Whether you're looking to cash in on your first ore vein or need to refine your gathering methodology, diamonds are a major milestone for any Minecraft player. While Netherite may have eclipsed diamonds in terms of power and usefulness, diamonds are still an invaluable material for various efforts in the game.

Obtaining diamonds means access to enchanting, better tools, accessing the Nether for the most part, and building powerful contraptions. The sooner diamond is accessed, the more productive and efficient a player’s time will be. Here are some tips for how to find diamonds quickly in the beginning and ways to find them quickly later on.

Updated January 26, 2024, by Jack Pierik: While game updates can usher in new eras for resource-gathering strategies, sometimes all it takes is a little bit of time, creativity, or previously overlooked information or mechanics to discover a new diamond-gathering method. Sometimes, it really can be as simple as playing the game in a way that's different from your norm. Anyway, this update brings three new methods for finding diamonds, some riskier and more expensive than others. But hey, if it means getting a bunch of diamonds, that's probably a risk or material investment you're willing to take.

15 Searching Underwater Caves

If you've ever stumbled upon an isolated, completely submerged cave in your spelunking or seafaring adventures, you probably skipped over it since it's a pain mining underwater, or you had the valid fear of drowning and losing all your gear.

If you're willing to put the time and effort into it, though, these underwater caves typically have lots of resources to mine, including diamonds. If you have some extra EXP to throw at gear, Respiration, Aqua Infinity, and other related enchantments, as well as Night Vision potions, will make gathering in this environment much easier.

14 Looting End Cities

If you're tired of spelunking and draining your pickaxe durability, looting End Cities is a highly effective end-game method of getting diamonds. The catch is that this method is only viable if you have an Elytra and plenty of fireworks to fly between floating islands.

Otherwise, the process is simple: fly around, find End cities, and loot every chest you can find. Not only will you get diamonds, but also diamond tools and armor, which is a nice bonus. If you're not a seasoned End explorer, check out our guide on finding End cities quickly.

13 TNT Mining

While it's certainly one of the most costly methods out there since it requires so much gunpowder, mining with TNT makes carving out large, long tunnels through the earth a breeze. Just... try not to hurt yourself in the process. Bring some gold armor or a shield if you're worried.

Whether you want to be as direct as a nitroglycerin-wielding California gold miner from the 1800s by lighting the TNT yourself or put your Redstone skills to use by making a machine that launches TNT and bores tunnels for you, this method gets the job done.

12 Searching At The Right Level

The most important thing to know while searching for diamonds is where they generate. Diamonds are most commonly found between Y: 16 and Y: -64. Mining at this level will give you the highest chance of encountering diamonds. Overall, the best place to find diamonds is around Y: -59.

This is pretty deep, and you may run into several bodies of lava while diamond hunting. We recommend bringing a stack of blocks to help you bridge and tower your way to any diamonds you see.

11 Using The Staircase Method

Above, you might have noticed how deep the optimal level for diamonds is. If you are still on the surface, you are pretty far away from the diamonds, so let's take a quick look at how to safely and efficiently get down to Y: -59.

If you choose to do this, make sure that you have an easy way to get back to the surface!

One of the first rules of Minecraft is to never dig straight down. That being said, it is the single fastest way to reach the lower levels of the world where diamonds are found. For players wanting the fastest route to diamonds, nothing beats a straight line. To make it a bit safer at the cost of some efficiency, we recommend building a simple staircase all the way down to the desired level. This will allow you to see any dangerous mobs or areas.

10 Quick Access To Bedrock

Having a quick way to travel underground is essential for quickly finding diamonds. Constantly traveling nearly 100 blocks vertically takes time, so we recommend building a bubble elevator to help you quickly travel from diamond level to the surface in no time. For more information on bubble elevators, be sure to check out our guide on how to make one.

If you don't want to travel too often, you can build a small underground base filled with chests, furnaces, and a bed. A sustainable underground area means you never have to travel to the surface and can spend more time mining.

9 Brush Away Suspicious Sand

Archeology was added to Minecraft as part of The Trails and Tales update. One aspect of archeology involves searching for easily hidden blocks and brushing them away with a brush. Doing so will reveal relics of the past, which means gemstones and broken pottery shards. While more times than not, you'll get broken pottery, you also have a chance of brushing away a diamond!

Fortunately, you can find multiple blocks of suspicious sand together. They generate inside Desert Temples, in rooms full of sand. They can also be found at the bottom of Desert Wells. While it may not be the most abundant option, these are arguably the fastest way to get diamonds in Minecraft.

