Where To Find The Rarest Blocks In Minecraft

Players aren’t likely to get bored in Minecraft anytime soon. After all, the game is continually updated with new content. So, there are always more things to grind for in a survival world.

While Minecraft is a game where most items can be crafted from scratch, there are some items that are rarer than others. These are things that you aren’t likely to see every time you turn on the game. In fact, you may never come across them organically. But they are out in the environment, and here is where you can find them.

Updated November 2, 2024 by Jacqueline Zalace: Looking to have a collection of the rarest blocks in Minecraft? We’ve updated this list with even more blocks in the game that stand out among the rest in terms of rarity.

19

Dragon Head

There are plenty of decorative blocks in Minecraft, but if you want to be truly metal, you can place the head of a dragon in your house – alternatively, you can stick it onto your head. And it’s not just any dragon head – it’s the skull of the Ender Dragon. So, if you’ve killed the beast, you can use it as a reminder of your achievement.

However, you don’t actually acquire it through killing the dragon. Instead, you can find it attached to an End Ship, which are sometimes near End cities. When you find it, you can simply break it with any tool, and it will drop.

18

Wither Skeleton Skull

If you see yourself as a Dr. Frankenstein figure, you can build your own Wither. It’s unclear why you’d want to do this outside of getting the achievement or trophy, as they’re one of the most dangerous mobs in the game. However, if that is your wish, you’re going to need a few Wither Skeleton Skulls.

The concept of getting them is simple: you just kill Wither Skeletons. Yet, not only are they not that easy to kill, but they rarely drop their skulls when they do die. While the chances increase if you have a few levels of looting on your weapon, it’s still a small percentage. When you do get them, you can just use them as decoration if you aren’t fond of monster creation.

17

Lodestone

One block introduced in 1.16 is the lodestone, which allows players to never get lost, even when exploring places like the Nether or the End. Before the addition of the lodestone, compasses would not work in other dimensions.

The lodestone can be crafted, but it can also be found in the Nether in places known as Bastion Remnants. These Piglin strongholds will usually have a bunch of chests which have a chance of spawning this super useful contraption.

16

Gilded Blackstone

Bastion Remnants aren’t just really nice locations for great loot, they also naturally spawn a very cool variant of the blackstone; gilded blackstone. This stone basically drops a few gold nuggets when mined.

However, mining a block like this within the Bastion will usually turn any nearby Piglins hostile. Players who are in dire need of gold and want to trade should definitely go for this rare blackstone variant, but at their own risk.

15

Crying Obsidian

Obsidian in itself isn’t that rare, but its variant, the crying obsidian, is a rarity that anyone should take advantage of and mine. The block is found both in the Nether and in the overworld, usually in ruined portals or even in Bastion Remnants.

When trading with piglins, it’s also possible for them to drop crying obsidian for the player. This block is important because it allows you to craft the respawn anchor block, which lets you set a respawn point within the Nether.

14

Spawner

The good old spawner block is a very special block that players have been wanting to have altered for quite some time. This block can’t be mined and harvested and will only drop experience orbs when broken with a pickaxe.

Spawners are fairly uncommon, especially those that don’t involve cave spiders which often appear in abandoned mineshafts or zombie ones. You may be incredibly lucky and find several spawners near each other; at this point, you can make the perfect multi-spawner XP farm.

13

Ancient Debris

The highly coveted ancient debris is the gateway to making Netherite. It’s the material that everyone wants after getting full diamond gear, and will completely change how armor and weapons look and feel in combat.

Ancient debris can only be found within the Nether, and unlike diamonds, there’s no set way to strip mine it. By using beds or other explosives, however, you can blast away blocks to expose any ancient debris clusters. Since it’s blast-resistant, explosives are so far the best method for mining it.

12

Prismarine Blocks

Through the introduction of ocean monuments to spice up the underwater experience of Minecraft, the watery depths brought in this turquoise and green set of blocks known as Prismarine. These blocks are needed to construct a frame in order for a Conduit to activate underwater.

Prismarine is found in all ocean monuments, as it’s the main construction block. It comes in a few different color and pattern varieties depending on the room of the monument. While these structures aren’t too rare, you may struggle to find an ocean. On top of that, exploring the monument can be quite nerve-wracking.

11

Sea Lantern

Sea lanterns are another separate block that can be found in ocean monuments. These blocks are also turquoise and white in color, and they actually emit a pretty decent amount of light. Most ocean monuments have a few of them at their highest point, making them easy to detect at night time.

