How to use it

Pick an ore and enter how many blocks of it you mined or plan to mine. The table shows the average drop per block and the expected total with no Fortune and with Fortune I, II and III.

These are averages. Any single block can drop more or less, but over a few dozen blocks your total will land close to the expected number.

How Fortune works on ores

For most ores, Fortune gives each block a chance to multiply its drops:

Level	Possible multipliers	Average
Fortune I	1× or 2×	1.33×
Fortune II	1×, 2× or 3×	1.75×
Fortune III	1×, 2×, 3× or 4×	2.2×

Ore	Average with no Fortune	With Fortune III
Diamond, coal, emerald, iron, gold, nether quartz	1	2.2
Copper (raw copper)	3.5	7.7
Nether gold (nuggets)	4	8.8
Lapis lazuli	6.5	14.3
Amethyst cluster (shards)	4	8.8
Redstone (dust)	4.5	6

Redstone is the exception: Fortune adds 1 to the most dust a block can drop, rather than multiplying it, so Fortune III only takes it from 4.5 to 6 on average.

Fortune or Silk Touch?

Fortune for diamonds, emeralds, lapis, coal and quartz: you want as many of the item as possible.
Silk Touch when you want the ore block itself, for example to store it and mine it later with Fortune, or for decoration.
Iron and gold: Fortune works on raw iron and raw gold, so a Fortune III pickaxe more than doubles your metal from every vein.

You can't have both on the same pickaxe, so many players keep one of each.