A metal is a lustrous, conductive, and generally strong material. There are currently three different metals within Minecraft:
There is also one alloy:
Properties of metals
Pure metals in Minecraft all share the following properties:
- They can exist in nugget (excluding copper), ingot, raw, raw block and full block forms. 1 metal block is equivalent to nine ingots, and 1 ingot is in turn equivalent to nine nuggets.
- They have corresponding tool and armor sets (excluding copper).
- Their tool and armor sets can be processed by a furnace or blast furnace in order to receive a nugget of the respective metal back (excluding copper, as copper cannot be crafted into a tool/armor set, nor does it have a nugget form).
- They, in block form, can power beacons (excluding copper).[1]
- They have raw forms, which are dropped when breaking their ores.
Alloys have the following distinct properties from pure metals:
- They exist in block and ingot form, but not in nugget form. And as such items made with alloys cannot be smelted into nugget form
- They do not have direct ores and must be combined with other metals.
Metallic elements
Aside from gold and iron, there exist numerous elements[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only] that correspond to real-life metals. However, these do not have the same uses that gold and iron metals have in-game.
d-block metals
- Scandium
- Titanium
- Vanadium
- Chromium
- Manganese
- Cobalt
- Nickel
- Copper
- Zinc
- Yttrium
- Zirconium
- Niobium
- Molybdenum
- Technetium
- Ruthenium
- Rhodium
- Palladium
- Silver
- Cadmium
- Lutetium
- Hafnium
- Tantalum
- Tungsten
- Rhenium
- Osmium
- Iridium
- Platinum
- Mercury
- Lawrencium
- Rutherfordium
- Dubnium
- Seaborgium
- Bohrium
- Hassium
- Meitnerium
- Darmstadtium
- Roentgenium
- Copernicium
f-block metals
Alkali metals
Alkaline earths
Other metals/poor metals
Metal as a material type
Certain blocks are classified as metals as opposed to rock, requiring a pickaxe to be mined. However, the blocks placed in this category are not necessarily made of metal in themselves; for example, blocks of diamond, blocks of emerald, blocks of redstone and lapis lazuli blocks are all listed under this category despite not being made of metal.
History
| May 21, 2009 | Notch mentions metal blocks being added to minecraft. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Java Edition Classic | |||||
| 0.0.14a |   Added iron and gold ores. | ||||
| 0.0.20a |  Added blocks of gold. | ||||
| 0.26 SURVIVAL TEST |  Added blocks of iron. | ||||
| Java Edition Indev | |||||
| 0.31 | 20100128 |   Added iron and gold ingots. | |||
| Java Edition | |||||
| 1.0.0 | Beta 1.9 Prerelease |  Added gold nuggets. | |||
| 1.11.1 | 16w50a |  Added iron nuggets. | |||
| 1.16 | 20w06a |   Added netherite ingots and blocks. | |||
| October 3, 2020 | Mojang reveals copper ore. | ||||
| 1.17 | 20w45a |    Added copper ore, ingots and blocks. | |||
| Pocket Edition Alpha | |||||
| Pre-release | Added blocks of iron. | ||||
| v0.1.0 |  Added iron and gold ores.
| ||||
 Added blocks of gold. | |||||
| v0.3.2 | Added iron and gold ingots. | ||||
| v0.12.1 | build 1 |  Added gold nuggets. | |||
| Pocket Edition | |||||
| 1.1.0 | alpha 1.1.0.0 | Added iron nuggets. | |||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.16.0 | beta 1.16.0.51 | Added netherite ingots and blocks. | |||
| 1.16.210 | beta 1.16.210.57 | Added copper ore, ingots and blocks. | |||