Abyss ores, depths and picks
Everything you can mine in the descent, where it turns up, and what you have to be holding to get it out.
Two separate things are worth digging for down here:
- Ordinary ores are seeded through plain stone and deepslate, and open up as you go deeper. Any pickaxe of the usual vanilla tier works.
- Ginko minerals are the Abyss’s own seams. They answer to their own tools, and a diamond pickaxe will not open a rare one however long you hit it.
The depths below are where to start looking rather than a guarantee. Terrain shifts a boundary here and there, so treat them as guidance.
The strata, by depth
| Stratum | Height |
|---|---|
| 0 - The Sulfur Sea | surface, sea at 1552 |
| I - The Shallows | 1502 – 1382 |
| II - The Verdant Deep | 1382 – 1262 |
| III - The Great Hollow | 1262 – 1142 |
| IV - The Blooming Wilds | 1142 – 1022 |
| V - The Sunless Sea | 1022 – 902 |
| VI - The Elder Depths | 902 – 782 |
| VII - The Bleeding Earth | 782 – 662 |
| VIII - The Inverted World | 662 – 542 |
| IX - The Pale Expanse | 542 – 422 |
| X - The Abyssal Verge | 422 – 302 |
| XI - The Root | 302 – −64 |
Ordinary ores
Only plain stone and deepslate carry ore. Calcite, tuff, granite, basalt and cinnabar stay clean, so you never find a seam sitting awkwardly in the middle of a decorative band.
| Ore | From | Pick needed | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coal | everywhere | wooden+ | |
| Iron | everywhere | stone+ | |
| Copper | down to stratum VIII | stone+ | |
| Gold | stratum III and below | iron+ | half again as rich in VII, which is the layer that ought to be worth the burns |
| Redstone | stratum V and below | iron+ | |
| Lapis | stratum IV and below | stone+ | |
| Diamond | stratum IV and below | iron+ | |
| Emerald | stratum VIII and below | iron+ | alone, never in a vein, the way mountains do it |
The deepest gate is emerald at VIII. Strata IX, X and XI hold the same ordinary ores as VIII, so if it is vanilla ore you are after, there is no reason to go below the Pale Expanse.
Seams come up as pockets rather than thin sheets, so when you break into one it is usually worth following.
Ginko minerals
The Abyss’s own seams, with their own tool requirements, sounds and drops. Mining one drops the raw mineral rather than the block.
| Mineral | Tier | Pick needed | Where it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marmorite | common | any pickaxe | Stratum I, upper half |
| Vulcanite | common | any pickaxe | Stratum I, lower half |
| Aurite | rare | abyssal or echo pick | Stratum II thickly, III and IV thinly |
| Porphyrite | rare | abyssal or echo pick | Stratum II thickly, III and IV thinly |
| Thalassite | rare | abyssal or echo pick | Stratum II thickly, III and IV thinly |
| Laurionite | rare | abyssal or echo pick | not in the Abyss at all - the ice caverns |
| Aetherite | epic | vulcanite pickaxe only | VI–VIII rarely, IX–X more often |
One mineral per pocket, always. You break into aurite, not into a speckle of three different things.
Which picks open what
- Marmorite pickaxe - crafted, from refined marmorite
- Vulcanite pickaxe - crafted, from refined vulcanite
- Echo pickaxe - crafted, from echo crystal
- Abyssal pickaxe - found, and only as a drop below stratum IV
The Abyssal pickaxe is the odd one out: the others are made at a bench from something you refined yourself, and it is the descent’s own answer to a seam your diamond pick bounces off. It stops at rare. Aetherite still answers to a vulcanite pick alone, so a lucky drop will not hand you the deepest tier.
The way down, in order
- Walk in with any pickaxe. Marmorite in the upper Shallows and vulcanite just below it are both already open to you.
- Refine either into a pick. That pick opens the rare seams - aurite, porphyrite and thalassite - waiting one stratum down in the Verdant Deep, and thinly through the Great Hollow and Blooming Wilds under it.
- Or skip the bench entirely: get past stratum IV and hope for an abyssal pickaxe to drop, which opens the same rare tier with no crafting at all.
- Aetherite starts appearing from stratum VI, rarely at first and noticeably more often from the Pale Expanse down. It stays behind a vulcanite pick the whole way.