8 Searching In Caves

Caves are a great way to quickly find diamonds if they generate at the right levels. They create massive pockets of air that expose a large number of blocks. You can simply traipse through the caves, planting torches along the way and seeing if you can find any exposed diamonds. Even a surface-level cave can be helpful. You can quickly use it to get as far down as possible before mining a staircase down to bedrock. The right cave network can bypass a dozen or more layers' worth of material you would normally have to mine through.

Overall, caves are one of the most efficient ways to find diamonds, especially after their rework due to the Caves and Cliffs update. Now, caves can go on forever, exposing a lot of surface area where diamonds may appear. If you discover a massive underground cavern, search every nook and cranny for diamonds before leaving.

7 Finding Abandoned Mineshafts

Abandoned Mineshafts are great finds when looking for diamonds. They’re often found at diamond levels and expose a large number of blocks thanks to the tunnels. It’s like a cave, but the premade tunnels and shafts are much more efficient for traveling and mining.

Sometimes, Abandoned Mineshafts will have diamonds lying around. You can come across minecart chests with a rare chance of containing diamonds. There is no trick to finding a mineshaft, but they aren't too rare, so you might stumble across one after a bit of caving.

6 Search For Shipwrecks

Craft a boat, head to the high seas, and search for the ruins of failed ships before you. These randomly generated structures can appear in any oceanic biome, along with most beaches. Inside them are chests containing a variety of loot. Sometimes these chests contain valuables, including diamonds. There's a 14 percent chance of a diamond spawning in these chests. And while that's not the largest, it is more notable than most random generations.

But that isn't the best part. Sometimes these chests also spawn treasure maps. Following these and locating the buried treasure will result in a chest with lots of valuable loot. These chests have a whopping 60 percent chance of spawning, making them one of the most reliable sources of diamonds. The biggest catch is the difficulty finding more maps.

5 Have Higher Tier Pickaxes

To mine for diamonds, you will need to bring an iron pickaxe. This is the lowest tier of a pickaxe that can mine through diamonds. If you were to bring a stone or wood pickaxe, you wouldn't be able to gather diamonds, and you definitely don't want that to happen.

If you want to mine fast, consider making yourself a Netherite pickaxe. Experiments by gamers have discovered that Netherite is almost twice as fast as iron when it comes to mining. Additionally, this fire-proof material lasts longer. Iron pickaxes have 250 uses, diamond has 1,563, and Netherite has 2,031 uses before breaking. More uses means more time mining and less time replacing tools.

4 Using Enchanted Pickaxes

In addition to having a stronger Pickaxe, it’s immensely helpful to have the best enchantments. Pickaxes can be enchanted to have all kinds of abilities, but for the sake of finding diamonds, we recommend using the following enhancements.

Overall, we recommend getting a pickaxe with Fortune as soon as possible. There are three levels to this enchantment, with Fortune III giving up to four diamonds per node. This means that if you find a diamond vein made of just three ores, you can get 12 diamonds rather than just three.

3 Managing Your Inventory

While mining, you will inevitably gather a lot of items in your inventory. If you find your inventory getting packed with unimportant blocks, then it's definitely time to start managing your inventory.

To quickly solve this problem, you can simply toss items out onto the ground. This is helpful for items like cobblestone since you will get stacks of this while mining.

If you want to keep all the materials you are mining, try using shulker boxes. These are boxes made from the shells of shulkers, a mob in the End that live in End Cities. This mob can be quite annoying to deal with since they shoot bullets that can cause you to levitate, but their shells are quite valuable. You can put items in a shulker box, then pick them up with all the materials inside.

2 Branch Mining

In addition to searching caves, branch mining is one of the most efficient methods to find diamonds. To branch mine, create a long tunnel, then mine little side tunnels that branch off. All tunnels should be two blocks high and one block horizontal, spaced three blocks apart from each other.

The reason for this is to minimize how many blocks are mined to find a diamond vein. It cuts down on overall mining time, minimizes resource waste, and allows you to cover a lot of ground faster. A single block of diamond might be overlooked, but you will find the three to five diamond block veins faster to offset this.

1 Using A Haste Beacon

Lastly, to speed up your mining time, you can use a beacon with haste effects. Haste will increase mining speed by ten percent at level one to 20 percent at level two. This beacon can be quite expensive, though, since this requires a level four pyramid under their beacon.

A level four pyramid requires 164 mineral blocks — iron is strongly recommended as it’s more cost-effective than gold, emerald, diamond, or Netherite. Gathering 144 iron blocks and the Nether Star to craft the Beacon is no easy feat, so be sure to check out our guides on building a beacon and creating an iron farm.