What is Raw Iron in Minecraft?
Raw iron is a lumpy, brownish piece of metal that you get from mining iron ore. It is the unprocessed version of iron, which means you have to cook it in a furnace before you can use it to make anything. Its only purpose is to be smelted into iron ingots, which are one of the most important and versatile items in all of Minecraft. The game added raw iron so that the Fortune enchantment could be used on iron ore, allowing you to get a lot more iron from a single mining trip. This was a huge and very helpful change for all players, as it makes gathering this essential resource much faster and more efficient. Raw iron is the first step to getting your first set of good tools, armor, and so much more.
How to get Raw Iron in Minecraft
The main way to get raw iron is by mining iron ore. Iron ore is a stone block with brownish specks in it, and it is one of the most common ores in the game. You can find it in large veins almost everywhere underground, with a particularly good spot being around Y level 16. To get the raw iron, you need to mine the ore block with at least a stone pickaxe. When you mine a single block of iron ore, it will drop one piece of raw iron. The best part about this is that you can use a pickaxe enchanted with Fortune to get more. A Fortune III pickaxe can make a single ore block drop up to four pieces of raw iron, which is a fantastic way to stock up quickly. You can also find raw iron in chests in many different structures, like villages, shipwrecks, and dungeons. It is also a common drop from the new archaeology feature in trail ruins, where you can get it by brushing suspicious gravel.
How to use Raw Iron in Minecraft
The one and only use for raw iron is to smelt it into iron ingots. To do this, place the raw iron in the top slot of a furnace or a blast furnace with some fuel. A blast furnace will cook it twice as fast. Each piece of raw iron becomes one iron ingot. These ingots are what you use for countless crafting recipes, from armor and tools to buckets and anvils. If you have a lot of raw iron and want to save space in your chests, you can also craft it into a block. Just place nine pieces of raw iron in a three by three square in a crafting table to create one block of raw iron. This is a great way to store it, and you can easily craft it back into raw iron later.
How to craft Raw Iron in Minecraft
Crafting Table

