How to find Diamonds in Minecraft with the Lapis trick [2023]

Updated to 1.20

Lapis Lazuli Ores and Diamond Ores are linked. You can easily find Diamonds following a simple step by step process, starting from Lapis Lazuli Ores. Today we are here to see this Lapis-Diamond trick in details. Let’s start!

minecraft diamond

Where to find Lapis Lazuli

The best way to find Lapis Lazuli Ores is to go exploring caves or Ravines. Lapis Lazuli can generate from Y-level -64 to Y-level 64. They are more common around level 0 though.

minecraf lapis lazuli

To know the Y-level you are at, you can press F3 to see your coordinates.

minecraft coordinates
F3 coordinates. The Y-level in the screenshot is 69

Where to dig for Diamonds

First and foremost, press F3+G to see the chunk’s borders. This is very important. The chunk’s borders will look like this.

chunk borders

From one of the Lapis Lazuli Ores that are on the North side of the group, move to the 4th block in the North direction.

4 blocks north lapis
The golden block represent the 4th block north

To know where the north is, you can press F3. The blue arrow at the center will point North (also known as the positive Z-axis).

minecraft north

If the 4th block north is in another chunk, like in the following screenshot:

lapis diamond trick

then you have to continue counting on the other side of the same chunk:

chunk border trespassing

You can start digging down from that block.

Always be careful when digging straight down, you could easily die from fall damage or end up in a Lava pool. That’s why you may want to dig following a vertical stairs pattern.

minecraft staris digging

All you have to do is dig down until you find Diamond Ores.

minecraft diamond

When the Lapis trick doesn’t work

  • This system doesn’t have a 100% chances of success (more like 80%), so you will not always find Diamonds this way
  • It also does not work in all seeds. If you try it on 5/6 or more Lapis Lazuli Ores and you don’t find any Diamond, chances are that it is not going to work in all the Minecraft world you are playing
  • It doesn’t work if you are playing the Java 1.13 patch or older
  • This method doesn’t seem to work in Minecraft Bedrock edition
  • Since the 1.18 patch, the process of terrain generation was changed and this method is not as reliable as it used to be. The Clay-Diamond trick on the other hand was not as affected by the change in the terrain generation

Credits to leospeedleo who discovered and covered the correlation between Lapis Lazuli and Diamonds.


Conclusions

The Lapis-Diamond trick is a great way to find plenty of Diamonds without having to strip mine, something that players usually don’t love (to say the least). You need to find Lapis Lazuli Ores, then dig down starting from the 4th block north from the Ores. If the 4th block north is in another chunk, then you have to continue counting on the other side of the same chunk. Thank you very much for reading the article this far and I hope I’ll see you again around here. See you and take care!

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