Mine Ore Without Auto-Smelting

Get Raw Ore Blocks Instead of Ingots

If you want to collect raw ore blocks for later smelting or trading, you can prevent auto-smelting from converting them to ingots.

Steps:

1. Craft or obtain a pickaxe with the Silk Touch enchantment

2. Hold the Silk Touch pickaxe

3. Mine any ore vein normally (left-click)

4. All broken ore blocks will drop as raw ore blocks, not ingots

5. Collect the ore for storage or later processing

Why Use Silk Touch

Auto-smelting is convenient for quick resource gathering, but Silk Touch lets you preserve raw ore for flexibility. You can then smelt it yourself when you have fuel available, or use it for other purposes like decoration or trading with villagers.

Silk Touch works with all supported ore types, including Deepslate variants. The vein mining effect still breaks the entire connected vein—only the drop type changes.