Introduction to Mining
Craft a pickaxe. If you've never been mining before, you'll need to make your first pickaxe. Here's how to make one that can mine through stone and less valuable ores: Craft a wooden pickaxe (a column of two sticks below a row of wood planks). Use the wooden pickaxe to break through a few stone blocks. Craft a stone pickaxe (two sticks below three blocks of stone).
Prepare your inventory. Mining ends in two ways: a proud return with bags of loot, or death. To prepare for both scenarios, empty your valuables into a chest, leaving plenty of inventory space. Pack the following for your first short expeditions, besides the pickaxe: Food Wood Building Blocks Sword (unless playing on Peaceful difficulty) Stone Pickaxe
Learn the rules of safe mining. Almost every player has died from a bad decision while mining, even with no enemies around. Prevent this by following these simple rules: Never dig through the block you're standing on, to avoid falling into lava or a deep cave/ravines. When digging the block above you, make sure there is a torch at your feet and a quick escape route. This way, if gravel or sand falls down then the torch will break it, and since lava is slow, you can escape from it without getting harmed. Do not descend too deep or enter special areas (such as abandoned mineshafts) until you have good armor and weapons. Once you do go far down enough (About Y-19), Try mining as far as possible from the blocks so you have enough time to patch up lava spills if you get to lava.
Mine some coal. Coal is the easiest ore to find, and looks just like black dots studded in coal. The safest place to mine it is from hillsides, cliff faces, or shallow caves. Collect it with a pickaxe until you've mined at least two or three groups, or veins, of coal ore. Ore almost always spawns in groups larger than one block. Look carefully at surrounding blocks whenever you mine something. There usually is between 6-8 blocks of coal ore per group. Don't wander too far! Many players get lost for the first time when they start mining. Try pressing F3 to view your x-, y-, and z-coordinates, and write down the coordinates you'd like to return to. It is a good idea to write down the coordinates of your spawn point or house before you go mining, so you know which direction to go to return home.
Craft torches. Place the coal above a stick in the crafting area, and make as many torches as you can. You can place these torches on any solid surface to make a permanent light source. Don't leave home without them.
Find a natural cave. Because of wandering monsters, caves are more dangerous than digging an artificial mine. That said, they're also much faster and much more fun. Wander around until you see an opening in the ground or the side of a mountain. Only coal and iron ore will appear above sea level, so don't wander too high into the hills if you are looking for diamonds. You want a cave that extends down, although it doesn't have to be steep.
Light the cave. You've probably seen monsters burn up in daylight, but when you're underground, it's a different story. Out of the Sun's reach, monsters can wander all day and all night. Torches won't stop them, but they will reveal monsters approaching so you can make a quick getaway. Torches also stop monsters from spawning, as long as you place enough down to fully cover the cave to have it bright enough in order to keep monsters from spawning next to you.
Make sure you know the way around the cave. If the cave has many branches, keep the torches along the right wall. If you get lost, you'll know to keep the torches on your right to go deeper, or on your left to get to the surface. If the cave is very wide, don't forget that you can also place signs.
Mine your first iron block. Just like all ore, iron ore looks like a stone block with colored flecks; in this case, they're beige or yellow-brown. Iron shouldn't be too hard to find, as long as you're looking a few blocks below sea level or lower. Do not use a wooden pickaxe to mine iron. It will break the block and fail to drop ore. Use a stone-tier pickaxe or higher to mine iron ore. Only stone, iron, diamond pickaxe, or netherite pickaxes will successfully mine iron ore. Press F3 to view coordinates. Iron only shows up at a y-coordinate below 60, and is much more common below layer 50.
Craft better equipment. Go back up to the surface, collecting the torches you placed earlier. You've survived your first mining expedition, and the fruits of your labor will help you do even better on the second one. Before you jump down the next cave, make some iron tools: Craft a furnace and place it on the ground. Interact with the furnace and place the iron ore in the top slot. Place wood, coal, or other flammable items in the bottom slot. Over time, the fuel will burn away and the ore will become iron ingots. (Try to keep 5 Iron ore/ingot extra to craft a blast furnace) Use the iron ingots to make a better pickaxe, better sword, and (eventually) armor. You can also make an anvil in the future to fix items.
Longer Expeditions
Stock your inventory. Let's say you've done a fair amount of mining, but you'd like to make the process more efficient and profitable. At this point you should stock your inventory with plenty of basic equipment: Food, iron pickaxe, shovel, & your best combat equipment Torches (several full stacks) Coal Crafting table and several chests Two buckets of water Ladders Bed (if you're in a multiplayer game that skips night)
Set up base camp. Place a crafting table, chest, and furnace on the surface, either at a cave entrance or anywhere you plan to mine. Stash your valuables (besides mining and combat equipment) in the chest, so you can retrieve them if you die. You can also create a blast furnace which uses more fuel, but actually smelts ore way quicker than a normal furnace)
Know where to find valuable ore. Each ore has a different distribution across the vertical layers of the world. Press F3 to view your coordinates and use the y-coordinate to guide you to the right area for the ore you seek (coordinates are given for PC edition): Diamond: Only layer 15 and below, most common around -56 Gold: Only layer 31 and below, except in the badlands biome, where it generates frequently above layer 31. Lapis lazuli: Mostly between layers 8 and -16. Redstone: Only layer 15 and below, most common around -56 Emerald: Only above layer -16 under mountain biomes, most often above 100 Iron: Mostly between layers -24 and 50, and above 120 Copper: Between 104 and -16, most common around 48. Coal: Anywhere above layer 0 No specific purpose: Focus on layers -48 to -56.
