Mining, unsurprisingly, is a major part of playing Minecraft. You have to mine to collect resources, find mobs, and even discover areas like the new deep dark caves biome. But before you jump into a mining adventure, you need to get the best tools. This makes it important that you know how to make a diamond pickaxe in Minecraft. This is one of the most powerful pickaxes in Minecraft. From finding diamonds to making the best out of this pickaxe, we have covered it all in this guide. You can use our guide on all Minecraft Java and Bedrock editions. With that out of the gate, let’s figure out how to make a diamond pickaxe in Minecraft.

Before we make a diamond pickaxe, we first need to make multiple other pickaxes. But if you’re already past that point in your journey, use the table below to skip to the steps for crafting a diamond pickaxe.

  • Why is a Diamond Pickaxe Important?What is a Diamond Pickaxe Used ForHow to Get a Diamond Pickaxe in MinecraftItems Required to Make a Diamond PickaxeHow to Find Diamonds in MinecraftMinecraft Diamond Pickaxe Crafting RecipeBest Enchantments to Use on a PickaxeHow to Get a Netherite PickaxeFrequently Asked Questions

Why is a Diamond Pickaxe Important?

The diamond pickaxe is the most famous Minecraft tool among the community, and for all the right reasons. The diamond pickaxe is the second strongest pickaxe, only behind Netherite, which in itself is a leveled-up form of the diamond pickaxe. When it comes to speed, it’s the third fastest. A Netherite pickaxe is faster, and a gold pickaxe is the fastest one in the game. But several blocks broken with the gold pickaxe don’t drop anything.

Leaving their high efficiency aside, diamond pickaxes are an inevitable tool you need to finish the game in survival game mode. Let’s see how.

A diamond pickaxe has the following uses in Minecraft:

  • It is used to mine obsidian. Other weaker pickaxes don’t make the obsidian drop when mined. You need it to make a Nether portal and later, finish the game.You can use it to efficiently mine all ores in the game. You can use our Minecraft ore distribution guide to learn the location of the most popular ores. A diamond pickaxe allows you to get other diamond items easily.With a diamond pickaxe, you can create a Netherite pickaxe. And eventually, you can mine other Nethertie items, the strongest in the game, using this pickaxe.A diamond pickaxe also has a high rate of damage. So, you can also use it as a weapon in dire situations.

How to Get a Diamond Pickaxe in Minecraft

Fortunately, crafting isn’t the only way to get your hands on a diamond pickaxe. You can also find it within the chest loot of the following locations: End City and Bastion Remnants.

You can use the following command in your chatbox to get a diamond pickaxe without any effort:

/give @s minecraft:diamond_pickaxe{Enchantments:[{id:“minecraft:efficiency”,lvl:1000s}]} 1

Going back to the world of crafting, you need the following items to make a diamond pickaxe in Minecraft:

Sticks are a constant element in the recipe of every pickaxe in the game. They act as the handle of the pickaxe, while the other material acts as its head. You can make sticks by placing two planks next to each other vertically in the crafting area. In case you don’t know already, you can get planks by placing a wood or stem block in the crafting area.

The type of wood doesn’t matter when crafting or using sticks, as Minecraft treats them equally. With sticks crafted, it’s now time for us to get diamonds. But we have to make a few pickaxes first. Let’s see how.

Make a Wooden Pickaxe

The first pickaxe we need to make is a wooden one, and its only purpose is to allow us to mine stones. To make a wooden pickaxe, you have to place a plank in each cell of the first row of the crafting area. Then, place 2 wooden sticks in the middle cell of the second and third rows.

When the wooden pickaxe is ready, go around the world and look for the stone block. Fortunately, it’s one of the most common blocks in the overworld. After finding and mining it, you will get cobblestone. We need three cobblestone blocks for our next step.

Once you have enough cobblestone, go back to the crafting table. Here, you first need to place a cobblestone block in each cell of the topmost row of the crafting area. Then, put a wooden stick in the middle cells of the other two rows (as shown below). The placement of sticks remains the same in the crafting recipes of all pickaxes.

After preparing a stone pickaxe, go into the caves to find iron ore. It’s a comparatively common ore you can find most at world height Y=16. You can use our Minecraft 1.18.1 ore distribution guide to get additional help. Once you mine iron ore, it drops raw iron. Make sure to collect at least three pieces of raw iron before leaving.

After collecting raw iron, you have to smelt it into iron ingots using a furnace or a blast furnace. You can also use wooden planks as fuel for the same. When you have three iron ingots, place them in each cell of the first row of the crafting area. Then, put wooden sticks in the middle cell of the second and third rows to complete the recipe.

You might have noticed the pattern that we need a pickaxe to upgrade to a better pickaxe. Fortunately, the condition doesn’t apply when moving to the gold level. You can use either gold or iron pickaxe to mine diamonds. The latter is easier to obtain and lasts longer.

Diamonds most commonly generate below Y=16 world height in Minecraft. Their generation rate peaks when you get closer to Y= -64 or the Bedrock layer. So, if you are at the correct height, you are bound to find diamonds sooner or later. Here, our guide about how to find diamonds in Minecraft contains several useful methods to speed up the process even further. You can use it to find enough diamonds for your complete gear.

When mined, the diamond ore block directly drops diamonds. So, you don’t have to smelt it like iron. You can use the dropped pieces of the diamond as per your liking. We need three diamonds to make a diamond pickaxe.

Thanks to the presence of Warden in Minecraft 1.19, many players don’t consider going deep into the mines safe. If you’re one of them, you can get diamonds from chest loot at the following locations:

Among these, villages are the safest place to find diamonds in Minecraft. You can use our list of best Minecraft village seeds to find one with multiple ironsmiths and potentially diamonds.

Minecraft Diamond Pickaxe Crafting Recipe

If you are going through this guide sequentially, you already know that the crafting recipe for a diamond pickaxe isn’t much different from other pickaxes. To craft a diamond pickaxe, you first need to place a diamond in each cell of the top row of the crafting area. Then, put sticks in the middle cells of the second and third rows to finish the recipe.

You can use the following enchantments to make your diamond pickaxe even more powerful:

You can use our Minecraft enchantments guide to apply these and a few more enchantments to your gear.

Once you have made a diamond pickaxe in Minecraft, it’s not the time to stop. Next, you have to upgrade it to a Netherite pickaxe with the help of a smithing table.

You have to place the diamond pickaxe along with a piece of Netherite ingot on the smithing table to upgrade the pickaxe. As for obtaining the Netherite ingot, you can use our guide to find Netherite in Minecraft. You already have the necessary diamond pickaxe to mine it.

Can You Find a Diamond Pickaxe in Minecraft?

The diamond pickaxes naturally spawn only within Bastion Remnants and End cities. You can loot the chests to find regular and enchanted diamond pickaxes.

The technical in-game ID number for a diamond pickaxe is 278. You can use it while creating custom commands around pickaxes.

A diamond pickaxe is the second strongest pickaxe in the game. But it still has limited durability that gets reduced each time you use it. So, it’s best to use it with mending enchantment or unbreaking enchantment.

Unless you find a village with ironsmiths, mining in large open dripstone caves is the most reliable way to find diamonds.

What are All the Pickaxes in Minecraft?

In Minecraft, you can find pickaxes made out of wood, stone, iron, gold, diamond, and Netherite.