Quick answer: Ancient debris (the source of netherite) peaks at Y 15 and generates between Y 8 and Y 119, densest from Y 8 to 24. This Netherite Finder marks ancient debris from your seed on a visual map at 91% accuracy on Java 26.2 and 71% on Bedrock 1.26.30.
Ancient debris is most common at Y 15. It generates throughout the Nether from Y 8 up to Y 119, but the dense band is Y 8 to 24 — so the netherite level players mine at is Y 15 (sometimes Y 14–16 to clear a 2-block-tall tunnel). Netherite itself is crafted from the scrap you smelt from ancient debris.
Ancient debris spawns anywhere in the Nether, buried inside netherrack, basalt and blackstone — it is never exposed to air, so you have to dig or blast to it. It is blast-resistant, so bed or TNT mining at Y 15 is a common tactic. The finder marks the chunks most likely to hold a vein so you don't blast blind.
Bedrock uses the same Y 8 to 24 dense band and Y 15 sweet spot as Java. The finder supports Bedrock 1.26.30; toggle the edition and the accuracy badge updates to the Bedrock figure (71%, a conservative floor).
| Ore | Best Y level | Spawn range | Java accuracy | Bedrock accuracy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netherite | Y 15 | Y 8 to 119 | 91% | 71% |
Accuracy is the share of marked hotspots that really contain the ore in your world, shown as a plain number.
Y-levels, drop rates, smelting and recipes for Netherite — straight from our Minecraft catalog, in both editions.
The Ore Finder reproduces Minecraft's own ore-placement maths from your world seed, entirely in your browser. It runs the same ore-distribution and cave-carving steps the game uses, then marks the chunks where diamonds, netherite and other ores are most likely to be exposed. Nothing is uploaded – your seed never leaves your device.
Where an ore ends up depends on the exact terrain and caves Minecraft carves around it, and no in-browser tool can rebuild every block the game places. We reproduce that terrain very closely, so a hotspot marked with a high percentage really contains the ore in your world around 85–91% of the time. A few spots may have been carved away by a cave or shifted slightly, so treat the markers as very strong leads rather than a guarantee.
In the Overworld it finds diamond, iron, copper, gold, redstone, lapis lazuli and coal, and in the Nether it finds ancient debris (netherite). You search one ore at a time and can optionally limit the search to a specific Y level.
Diamonds get more common the deeper you dig, peaking around Y -59 in current versions (they generate between Y -64 and Y 16). The finder defaults to each ore's full spawn range, and you can tick 'limit to a specific Y level' to focus on the richest band – for diamonds, around Y -59 to -54.
It works on both Java and Bedrock Edition. On Java it covers modern versions, including 1.21 and the 26.x releases, which share the same ore-generation rules. Bedrock Edition is now supported as well – on 1.18 and newer it finds the Overworld ores (diamond, iron, copper, gold, redstone and lapis lazuli). The two editions use different world generators, so make sure you pick the edition your world was created in.
That is up to how you like to play. In single-player it is just a faster version of strip-mining for a diamond start. On multiplayer servers, check the rules first – some servers don't allow seed-based tools.