What is the best y level for iron in Minecraft 1.21?

Wondering what is the best y level for iron in Minecraft? Iron is one of the most important resources in all of Minecraft. Early on, it makes for great armor, tools, and weapons, and it maintains its value into the late game thanks to being required to craft shields, hoppers, crafters, and more. This means that knowing the best levels to find iron, as well as its major uses, is one of the most important parts of survival.

Here is the y best level to find iron in Minecraft as well as all of the material's uses in a survival playthrough.

How to find iron ore in Minecraft? - Best Y level for iron ore

Iron ore found within deepslate (Image via Mojang)

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Here are the Y levels where you can find iron ore in Minecraft:

Total Range of iron ore generation: -64 to 320
Best Layer for iron ore: 14
Layer(s) with no iron ore: 73 to 77

Y level 14 is the best layer for finding iron ore in Minecraft. Thankfully, finding iron is quite easy. Iron ore can generate across almost the entire range of a world, and it only skips Y levels 73 through 79 in worlds. Mining around Y level 14 can get you lots of iron ores easily in Minecraft. Iron is easy to find in the mountain biomes that make up Minecraft's best seeds, with large amounts of ore generated exposed to the air. This makes mountains amazing to find early game, as they can jumpstart your progression.

If lucky, players may also discover rich iron ore veins below Y level 0. These ore veins are full of deepslate iron ores, raw iron blocks, and tuff. After mining iron ores, you can smelt them in a furance to make iron ingots in Minecraft.

Major uses for iron in Minecraft

Iron has many uses in Minecraft, ranging from crafting equipments and armors to useful blocks like anvil and crafters. Let's go over the best ways to use iron ore in Minecraft:

Armor

Iron armor is the first type of armor that most players will use. A full set of iron armor can give players a total of 60% damage resistance against attacks, compared to the 80% of diamond armor. This makes it great to use in the mid-game when diamonds are still in short supply.

Iron is also needed to make shields, an armor type that is useful no matter what stage of the game it is. Shields can also be personalized by adding a banner to them, making them useful for decorating medieval builds like Minecraft castles.

Tools

Crossbows are handy due to being able to be kept loaded (Image via Mojang)

Iron is also used to make several different tools and weapons. Iron, as a tier, falls between stone and diamond. In that sense, it's on par with gold—iron blocks in Minecraft can break, but iron tools have much better durability. There are also two utility tools made from iron. The first of these is the flint and steel needed to light fires and start Nether portals. The other is shears, which can be used to get wool off of sheep.

Outside of iron swords, iron is also needed to craft crossbows, which are needed to get Minecraft's Arbalistic achievement.

Anvils

Another major use of iron is to craft anvils. Anvils are one of the most important pieces of a Minecraft enchanting setup. They allow you to combine enchanted books with items. You can also combine enchanted items to level enchantments up, making tools more powerful. Items can also be renamed within anvils for a cheap XP cost.

Crafters

One of the most interesting uses of iron is in Minecraft 1.21's new crafters. These are redstone components that can take base materials as input and then automatically craft more advanced items. Auto-crafting is a feature of many mods, so having a vanilla option is going to revolutionize a huge number of the game's best farms.

Hoppers

The final, and arguably most important, use of iron is in the creation of hoppers. These items are quite expensive, requiring an entire chest and five iron ingots per hopper. However, they are more than worth their cost, as they can connect different inventories and send items around automatically.

Many of the game's best farms can only operate thanks to hoppers sending items from one location to another.

Conclusion

In Minecraft, iron is one of the most valuable and versatile resources to help players progress through the early game. Players looking for iron ore can mine around Y level 14 to find lots of them. Exploring tall mountains and large caves is another way to spot iron ore veins easily.

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Edited by Siddharth Satish