Emerald Ore

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Emerald Ore

Type	Solid Block
Requirements	None
Physics	No
Transparency	No
Luminance	No
Blast resistance	15
Tool
Renewable	No
Stackable	Yes (64)
Flammable	No
Availability	?
First appearance	12w21a
Data value	dec: 129 hex: 81 bin: 10000001

Emerald ore is an extremely rare mineral block that only generates in Extreme Hills or Extreme Hills Edge biomes and drops emeralds when mined with a diamond or iron pickaxe without the Silk Touch enchantment. It drops 1 Emerald from each ore block mined in this way (1-4 if Fortune III is used) or experience orbs worth 5-7 experience if mined with any other tool (including a pickaxe without Silk Touch.) Instead of generating in veins like other ores, it is encountered as a single block, and tends to be very scattered around. It is also the only ore with a texture that looks to be small square gems embedded inside the ore, unlike the small, broken rectangles seen on the other ores.

1 Ore distribution
2 As a smelting ingredient
3 Video
4 History
5 Issues
6 Trivia
7 Gallery
8 See also
9 References

[edit] Ore distribution

Emerald ore is only generated in Extreme Hills (Edge) biomes. Due to the nature of the generation algorithm, it may be found a short distance into adjacent biomes, but always within the same chunk as an Extreme Hills (Edge) biome.^[1] It attempts to generate 3-8 times per each chunk, generating anywhere between layers 4 and 32, meaning it can occur as high up as gold can. In a world there are about 0.2 Emerald ores per chunk. It will only generate in locations which would have otherwise been stone - it is thus possible for as few as 2 to 0 emeralds to generate in a chunk. Found as individual blocks, rather than veins, it can be encountered more commonly than gold, which has a similar range. Also note that even though Emerald ore is less common than Diamond ore in general, it is possible for Emerald ore to be more common than diamond ore in a certain type of biome or a specific chunk.

[edit] As a smelting ingredient

Ingredients

Input » Output

Emerald Ore

Note: Emerald ore blocks can only be mined with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch.

[edit] Video

[edit] History

Indev
Indev		During Indev, diamond was originally named emerald.
Official release
1.3.1	12w21a	On 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] For the release of 12w21a, the block was changed to an emerald ore. The texture for emerald ore 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."
	12w21b	The texture was corrected from to . The previous ruby texture remains in the items.png file above the emerald texture. Translations of emerald as diamond were also corrected. An analysis of a 500x500 Extreme Hills biome with MCedit gave 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	Emerald ore would have no longer generated naturally.^[5] This was due to the large number of complaints by users about emerald ore's rarity, despite Jeb's wishes for it to only be a "nice find." If this change had occurred, it would have still been available in the Creative mode menu.^[6] However, Jeb eventually decided against it and added emerald ore back into natural generation after more community response.^[7] Jeb later decided to keep emeralds spawning as he thought it would be a "nice surprise"; Emerald ore now only generates in veins of 1. Because of this, it is much more practical to obtain emeralds through trading.

[edit] Issues

Issues relating to "Emerald Ore" are maintained on Mojira. Report issues there.

[edit] Trivia

Ruby and ruby ore can be found in the lang files, which indicates that the gem and ore were originally supposed to be rubies. This is supported by the fact that the first screenshot of the trading system released by Jeb featured red gems rather than green ones and that one of the snapshots had ruby ore texture instead of the correct texture (emerald).
Emerald and Nether Quartz are the only biome-specific ores.
Mining emerald ore, along with other ores, gives you experience orbs, allowing for a different way to get enchantments. One stack of emerald ore will give roughly 18 levels.
Emerald ore, along with Lapis Lazuli ore and Nether Quartz ore, are the only ores that have a unique texture
Ruby ore may not be implemented again, as players could confuse it with Redstone Ore

[edit] Gallery

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 new texture of emerald ore.
Emerald ore found at layer 18 in an Extreme Hills biome.
A wall of emerald ore utilizing a previous texture in Snapshot 12w21a.
The texture that was used by ruby ore before it was changed to emerald ore.
Naturally occurring Emerald Ore as of Snapshot 12w22a.
Emerald blocks, emerald ores, and emeralds.
A comparison of the occurrence of Emerald Ore to the occurrence of Diamond Ore.