5 best ways to find gold in Minecraft (2023)

Gold may not be Minecraft's most precious resource, but it's still important for several reasons. Whether to craft powered rails and clocks, barter with piglins, or create netherite ingots, you will need gold at some point, and it's a good idea to keep some stashed away. Fortunately, there are more than a few ways to collect gold in the beloved sandbox game.

Finding gold in Minecraft can be accomplished in various ways. Sure, mining is one of the most direct approaches, but there are plenty more options on the table than you might think.

If you are in a hurry to find some gold, here are a few methods to consider first and foremost.

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5 methods to find plenty of gold in Minecraft

1) Mining

Mining gold may not be the most exciting way to access the resource in Minecraft, but it's often one of the most lucrative and doesn't require much effort. By heading underground in the Overworld or searching for nether gold ore in the Nether, you can rack up plenty of raw gold and gold nuggets by breaking gold ore, nether gold ore, and gilded blackstone blocks. The yields can be increased via mining by adding a Fortune enchantment to the pickaxe being used, which should make the tedious mining work feel a bit more rewarding.

Fortunately, the height levels where gold ore blocks and their variants can be found have remained largely consistent in Minecraft 1.19. As long as you know where to look, you should have plenty of success mining for gold.

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2) Looting generated structures

Just about every single generated structure in Minecraft 1.19 possesses loot chests that have the potential to offer you gold ingots when opened. However, some structures are more likely to provide gold ingots in their chests than others, and you may want to prioritize looting these structures first to avoid wasting time. Specifically, focus on looting chests in end cities, villages, nether fortresses, shipwrecks, jungle temples, bastion remnants, and finding buried treasure chests on beaches in the Overworld.

The loot to a given chest is randomized each time a world seed is generated, but you won't have to loot too hard to find more than a few gold ingots in Minecraft.

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3) Breaking gold blocks in ocean monuments and bastions

In addition to loot chests, two of Minecraft's generated structures possess solid gold blocks in their architecture, and cannot be mined. Specifically, if you comb the depths of an ocean monument or thoroughly search a bastion remnant, you'll find more than a few gold blocks that can be mined with a Silk Touch-enchanted pickaxe to collect them. Then head to a crafting table and place your golden blocks to acquire nine gold ingots per block, which should be pretty helpful in a pinch.

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4) Smelting golden gear

It's common knowledge that golden tools, weapons, and armor in Minecraft aren't the best when it comes to quality. They may work well for a little while, but they break way too easily. If you have snagged plenty of golden gear, you can pop it into a smelter and convert the gear into gold nuggets.

Granted, gold nuggets aren't as useful as ingots in most situations, but nine nuggets can be crafted into an ingot. With enough excess golden gear laying around, players should at least consider smelting it and crafting some ingots afterward.

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5) Farming zombified piglins

Setting up a gold farm in Minecraft isn't easy and will be resource-intensive, but once you have one, you won't run out of gold easily (or ever). Farms will require you to create a farm in the Nether that spawns and automatically kills zombified piglins. These drop gold nuggets upon death as well as gold ingots when you or a tamed wolf kill them.

That said, most farms stick to accruing gold nuggets, but the farm can generate so many of them that you won't run out of ingots for the foreseeable future. You may have a tough time setting up a zombie piglin farm, but it's hard to argue with the resulting endless stream of gold. You'll even receive plenty of XP from the farm.