tunnel and find
nothing but spitebut now you’ll at least know you did it scientifically.