Overview
Emeralds are currency, not equipment. There is no emerald tool, no emerald armour and no emerald building set worth the cost — what they buy is villager trades, and villager trades are the fastest route to Mending, Protection IV, saddles, name tags, enchanted diamond gear and bulk food in the game. A librarian selling Mending for a few emeralds saves you thirty levels of gambling at an enchanting table, which is why experienced players build a trading hall before they build a mine. Emerald ore is the rarest ore in the game and only generates in mountain biomes — windswept hills, meadows, groves, jagged and stony peaks and snowy slopes — where it appears as single blocks rather than veins, peaking high up around Y 236. Mining for it is therefore a poor use of time. The efficient supply is trading: sell wheat, carrots, pumpkins, coal or paper to villagers and the emeralds arrive by the stack. A single automated sugar cane farm supplying a librarian with paper will out-earn any mountain expedition. Build the farm, not the expedition, and the trading hall pays for itself within a week.
Buying villager trades — Mending books, Protection IV, saddles, name tags and enchanted gear — which is faster and cheaper than enchanting the same things yourself.
Emerald is a crafting material item in Minecraft 1.21.4. It stacks to 64. The usual source is Evoker, Pillager, and Vindicator.
Look for it in the loot of Village, Desert Pyramid, Jungle Pyramid, Ocean Ruins and 8 more. It is mined from Emerald Ore, which is most common around Y 236. You make it with Block of Emerald.
Put Deepslate Emerald Ore in a furnace and this is what comes out. It is not used in any crafting recipe.
How to get it
Sell crops, paper, coal or sticks to villagers — a librarian buys 24 paper for 1 emerald. Emerald ore generates only in mountain biomes as single blocks, peaking around Y 236.
Tips
- Farm emeralds through trading, not mining; the ore is the rarest in the game and generates one block at a time.
- A paper or crop farm plus one librarian produces more emeralds per hour than any mountain trip.
- Cure a zombie villager to get permanently discounted trades — see villager trading.
- Villagers restock twice a day, so a trading hall rewards regular visits rather than one long session.
Properties
One inventory slot holds 64, so a double chest holds 3,456.
- Stack size
- 64
- Renewable
- Yes
- Category
- Materials
How to get it
Crafting Table
Shapeless recipe
Emerald ×9
Furnace · 10s · 1 XP
Emerald
Also works in: Blast Furnace
Furnace · 10s · 1 XP
Emerald
Also works in: Blast Furnace
Dropped by
3 mobs drop Emerald: Evoker, Pillager, and Vindicator. Looting raises the maximum on most of them.
Found in
Emerald is in the loot tables of Village, Desert Pyramid, Jungle Pyramid, Ocean Ruins, Shipwreck, Buried Treasure and 2 more.
- Village — Villages generate in five architectural variants — plains, desert, savanna, taiga and snowy — each built from local materials with its own house shapes, and the variant is fixed by the biome of the village centre even if it sprawls across a border.
- Desert Pyramid — A sandstone temple with an orange-and-blue terracotta motif on its floor, always with a hidden shaft under the centre tile.
- Jungle Pyramid — A mossy cobblestone temple buried in jungle canopy, and the only structure in the game built around an actual redstone puzzle.
- Ocean Ruins — Scattered clusters of sunken buildings, in a sandstone warm-water variant and a stone cold-water variant.
- Shipwreck — A wrecked sailing ship, generated upright, capsized, or broken in two, on the sea floor or beached on the sand.
- Buried Treasure — A single chest buried beneath a beach or shallow sea bed, findable only with a buried treasure map from a shipwreck or ocean ruin.
- Trail Ruins — A buried settlement of terracotta, mud bricks and stripped logs, almost entirely underground, so it is easy to walk over one without noticing.
- Trial Chambers — A copper and tuff complex of interconnected combat rooms, corridors and reward vaults, generating throughout the Overworld underground.
Dropped by blocks
Mining Emerald Ore and Deepslate Emerald Ore drops Emerald.
Used to craft
Emerald is an ingredient in 1 recipes, producing Block of Emerald.
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
How do you make Emerald in Minecraft?
Emerald is crafted from Block of Emerald.
What is the stack size of Emerald?
Emerald stacks to 64.
