Emerald ore is the rarest mineral block in the game. It only generates in Extreme Hills or Extreme Hills Edge biomes, and drops emeralds when mined with a diamond or iron pickaxe without the Silk Touch enchantment. It drops 1 Emerald from each ore block mined in this way (1-4 if Fortune III is used) or experience orbs worth 5-7 experience if mined with any other tool (including a pickaxe without Silk Touch.) Instead of generating in veins like other ores, it is encountered as a single block, and tends to be very scattered around. It is also the only ore with a texture that looks to be small square gems embedded inside the ore, unlike the small, broken rectangles seen on the other ores. It can also be obtained with laser drill.
Note: Emerald ore blocks can only be obtained directly with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch. Otherwise they will drop emeralds when mined.
Villager Trading[]
Another way to obtain emeralds is by trading with NPC villagers, who will give you emeralds for certain items depending on their occupation, like bookshelves for librarians, or meat for butchers.
Ore distribution[]
Emerald ore is only generated in Extreme Hills (Edge) biomes. Due to the nature of the generation algorithm, it may be found a short distance into adjacent biomes, but always within the same chunk as an Extreme Hills (Edge) biome.[1] It attempts to generate 3-8 times per each chunk, generating anywhere between layers 4 and 32, meaning it can occur as high up as gold can. In a world there are about 0.2 Emerald ores per chunk. It will only generate in locations which would have otherwise been stone - it is thus possible for as few as 2 to 0 emeralds to generate in a chunk. Found as individual blocks, rather than veins, it can be encountered more commonly than gold, which has a similar range. Also note that even though Emerald ore is less common than Diamond ore in general, it is possible for Emerald ore to be more common than diamond ore in a certain type of biome or a specific chunk.