Deepslate Redstone Ore — Minecraft block

Overview

Deepslate Redstone Ore is a stone-family block in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. It is gathered by mining rather than crafted. At hardness 4.5 this is one of the tougher blocks in the game.

It needs at least an iron pickaxe to drop anything; a weaker tool destroys it for nothing. What you actually collect is Redstone Dust. A full stack holds 64.

Its only crafting use is Redstone Dust.

About the deepslate set

How long it takes to break

Deepslate Redstone Ore sits at hardness 4.5: 23 seconds per block with your fists, 0.75 with the correct netherite tool.

Iron manages 1.2 seconds and diamond 0.85, which makes diamond the tier that changes how this block feels.

It will break below iron, and you will get nothing for it. That combination of time spent and drop lost is the classic mining mistake.

Efficiency contributes its level squared plus one to tool speed, which makes Efficiency V roughly 3.8 times faster than the plain tool.

* breaks the block but yields no drop
Tool	No enchantment	Efficiency III	Efficiency V
Hand *	23 s	23 s	23 s
Wooden *	11 s	1.9 s	0.85 s
Stone *	5.7 s	1.7 s	0.75 s
Iron	1.2 s	0.45 s	0.25 s
Diamond	0.85 s	0.4 s	0.2 s
Netherite	0.75 s	0.4 s	0.2 s
Golden *	1.9 s	1.1 s	0.6 s

Properties

Deepslate Redstone Ore has a blast resistance of 3, so a nearby explosion will usually destroy it. It blocks light completely and emits no light of its own. Stack size is 64 — the standard full stack. A pickaxe is the fastest choice here. A tool of the wrong class is no better than your fist — the speed bonus is tied to the block's own tool tag. Broken normally it drops Redstone Dust rather than itself; Silk Touch is what returns the block, and Fortune raises the ordinary drop instead.

Transparent: No
Required tool: Iron Pickaxe

Where it generates

Redstone sits in the deepest layers alongside diamond, so a single strip mine at Y=-59 harvests both at once. Each block drops four to five dust before Fortune, which is generous enough that redstone rarely becomes a bottleneck once you reach deepslate. The ore lights up and emits particles when a player or mob touches it, which makes it easy to spot in an unlit cave, and it stays lit for a few seconds afterwards.

A second, uniform band generates from bedrock up to about Y=15, which is why redstone turns up on the way down as well as at the bottom. Density increases steadily below Y=-32.

Generation range: Y -64 … Y -32
Best Y level: Y -59
Densest at: Y -59
Dimension: Overworld
Experience dropped: 1–5