- Gold ores generate between Y levels -64 and 32. The Y level where you'll find the most gold in Minecraft is -16.
- Gold ores can also generate from level 32 to 256 in badlands biomes.
- Preferably, carry a Fortune III enchanted pickaxe whether you're caving in the badlands biome or branch mining in other biomes.
Gold is not the best material for armor, tools, and weapons in Minecraft. But that doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Numerous crafting recipes use gold ingots and features like bartering with piglins and trading with cleric villagers that require gold. So today, we will show you the best level to find gold ores in Minecraft.
Best Y Coordinate to Mine Gold in Minecraft
Regular Generation
Gold ores generate from Y level -64 to 32 in most Minecraft biomes.
As you can see from the ore distribution chart below, there are two batches. The first one generates these ores throughout the entire range, with the most frequent ones being generated around level -16. The ores that generate on Y levels toward either end get increasingly rarer. These gold ores have reduced air exposure, which means you’ll find more of them surrounded by other solid blocks.
The second batch generates gold ores from Y level -48 all the way down to the bedrock so that ores are spread evenly.
To answer your question on which Y level is the best for mining gold ores in Minecraft, it’s Y level -16. This is the altitude where you will find most gold ores, though they are mostly surrounded by solid blocks. If the gold ore replaces deepslate or tuff, it will become a deepslate gold ore.
Badlands Generation
The chart above also shows one more massive batch of gold ore generation, but it applies only to the badlands biome. Unlike iron and copper, there are no huge gold veins, but gold ores generate much more commonly in the badlands biome than in any other biome.
In addition to the two batches explained above, badlands biomes have also one more batch of gold ore generation that spreads evenly from Y level 32 to 256. These ores will generate regardless of the air exposure, so you’ll also find them more easily. Therefore, if you want to get lots of gold and gold ores, heading to the badlands biome is a must.
Items You Should Bring to Mine Gold
Now, let’s see what items you should bring while looking for and mining gold ores. We recommend the following:
- Armor, weapon, and a shield
- Plenty of food
- Fortune or silk touch iron, diamond or netherite pickaxe
- Decent shovel
- Lots of torches
- Bucket of water
- Crafting table
- Chest or two
- Bed
Armor, weapon, shield and food will all help you stay alive. When you mine gold ore with an iron, diamond, or netherite pickaxe, you will get raw gold. This is an item that you can smelt into gold ingots. If you use any other pickaxe, including the gold pickaxe, the ore will break yielding nothing.
However, you can increase the number of raw gold dropped by the ore thanks to the fortune enchantment. The higher level it is, the more likely you are to get more raw gold. In case you’d like to obtain the regular or deepslate gold ores for building or decoration, you’ll need silk touch enchantment.
Shovel will help you mine dirt and gravel quickly. Torches are cheap light source blocks that stop mob spawning and also provide light to the area. Bucket of water will allow you to turn any unwanted lava into obsidian or cobblestone. Crafting table is useful in case you break a tool and need to quickly make a new one. Also, having some logs in your inventory will let you turn them into sticks and planks for crafting.
At the end of your mining expedition, you’ll probably have all sorts of blocks in your inventory. So, to save up inventory space for more valuable items, you can stash the other random blocks in a chest. Finally, you should probably never leave your house without a bed, as you can easily skip nighttime and dangers with it.
Caving vs Branch Gold Mining: Which is Better?
As you probably know, players usually either explore caves or branch mine to find ores. Exploring caves or caving is a dangerous and exciting activity, as you’ll most likely find lots of hostile mobs on the way. However, you’ll also find plenty of valuables in the floor, walls and ceiling of caves.
Branch mining is a mining technique that implies you dig long and narrow tunnels, usually two blocks tall and one block wide, in the side of terrain. You can also create tunnels off of the tunnels you’ve already made, branching off to different directions. This will allow you to locate any hidden ores as soon as possible.
Caving can yield fast results, but is more dangerous than branch mining. Whereas, branch mining is safe, but it can be slow to find resources this way. Due to most gold ores generating with reduced air exposure, it is better to search for them through the branch mining technique. Though, if you are inside a badlands biome where air exposure doesn’t affect gold ore generation, then exploring caves is the way to go.
Just like that, you now know what the best level for finding gold ores is in Minecraft. With this knowledge, you are free to get as much gold as you can for your projects. So, what are you planning to do with gold ores and/or raw gold? Tell us in the comments below!
To mine gold ores, you’ll need an iron, diamond or netherite pickaxe. The gold pickaxe ironically cannot mine gold ores.
Yes, gold is the weakest material you can make tools, weapons and armor out of, since these items have really low max durabilities. But gold has some other important uses in-game.