Mineral armour
Four netherite-grade sets, one per mineral, crafted from refined minerals at a bench. Because you made them yourself they stay enchantable at a table like ordinary gear, rather than carrying the fixed enchantments that found armour does.
| Set | Protection | Durability | Level | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marmorite | netherite +15% | +50% | 29 | +2 hearts, and nothing else. The plain set |
| Vulcanite | netherite +40% | +75% | 31 | +2 hearts; mends half a heart every 7s for one piece, down to every 3s for the full set; the chest grants Fire Resistance; the full set gives Speed I. Any piece burns in water or open rain |
| Aurite | netherite +30% | +75% | 33 | +4 hearts; +10% axe damage per piece, and 5% per piece to repel an attacker; the full set gives a gilded aura and makes food 50% more filling |
| Thalassite | netherite +30% | +100% | 34 | +4 hearts; the helm grants Water Breathing, the greaves Dolphin’s Grace, the full set trails bubbles |
| Aetherite | netherite +45% | +100% | 36 | +6 hearts; falls stop hurting |
Extra health comes per piece, so a partial set still counts for something. The two Shallows minerals give half a heart a piece; the rare pair from the Verdant Deep give a full one.
These sit just under the found mythical sets, and the split is deliberate: crafted gear buys protection and utility, found gear buys health.
Aetherite is the deep set, and the only one whose ore comes from below the Sunless Sea. It is doubly gated, since the epic tier answers to a vulcanite pick alone, so wearing it is proof both of the descent and of the pick that got you there. A full set takes 24 refined aetherite, which is somewhere around 32,760 gold of material - the most expensive craft in the game.
Vulcanite is the strongest plate down here and the only set with a real drawback. The water penalty is flat rather than per piece, so a single boot costs you exactly what the whole set would.
Porphyrite, laurionite and aetherite have no armour of their own. Aetherite in particular is what the whole pick progression builds toward, and still gives you only a sword and a lamp.
Repairing it
Every piece of Abyss mineral gear - armour, tools and swords, thirty items in all - mends only from its own refined mineral, a quarter of the bar per unit, up to four units at a time, at one level each.
The anvil refuses the wrong mineral outright, so nobody is cheapening a piece of aurite plate with an ordinary ingot. Bring the same mineral it was forged from.
Enchanted books and merging two of the same piece both work as normal, since neither is a material repair. Mineral blocks and the aetherite lamp cannot be repaired at all: they are forged from refined ore but have no durability bar to mend.
Ore inside the zones
A zone builds its own rock, so the ordinary depth-based ore never appears inside one. A zone is barren unless it seeds ore of its own, and every one that does is listed here.
| Place | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Lantern Gardens (I) | coal, copper, iron in small clusters |
| Blossom Caverns (II) | coal, copper, iron; a little gold on the flooded ocean bed |
| Verdant Rivers (II) | four river courses carrying coal, and a little gold |
| Amethyst Peaks (III) | coal, copper, iron and gold in denser clusters; valuable obsidian nodules |
| Bloom Hollow (IV) | coal, copper, iron, gold, lapis, and rare diamond clusters |
| Elder Vaults (VI) | diamond, emerald, lapis, gold, redstone, budding amethyst and raw metal banked into the strongroom walls |
| Sounding Posts (VI) | one seam in the cellar wall |
| Ember Reach (VII) | gold, sealed in the rock beneath the shore and the Anvil |
| Upturned (VIII) | lapis and redstone, deep in the body rock |
| Boneyard (IX) | redstone and gold, under the ash |
| Leviathan (X) | gold, lapis and redstone, through the flesh wall |
| The Root (XI) | diamond, ancient debris, emerald, and vulcanite, thalassite, porphyrite and aurite |
The Root is the only zone where Ginko minerals turn up. Everything else on that list is ordinary ore, matching roughly what the surrounding stratum would have given you anyway.
Soil, roads, decorative surfaces and the undersides of islands never carry ore.
Ore you do not have to mine
Ruin containers stock themselves according to depth.
- Stratum VI and below draw the deep table: diamond, gold ingots, iron blocks, echo shards, amethyst, ancient debris, obsidian, glowstone, and gold blocks, the one deep find that converts into whatever you actually wanted.
- Monuments - the Pale Cathedral and the Inverted Temple - hold a relic better than half the time, and roughly a third of those come from the mythical table.
Containers left behind by the Abyss’s own builders stock themselves the same way, from stratum V down.