Where to find emeralds in Minecraft 1.17 Caves & Cliffs update?

Minecraft's latest 1.17 Caves & Cliffs update part 1 was released on June 8th by Mojang. The new changes and features added have left players eager to start their new survival world.

The most fun and exciting part about starting a new Minecraft survival world is gathering rare and valuable minerals like emeralds and diamonds. Emeralds are essentially used as the currency for trading with villagers. Players can trade many items with the villagers for emeralds.

Likewise, emeralds can be exchanged for specific items, depending on which type of trader players decide to transact with. For example, an apprentice butcher can trade one emerald for five cooked chickens.

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Different ways of finding emeralds in Minecraft 1.17 Caves & Cliffs update

Emerald ores can be mined (Image via Minecraft)

Mining emerald ores

Emerald ores can only be found in the mountains biome. Mining emerald ores isn't the most efficient way of finding these items as only small veins are generated, and that too, rarely.

Emerald ores can be mined using an iron pickaxe or better, or else it won't drop any emeralds. If an emerald ore is mined using a silk touch pickaxe, it will drop as an emerald ore, which can be later smelted to get emerald.

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Emeralds in chests of naturally generated structures

Emeralds inside the chest of a village house (Image via Minecraft)

Emeralds can be found in chests of structures like villages, shipwrecks, buried treasure, underwater ruins, and desert temples. These naturally formed structures have different chances of having emeralds in their chests:

• Buried Treasures have a 59.9% chance of having 4-8 emeralds.
• Underwater Ruins have 14.9% or 16.4% of having an emerald, depending on the chest size.
• Desert temples also have a decent probability of having 1-3 emeralds with an 18% chance.
• Shipwrecks have the highest possibility of having 1-5 emeralds with a 73.7% chance.
• Villages can have from 9.9% up to 31.8% chance of having a maximum of 4 emeralds in their chests depending on which biome they are generated in and which traders house the chests are in.

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Emeralds from mobs

A fox with an emerald in its mouth (Image via ExplodingTNT)

To find these rare minerals, players can also spill the blood of Vindicators and Evokers as they can also drop emeralds upon death. These hostile mobs can be found in Woodland Mansions.

Another mob that can be a source of emerald is foxes holding an emerald in their mouth. These animals holding emeralds can have a drop rate of up to 100% when they die.