Deepslate — Minecraft block

Overview

Deepslate is the stone of the lower world. Below roughly Y 0 it replaces ordinary stone entirely, fading in over a transition band from about Y 8 down to Y -8, and everything that generates in it — every ore, every cave wall — takes the deepslate variant. The practical consequence is mining speed: deepslate has a hardness of 3 against stone's 1.5, so every block in the deep world takes twice as long to break, and Efficiency on a pickaxe matters far more below Y 0 than above it. Mined normally it drops cobbled deepslate, exactly as stone drops cobblestone; Silk Touch is needed to collect the deepslate block itself, and a furnace turns cobbled deepslate back into deepslate. As a building material it is one of the darkest greys available and comes with a complete family: cobbled, polished, bricks, tiles, chiseled, plus stairs, slabs and walls of each through the stonecutter. Because the whole diamond and redstone layer is deepslate, most players end up with far more of it than they know what to do with, which is why so many late-game builds are grey.

The dark grey building family — polished, bricks, tiles and chiseled — and the stone you will inevitably be tunnelling through at Y -59 while mining diamond and redstone.

Deepslate counts as a stone-family block in Minecraft 1.21.4. At a hardness of 3 it takes a moment to break but never slows a build down. It needs at least a wooden pickaxe to drop anything; a weaker tool destroys it for nothing.

What you actually collect is Cobbled Deepslate. A full stack holds 64. It is smelted from Cobbled Deepslate.

Nothing on the crafting grid is made from it.

About the deepslate set

How to get it

Mine it with any pickaxe below Y 0, where it replaces stone entirely. It drops cobbled deepslate unless you use Silk Touch, and takes about twice as long to break as ordinary stone.

Tips

Bring Efficiency IV or V below Y 0: deepslate's hardness of 3 doubles the time every block takes.
Silk Touch gives the deepslate block itself; without it you get cobbled deepslate, which smelts back.
Use a stonecutter for deepslate stairs — it saves a third of the material over a crafting table.
Deepslate tiles and bricks are the standard palette for dark castle and dungeon builds; nothing else is as neutral.

How long it takes to break

Deepslate has a hardness of 3. By hand that is 15 seconds per block; with the correct tool at netherite tier it is 0.5 seconds.

An iron tool takes 0.75 seconds and a diamond one 0.6, so the jump that actually matters for this block is the one to iron.

The block still breaks with a weaker tool, but below wooden it yields nothing at all — the time is spent and the drop is lost, which is the single most common way players waste a vein.

Efficiency adds its level squared plus one to the tool speed, so Efficiency V is about 3.3 times faster than the same tool unenchanted.

* breaks the block but yields no drop
Tool	No enchantment	Efficiency III	Efficiency V
Hand *	15 s	15 s	15 s
Wooden	2.3 s	0.4 s	0.2 s
Stone	1.2 s	0.35 s	0.15 s
Iron	0.75 s	0.3 s	0.15 s
Diamond	0.6 s	0.25 s	0.15 s
Netherite	0.5 s	0.25 s	0.15 s
Golden	0.4 s	0.25 s	0.15 s

Properties

Deepslate has a blast resistance of 6, so a nearby explosion will usually destroy it. It blocks light completely and emits no light of its own. One inventory slot holds 64, the normal full stack. It is not renewable: every one in the world is finite. A pickaxe is fastest here; any other class mines it at bare-hand speed, because the bonus only applies to the class the block is tagged for. Broken normally it drops Cobbled Deepslate rather than itself; Silk Touch is what returns the block, and Fortune raises the ordinary drop instead.

Transparent: No
Required tool: Wooden Pickaxe
Renewable: No