Sea lanterns can be found exclusively in ocean monuments and some underwater ruins. They make for great decorative items but otherwise have no specific utility.

10

Purpur Blocks

Thanks to End Cities, you have access to an even wider variety of strange and beautiful decorative blocks. The Purpur blocks, in particular, are very peculiar and appear as detailed purple-colored stone blocks. They only come in one variety, but the texture changes slightly from one block to another.

Purpur blocks are found in End Cities and Ships only. They’re mainly used as decorative blocks and have no other purpose in the game. End cities themselves can be few and far between, which makes Purpur elusive at times.

9

Coral Blocks

With the 1.13 aquatic updated a while ago, we got a ton of new ocean-themed content; one of the biomes included was the underwater warm ocean, which contains coral reefs. This biome isn’t super rare, but it’s not very common either.

Sometimes, you can explore the ocean for hours and not run into this coral-filled biome. In order to mine coral, you’ll need to have a tool with Silk Touch. What’s more, it needs to be placed near water or it will turn grey and die.

8

Sponge

Back to the ocean monuments, there’s another type of block here that existed in the game for the longest time but wasn’t available in survival mode without the inclusion of cheats. Sponges can actually be found in abundance in the sponge rooms of ocean monuments.

Sponges are a great utility block. Once dried in the furnace and placed in water, they suck up the moisture around them and drain out water. It’s a must-have block for anyone wanting to build underwater, but definitely one of the hardest ones to find, as it requires an ocean monument. Even then, sponges aren’t always in abundance.

7

Blue Ice

In Minecraft, there are several types of ice that you can gather. There’s regular ice, packed ice and then there’s blue ice, which is the rarest of them all. To get blue ice, you’ll need a Silk Touch tool.

Blue ice is only found around icebergs in frozen oceans. It usually spawns underwater, but on rare occasions, it can be spotted overground. Blue ice is useful due to how slippery it is, and can be used to make quick highways for quite transportation.

6

Diamond Ore

Every Minecraft player knows the sheer joy of finding diamonds. This ore block is as highly coveted as it is useful, because all good tools and gear are made from diamonds. Diamonds can be found in any biome, but what makes them difficult to find is their elevation and rarity.

Over the years, the Minecraft world has gotten deeper. As such, the best place to find diamonds is below Y= -16. If you are looking to maximize the diamonds found, the best levels are -50 to -64, which is quite deep.

5

Dragon Egg

While not exactly a block, it still fits the bill. The Dragon Egg is rare because there’s only one per game, and to find it, you will need to defeat the Ender Dragon herself. Mining this block is also a bit of a hassle.

The Dragon Egg behaves like sand and gravel, and falls when nothing is underneath it. That’s why it’s best to mine two blocks underneath it, place a torch, and then drop it on the torch to make it spawn as a regular item on the ground.

4

Deepslate Emerald Ore

Deepslate Emerald Ore doesn’t seem like it would be rare, but it’s pretty much the rarest block in the game. Elderalds generate in from Y= -16 to Y=320. This is quite a big stretch of vertical blocks, but they are the most common at Y=232 and become less common as you head down.

Deepslate, on the other hand, starts to appear once you head below Y=0. This is 232 blocks away from the emerald sweet spot, which means that it’s extremely difficult to find deepslate that has emeralds in it.

3

Tall Grass

This is another odd addition to our list. While running around grassy areas, you’ll probably see some tall weeds springing up. You can’t actually gather them though. If you want to have your own piece of placeable tall grass, you’ll need to find it in a chest.

That’s right; the only way to find tall grass is to loot it from chests in Savanna Villages. Once of these chests has a 45.9 percent chance to hold the grass, which means that after you find the village, you may not even get the grass.

2

Conduit

Conduits are on this list simply because the materials used to make one can be hard to find. A Heart of the Sea can only be found by digging up buried treasure. This means that you will most likely need a map, and then you’ll need to successfully find the location marked.

After you get the Heart of the Sea, you’ll then need to find eight Nautilus SHells, which can be fished, traded from Wandering Traders (they only have five though), or dropped from Drowned. The Drowned in question will need to be visibly holding the shell; if not, then it doesn’t drop.

1

End Portal Frame

Last but not least, we have the End Portal Frame. This is a bit of an honorable mention, as you won’t actually be able to obtain this. The block doesn’t drop when destroyed, and there is no other place to find it.

Instead, you can only get this frame if you are in Creative mode, or if you use a command. In total, a Java world has 128 strongholds. Each End Portal itself has 12 frame blocks so in total, a Minecraft world only has 1,536 of these unmoveable blocks.