- Redstone can be obtained in four ways in Minecraft, including mining, within chests, killing witches, and trading.
- The easiest method to find redstone is by mining redsone ores underground with an iron or better pickaxe.
- You can loot chests in dungeons, mineshafts, strongholds, villages, and woodland mansions to find redstone dust.
- The witches drop 4-8 redstone dust when killed and cleric villagers sell this item for emeralds.
Minecraft’s truly unique feature is its Redstone mechanics. They allow you to make amazing Minecraft farms and various creative contraptions using the new crafter too. The one item needed for almost all Redstone-related machines is well, Redstone, which is technically called redstone dust. In this tutorial, we’ve discussed all the ways you can use to get redstone dust so you have a sufficient supply for all your creative projects.
1. Find Redstone Ore in Minecraft
The most traditional and fastest way to find redstone dust is by looking for redstone ore and mining it. Regular and deepslate redstone ores are blocks that generate underground. We have a dedicated Minecraft ore distribution guide to help you learn exactly where redstone ore generates.
The best Y level to find redstone ore is all the way at the bottom, so from Y level = -63 to -32. The deeper you go, the more redstone you’ll find.
If you mine the Redstone ore with an iron or a better pickaxe that doesn’t have the silk touch enchantment, it ends up dropping Redstone dust. But if you break it with any other item, the block disappears without dropping anything.
On the other hand, if you have fortune pickaxe enchantment, you’ll receive a lot more redstone dust per ore, which is a far more efficient way of obtaining it in large quantities.
2. Get Redstone from Chest Loot
One of the easiest ways to find Redstone in Minecraft is from chest loot that generates across the blocky world. You can find chests with Redstone dust in the following locations:
- Dungeons
- Mineshafts
- Strongholds
- Villages
- Woodland Mansions
The chests in strongholds and mineshafts usually have the highest amount of Redstone dust. So, we recommend visiting these locations to get even more Redstone dust for your projects.
3. Trade for Redstone Dust
In both Minecraft Bedrock and Java, the novice-level cleric villagers offer Redstone dust in exchange for emeralds.
On the Java edition, you can get 2 pieces of Redstone dust in exchange for 1 emerald. Meanwhile, on the Bedrock edition, you will receive 4 pieces of Redstone dust for a single emerald. Alternatively, it is possible to get Redstone dust for free by protecting villagers from a raid in Minecraft. On the Java edition, the clerics throw Redstone dust at players with the “Hero of the Village” effect.
4. Kill Witches to Get Redstone
Most Minecraft mobs drop some useful items whenever they die. Luckily, one of those mobs drops redstone dust. By killing a witch, starting from the Minecraft 1.21 update, there is a 100% chance that this mob will drop 4-8 redstone dust when killed.
The witch is a hostile mob that spawns in dark places and also in witch huts in the swamp Minecraft biome. You can increase the drop quantity up to 11 by enchanting your sword with looting III sword enchantment.
With that, you know all the methods that can get you redstone dust in Minecraft. And once you have enough of it, our list of best Minecraft farms is going to help you make the most of it. Moreover, you can read about all Redstone components like hoppers, dispensers, and more, via our guide.
Having said that, what are you going to use redstone for first? Share with us in the comment section below!
Sanmay Chakrabarti
