Iron Ingot

Overview

Iron is the material a Minecraft world actually runs on. Buckets, shears, rails, hoppers, anvils, cauldrons, shields, flint and steel, minecarts, chains, compasses, pistons, crafters and every iron tool and armour piece all come out of the same ingot, which is why the first question in any base plan is where the iron is coming from. Ore is common between Y 15 and Y -24 and generates in large blobs, so a strip mine finds it in quantity, and raw iron smelts one for one. Beyond mining, iron is one of the few materials that is fully renewable: an iron golem farm built around a village produces ingots continuously without a player swinging a pickaxe, and that is the point at which hopper-heavy redstone builds stop being expensive. Zombies also drop ingots occasionally. Nine ingots make a block for compact storage, and nine nuggets make an ingot in the other direction. If a project stalls in the mid-game, iron is usually the reason. Every ambitious build in a world eventually turns into an iron problem, and solving it early is what separates a base that grows from one that stalls at a row of chests.

Almost every functional item in the game — buckets, shears, hoppers, rails, anvils, shields and armour — which makes it the material every base plan is built around.

Iron Ingot is one of the 3 variants of this shape in the game. What changes between them is the material, and with it the hardness, the drops, the durability and the recipe — so every figure on this page is this variant's own. Copper Ingot is the same shape in a different material.

Iron Ingot is a crafting material item in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot. You get it by killing Husk, Iron Golem, Zombie, and Zombie Villager.

It also turns up in chests in Village, Desert Pyramid, Jungle Pyramid, Pillager Outpost and 8 more. You make it with Block of Iron. Put Deepslate Iron Ore in a furnace and this is what comes out.

It is an ingredient in 33 recipes, among them Activator Rail, Anvil, Blast Furnace and 30 more.

How to get it

Smelt raw iron in a furnace, 1 ingot per ore. Iron ore is common between Y 15 and Y -24, and an iron golem farm produces ingots indefinitely once a village has enough beds and villagers.

Tips

Build an iron golem farm before any large redstone project; hoppers and rails consume iron faster than mining supplies it.
A blast furnace smelts ore in half the time of a normal furnace, which matters when processing stacks of raw iron.
Store surplus as blocks — 9 ingots per block turns a chest of iron into a shelf of it.
Zombies drop iron ingots occasionally, so an early mob farm supplements a slow start.

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

Iron Ingot ×9

Crafting Table

Iron Ingot

Furnace · 10s · 0.7 XP

Deepslate Iron Ore

Iron Ingot

Also works in: Blast Furnace

Furnace · 10s · 0.7 XP

Iron Ore

Iron Ingot

Also works in: Blast Furnace

Furnace · 10s · 0.7 XP

Raw Iron

Iron Ingot

Also works in: Blast Furnace

Dropped by

4 mobs drop Iron Ingot: Husk, Iron Golem, Zombie, and Zombie Villager. Looting raises the maximum on most of them.

Found in

Iron Ingot is in the loot tables of Village, Desert Pyramid, Jungle Pyramid, Pillager Outpost, Woodland Mansion, Shipwreck 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.
Pillager Outpost — A dark oak watchtower flying an ominous banner, surrounded by tents, log piles, and often a cage holding an iron golem or, beneath the tower, cages containing allays.
Woodland Mansion — An enormous three-storey house of dark oak and cobblestone, generated only in dark forests and typically tens of thousands of blocks from spawn, which makes a woodland explorer map from a cartographer villager the practical way to find one.
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.
Stronghold — A sprawling underground maze of stone brick corridors, spiral staircases, storerooms, prison cells and libraries, and the only place the End portal exists.

Used to craft

Iron Ingot is an ingredient in 35 recipes, producing Activator Rail, Anvil, Blast Furnace, Bucket, Cauldron, Chain, Compass, Crafter, Crossbow, Detector Rail, Flint and Steel, Heavy Weighted Pressure Plate, Hopper, Iron Axe, Iron Bars, Block of Iron and 19 more.