Emerald Ore

Emerald ore is a rare mineral block that generates only in mountains and windswept hills biomes. It drops emeralds when mined, or itself if mined with a pickaxe with the Silk Touch enchantment.

Deepslate emerald ore is a variant of emerald ore that can generate in deepslate and tuff blobs.

Obtaining

Breaking

Emerald ore can be mined with a pickaxe made from iron or better, otherwise it drops nothing. If mined without Silk Touch, the block drops 1 emerald (or up to 4 with Fortune). It also drops 3–7 when broken.

Natural generation

Emerald ore generates in mountains and windswept hills biomes in the form of ore features, from levels -16 to 320, being most common at level 232, and becoming less common toward either end of the range. Emerald ore attempts to generate 100 times per chunk in blobs of 0—4 ores. Emerald ore can be exposed to the sky.^[1]

Emerald ore can replace stone, andesite, diorite, granite, tuff‌^{[JE only]}, and deepslate. Emerald ore that replaces tuff or deepslate becomes deepslate emerald ore, which is the rarest ore in Minecraft, rarer than normal emerald ore and ancient debris. It only generates between the altitudes of -16 and 8 where deepslate naturally occurs, which happens to be towards the end of emerald ore distribution where it is extremely rare; its limitation to certain biomes further adds to its rarity.

Usage

Smelting ingredient

Note blocks

Emerald ore can be placed under note blocks to produce "bass drum" sounds.

Sounds

Emerald ore

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Deepslate emerald ore

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

History

Java Edition
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]
1.3.1		12w21a			Added emerald ore.
					The announced ore has been changed to an emerald ore. The texture for emerald ore has 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" (due to "item.emerald" being the previous translation key for Diamonds).
					Emerald ore generates in blobs of up to 10 blocks.
		12w21b			The texture of emerald ore has been corrected. The previous ruby texture remains as "ruby.png". Translations of emerald as diamond have also been corrected.
					An analysis of a 500×500 extreme hills biome with MCEdit gives 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			Blob size was reduced to 1 block.
1.13		17w47a			Prior to The Flattening, this block's numeral ID was 129.
Texture Update		January 4, 2018			A new texture for emerald ore has been proposed.
1.14		18w43a			The texture of emerald ore has been changed.
1.17		21w06a			The height limit was expanded down to Y=-64. Emerald ores are temporary generating from Y=-64 instead of Y=0.
		21w07a			Emerald ore now generates as a triangle spread, generating between Y=32 and Y=320 and peaking at Y=256.
		February 18, 2021			JAPPA shows new textures of emerald ore.
		21w08a			The texture of emerald ore has been changed.
		21w10a			Added deepslate variant of emerald ore, which does not generate naturally.
					Added emerald_ores block tag.
					The amount of emerald ore that generates has been increased.
		21w15a			Most ore generation has been reverted back to the pre-21w06a generation and requires the Caves & Cliffs Prototype Data Pack to be seen. However, emerald ore generation was not properly reverted due to a bug.[5]
		21w16a			Emerald ore now generates at the correct Y-levels, but it still generates more frequently than it did in 1.16.[6]
					Deepslate emerald ore variant now generates naturally.
					In the Caves & Cliffs Prototype Data Pack, emerald ores now generate in the form of ore blobs instead of single blocks.
		21w17a			Emerald ore can now replace granite, andesite, diorite, tuff, and deepslate upon generating.
1.17.1		Pre-release 2			The frequency of emerald ore generation has been reverted to pre-1.17 levels.
1.18		Experimental Snapshot 1			All previous changes to ore distribution from the prototype data pack have now been implemented into the base game.
					Deepslate Emerald Ore no longer generates naturally.
		experimental snapshot 2			Emerald ore now generates in meadows, groves, snowy slopes, lofty peaks, and snow capped peaks.
		21w40a			Emerald ore generates more frequently and is now able to generate down to Y=-16.
					Deepslate Emerald Ore now generates naturally again.
Pocket Edition Alpha
v0.9.0		build 1			Added emerald ore.
					Emerald ore can be mined with a stone pickaxe instead of an iron one.
v0.12.1		build 1			Mining emerald ore now drops experience orbs.
					Emerald ore can now be collected with Silk Touch, dropping the block itself.
					Emerald ore now drops extra emeralds with the Fortune enchantment.
Bedrock Edition
1.2.0		beta 1.2.0.2			Mining emerald ore now requires an iron pickaxe.
1.10.0		beta 1.10.0.3			The texture of emerald ore has been changed.
1.16.220		beta 1.16.220.50			The texture of emerald ore has been changed.
					In the Caves and Cliffs experimental gameplay, emerald ore can now be found exposed and in blobs of size 0-10 on the surface of the new mountain biome variants.
1.17.0		beta 1.16.230.52			Added deepslate variant of emerald ore behind the Caves and Cliffs experimental gameplay.
		beta 1.16.230.56			In the Caves and Cliffs experimental gameplay, emerald ore generation has been changed. Emerald now generates on higher altitudes in extreme hills rather than lower.
		beta 1.17.0.52			Unintentionally readded the single-block emerald ore generation in the Caves and Cliffs experimental gameplay, which was removed in beta 1.16.230.56.
1.18.0		beta 1.18.0.20			Removed “Caves and Cliffs” experimental toggle. New emerald ore generation are now available through normal gameplay.
					Decreased the generation size of emerald ore blobs.
					Unintentionally increased the amount of emerald ore blob generation attempts a lot.
		beta 1.18.0.21			In extreme hills, emerald ore generates more frequently and is now able to generate down to Y=-16.
		beta 1.18.0.22			Emerald ore generation height has now been tweaked.
		beta 1.18.0.24			Emerald ore blob now generates correctly.
					Emerald ore generation height has now been tweaked to be in parity with Java Edition.
Legacy Console Edition
TU14	CU1	1.04	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added emerald ore.
		1.90			The texture of emerald ore texture has been changed.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0					Added emerald ore.

Issues

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

Trivia

• 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.

Gallery

Screenshots

• 
  An naturally occurring blob of emerald ore.
• 
  A naturally occurring blob of emerald ore.
• 
  A blob of emerald ore found at layer 18 in a windswept hills biome.
• 
  A room with placed emerald ores, including emerald blocks and thrown emeralds.
• 
  A comparison of the occurrence of emerald ore to the occurrence of diamond ore.
• 
  Two blobs of emerald ores that generated nearly together.
• 
  A block of emerald ore found in a plains biome.
• 
  A blob of emerald ore found in a mountain biome.
• 
  Ravine with multiple ores, water and lava falls, and stronghold bridge over it.
• 
  Multiple emerald ores close together.

Development images

• 
  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.

References