Get started. There are three basic approaches to starting a mine: A large natural cave gives you a headstart with exposed ore on the walls. Be prepared to fight plenty of mobs and take special care to mark the paths you take with torches or signposts. Dig your own vertical shaft to go straight to the best mining layers. Dig this in a 1 x 2 space so you never dig underneath your feet. When complete, build a way up with ladders, or pour water from the top to make a waterfall elevator that you can swim up and down. Dig an angled shaft at a 45º angle, clearing enough room above you to jump back up. Optionally, place stairs along the shaft for faster movement up and down.
Spread out on the desired layers. Once you're at the right layer, clear out an area three to five blocks tall, and extend it horizontally to search for ore. Since all ore besides emeralds come in groups of two or more, you do not have to reveal every single block to find the vast majority of them. Try digging tunnels one block wide, with three solid blocks between them. Remember, never dig straight up or straight down.
Take precautions against lava. Lava usually spawns below layer 30, but it can show up higher than that. Keep an eye out for embers, popping noises, and red ceiling drips that hint at nearby lava. If you do unleash a lava river, quickly emptying a bucket of water can cool it into cobblestone or obsidian. There's not much worse than mining diamond ore on the floor and watching it fall into lava. Dig around valuable ores first to check for this possibility.
Leave a trail of torches and chests. Even the most prepared miner can die in a freak accident. Place chests in well-lit, easy to find locations along your route back. Store your valuable ores in these chests to retrieve them on the way back, or to recover after you die. If you have trouble keeping your sense of Minecraft direction, leave a trail of redstone dust to follow on your way back. When exploring a cave, consider lighting each chamber first, then mining on your way back. This reduces the chance of an accident destroying your loot.
Identify special features. There are two structures that appear fairly often underground, and one that appears rarely but has amazing loot. Identify them by the change of scenery, and know what to expect: If you see mossy stone, you're near a dungeon. These are small rooms with a monster spawner and zero to two chests of loot. You can destroy the spawner or leave it there as a way to gain XP. If you see wooden structures or rails, you've found an abandoned mineshaft. Look for chests inside of minecarts, and clip cobwebs with shears to get string. Be wary of spider spawners lurking beneath the webs. If you see sculk (a dark blue block with light blue pulsing spots), you may be near an ancient city. Mine in each direction to locate it, and make sure to sneak! If you make too much noise, you may cause a warden to spawn. Wardens are the most powerful and dangerous monsters in the game. However, the ancient city also has very valuable loot, so be sure to raid it!
Look for nearby caves. Minecraft cave systems can be quite expansive. If one branch ends in a dead end, especially one ending in dirt or gravel, there's often another cavern on the other side. Taking advantage of this sideways "drifting" can add major shortcuts to your mining.
Advanced Mining Strategy
Enchant your pickaxe. So you have a diamond pickaxe, a fortress the size of New York, and enough ore to make Scrooge McDuck envious. Now's the time to get serious. Enchant your pickaxes to improve their mining ability. Here are all enchantments available for tools: Fortune (max level III) increases the amount of ore you get per block. If you are lucky enough to get this one, save it for the extra-valuable ore only. Note that you cannot get Fortune and Silk Touch on the same item. Silk Touch (max level I) mines entire blocks instead of ore. You'll need to mine the ore with a different pick to get the ore, but this does save on inventory space. It can be more valuable than Fortune if you're on a large multiplayer server and plan to sell the blocks. Efficiency (max V) speeds up mining and Unbreaking (max III) increases durability.
Mine in the Nether. Once you have diamond armor and a diamond sword, you may be ready to build a Nether portal. The area on the other side has several new blocks to mine, notably Nether Quartz and Ancient Debris. There's nothing unusual about the mining itself, but be prepared to face very difficult enemies. Note that with Ancient Debris, you must have at least a diamond pickaxe to mine. This is a special block, because once you have collected four Ancient Debris and smelted them into Netherite Scrap, you can combine the four Netherite Scrap with four Gold Ingots in a crafting table to get a Netherite Ingot, which can be used to upgrade your diamond equipment to Netherite equipment, the most powerful tier.
Transport your loot with an automatic subway. If you don't mind laying tracks and tinkering with redstone, you can make your own subway system to transport goods. By digging branches off of the main subway tunnel, you can stay near your tracks and never run out of inventory space. See the linked article for details.
Loot strongholds. Strongholds are the rarest and most valuable structures that show up underground. Look for mossy or cracked stone bricks, which could potentially lead to a system of stronghold libraries, prisons, and chests. Stronghold libraries contain chests with enchanted books; you could get some enchants shown above. Each stronghold has an End Portal that can be activated in order to reach the End, a special endgame dimension. You can find the strongholds using eyes of ender, gathered from the Nether.
Make silverfish mine for you. This technique is complex, dangerous, and requires a great deal of preparation. Most players will never even consider attempting this, but if you pull it off, you can mine incredibly quickly. Here's the gist: Enchant armor with at least Protection I. Brew splash potions of poison and regeneration. Attract silverfish from the spawner found next to End portals. Construct a tunnel of glass so they can follow you without burrowing to you. Prepare a high glass walkway in the next area you plan to mine. Build two Nether portals here, one for you on the walkway and one for the silverfish below you. Lure the silverfish through a Nether walkway to the portal you just built, so they reach the area you plan to mine. Throw splash potions of poison and regeneration on the crowd of insects. They will get hurt constantly but heal before they die, summoning more silverfish from the stone around them. In just a minute or two, the silverfish will mine through a massive area of stone, leaving the ore behind.
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