Emerald Ore

Transparency	No
Luminance	No
Blast resistance	15
Tool
Renewable	No
Stackable	Yes (64)
Flammable	No
Experience	Mined: 3–7 Smelted: 1
Drops	Emerald (1)
Data value	dec: 129 hex: 81 bin: 10000001
Name	emerald_ore

Emerald ore is the rarest mineral block in the game, which drops emerald when mined.

Obtaining[edit]

The emerald ore block itself (rather than its emerald drops) can be obtained by mining it with an iron or diamond pickaxe with the Silk Touch enchantment.

Block	Emerald Ore
Hardness	3
Tool
Breaking time^{[note 1]}
Hand	15
Wooden	7.5
Stone	3.75
Iron	0.75
Diamond	0.6
Golden	1.25

↑ Times are for unenchanted tools in seconds.

Natural generation[edit]

Emerald ore is only generated in mountains biomes (which actually contain more emerald ore veins than diamond ore veins). It will even continue to stay generated there when the world is customized. Due to the nature of the generation algorithm, it may be found a short distance into adjacent biomes, but always within the same chunk as a mountain biome,^[1] for example in river biomes which cross through them. It attempts to generate 3-8 times per each chunk, generating anywhere between layers 4 and 32, meaning it can occur as high up as gold can.

In a world there are about 0.2 emerald ores per chunk. It will only generate in locations that would have otherwise been stone - it is thus possible for as few as 0 to 2 emeralds to generate in a chunk. Found as individual blocks, rather than veins, it can be encountered more commonly than gold, which has a similar range.

Usage[edit]

Emerald ore drops 1 emerald and 3-7 experience when mined with an iron pickaxe or better. Mining with a Fortune enchanted pickaxe will increase possible yields by 1 per level (1-4 emeralds per ore with level III). If mined with any other tool, it drops 5-7 experience.

Smelting ingredient[edit]

Name	Ingredients	Smelting recipe
Emerald	Emerald Ore + Any fuel

Video[edit]

History[edit]

Java Edition
1.3.1			12w21a	On May 21, 2012, the week before the release of 12w21a, Jeb released a screenshot of himself testing the trading system.^[2] At this time, what would become emerald ore was ruby ore.^[3] For the release of 12w21a, the block was changed to an emerald ore. The texture for emerald ore remained unchanged, as Jeb forgot to commit the new texture in the snapshot.^[4] As this item was not announced before the snapshot was released, most translations call emerald "diamond". Emerald Ore generates in veins of up to 10 blocks.
			12w21b	The texture was corrected from to . The previous ruby texture remains as "ruby.png". Translations of emerald as diamond were also corrected. An analysis of a 500×500 Extreme Hills biome with MCEdit gave the following ore distributions: Overall ore distribution in the bottom most 32 layers A detailed zoom to the rare ores The graphs show that the distribution of all ores except for lapis lazuli is even in a certain range and falls off sharply at the borders. While the total amount of emerald is with 3386, even higher than the amount of diamonds (2997), the ore is spread out over double the height range, meaning that at a certain level the chance for finding an ore was just about half of the chance of finding a diamond ore, effectively making it twice as rare when tunnel mining.
			12w22a	Emerald ore would have no longer generated naturally.^[5] This was due to the large number of complaints by users about emerald ore's rarity, despite Jeb's wishes for it to only be a "nice find." If this change had occurred, it would have still been available in the Creative mode menu.^[6] However, Jeb eventually decided against it and added emerald ore back into natural generation after more community response.^[7] Jeb later decided to keep emeralds spawning as he thought it would be a "nice surprise"; Emerald ore now only generates in veins of 1. Because of this, it is much more practical to obtain emeralds through trading.
			12w22a	Inventory sprites for blocks were flipped from left to right, changing to .
1.13			17w47a	Prior to The Flattening, this block's numeral ID was 129.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.9.0			build 1	Added emerald ore, it can be mined with a stone pickaxe instead of an iron one.
?				Emerald ore now drops experience.
Bedrock Edition
1.2			build 1	Mining emerald ore now requires an iron pickaxe.
Legacy Console Edition
TU14	CU1	1.04	Patch 1	Added emerald ore.

Issues[edit]

Issues relating to "Emerald Ore" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia[edit]

Even though emerald ore is rarer than diamond ore, emerald ore is generally found more often in mountains biomes than diamond ore, as the emerald ore blocks are generated in a more scattered fashion.
It is possible to have two or more emerald ore blocks generate adjacent to each other, though this is very rare.
As emeralds are far easier to obtain by trading with villagers, the player may wish to use the silk touch enchantment to collect the far harder to get ore.

Gallery[edit]

The first image of the trading system released by Jeb. The emerald ore can be seen in the top right-hand corner with the original texture.
An enhanced version of Jeb's screenshot showing the original ore texture more clearly.
The old "ruby" texture of emerald ore.
The new texture of emerald ore.
Emerald ore found at layer 18 in an mountains biome.
Naturally occurring emerald ore.
Emerald blocks, emerald ores, and emeralds.
A comparison of the occurrence of emerald ore to the occurrence of diamond ore.
Two emerald ores that generated together, each one in a different chunk.
An emerald ore block found naturally in a cave.
An emerald ore block found outside of an mountains biome - this case in a desert biome.