Where to find diamonds in Minecraft: the best Y level

Diamonds are most common at Y -59, just above the bedrock. Go to that layer, dig long tunnels instead of exploring caves, and keep a water bucket ready for lava.

Diamond Ore only drops a Diamond when you break it with an Iron Pickaxe, a Diamond Pickaxe or a Netherite Pickaxe. A Stone Pickaxe, Copper Pickaxe, Golden Pickaxe or Wooden Pickaxe breaks the block but drops nothing.

Also pack:

• a Water Bucket against lava,
• a stack of Torches to light the tunnels,
• food and a few spare blocks to seal off lava.

Press F3 and read the Y value in the XYZ line: it is the height of your feet. In Java Edition 26.3, diamond ore generates from Y -64 to Y 16 in every Overworld biome, and it gets more common the deeper you go. Bedrock fills Y -64 to -60 irregularly, so Y -59 is the first clean layer and the peak. Anything between Y -60 and Y -38 is still a good layer.

Below Y 0, the underground is Deepslate (stone and deepslate mix between Y 0 and Y 8), so most of your finds will be Deepslate Diamond Ore. It drops the same diamonds, but deepslate breaks more slowly than stone.

Redstone Ore peaks at the same layer, so one trip fills both. Compare the two curves in the explorer below.

Diamond veins that touch air lose blocks during world generation. Small and medium veins skip 50% of the blocks that would touch a cave, large veins skip 70%. A fourth type, the buried vein (4 per chunk), never places a single block next to air. Caves therefore show you only part of the diamonds; the rest sits in solid rock.

Branch mining reaches those hidden veins:

1. Dig a main tunnel 2 blocks high at Y -59.
2. Every 3 blocks, dig a side branch 2 high, 1 wide and about 32 blocks long.
3. This leaves 2 blocks of rock between two branches. Each of those blocks touches a tunnel, so you see every block.
4. Check both walls, the floor and the ceiling as you go.

During world generation, caves and ravines between Y -63 and Y -55 are filled with lava instead of air. At Y -59 you are inside that zone: any block you break can open a lava lake.

• Dig a staircase down, never straight down.
• When lava shows up, place a block in the hole at once.
• Keep the Water Bucket in your hotbar: water poured on a lava source turns it into Obsidian.
• Items that fall into lava burn, diamonds included.

Without enchantments, each Diamond Ore drops 1 diamond and 3–7 experience points. Fortune III multiplies the drop: 40% chance of 1 diamond and 20% each for 2, 3 or 4, so 2.2 diamonds per ore on average. Fortune I averages 1.33, Fortune II 1.75.

Silk Touch drops the ore block itself instead. That is useful while you have no Fortune pickaxe yet: keep the ore blocks and break them later with Fortune III. Fortune and Silk Touch cannot be on the same pickaxe.

Tip: explosions destroy part of the drop of diamond ore, so never use TNT to mine diamonds.