Block of the Month: Nether Quartz Ore

The Nether is hotter than a ghast’s armpit (where is that located btw?) and not much more safe to hang around in. So players don’t generally like to spend a lot of time there – darting back into their portal the very instant a piglin looks at them the wrong way. To get them to stick around a bit longer, our developers were forced to pack the Nether full of goodies – like Nether quartz ore – our block of the month.

Nether quartz ore wasn’t added in the Nether Update as you might expect. No no, this special stuff has actually been a part of Minecraft for much longer – since the Redstone Update all the way back in 2013. That’s the same update that added activator rails, for those keeping track. I know you are, esteemed reader.

The equivalent of quartz ore in the real world would probably be granite, which is chock-full of the stuff. But it’s also common in sedimentary rocks like sandstone and shale, and metamorphic rocks like schist, gneiss. Nice. It mostly crystallizes out of molten magma – with those crystals occasionally getting really big. The largest single crystal ever found measured 6.1m x 1.5m x 1.5m, and weighed almost 40 tonnes.

Luckily, you don’t need to worry about weight when carting your treasures back out of the Nether to your base. So pack your pockets with quartz – you’ll never know when you’ll need it!