Minecraft: 8 Best Uses For Gold

Highlights

• Gold in Minecraft has various uses, including armor trims and golden armor, which turn Piglins from hostile to allies in the Nether.
• Gold ingots can be traded with villagers to obtain emeralds, which are essential for enchanted books and tools.
• Gold is a key component in crafting Netherite, a material that offers superior protection, efficiency, and damage compared to diamond.

While not as versatile as iron nor as infamous as diamond, gold in Minecraft is certainly valuable for building, crafting recipes, and more. Ever since the Nether Update, obtaining the glittering material has never been easier, and it has since gained even more uses. Gold ingots, nuggets, and even blocks can be used for all sorts of purposes, but some uses for gold shine brighter than others.

Most famously, gold in Minecraft is associated with flimsy tools that break in the blink of an eye, but the truly useful applications for gold, in any variety, are obvious. With so many uses for gold, the eight best uses for gold make it a treasure to find.

8 Armor Trims

Fashion Over Function

One of the newest additions to Minecraft, armor trims are easily one of the best customization options available in-game. Gold adds a flair to most of the trims, and while it doesn’t add any functional purpose to armor, it certainly adds status to the player wearing it. Netherite armor is trimmed especially well with gold, both thematically and with the contrast of the deep gray and the bright yellow.

Despite not having a gameplay benefit, gold armor trims still rank far above the likes of gold tools and weapons, as the cosmetic use still outweighs their flimsy durability.

7 Golden Armor

A Cheap Way To Make The Nether Less Hostile

Although gold armor still has the exact same problem as golden tools, these glittering pieces of protective wear have one major benefit: turning Piglins from hostile to allies. Given how many aggressive and dangerous mobs call the Nether home, this simple and logical addition adds much-needed relief from the usual game of survival.

While not one of the top uses for gold, this added detail to gold armor gave it an actual use beyond any cosmetic preference. Gold armor may not protect the player from Piglin Brutes, but it adds just enough protection to make Bastion Remnant raiding doable.

6 Villager Trading

Easy Emerald-Making

Ever since the villager rework back in version update 1.14, which greatly improved villager trades, the value of the emerald has skyrocketed. Once a novelty, obtaining a shiny green gem is now a necessity for consistent and guaranteed enchanted books, tools, weapons, and more.

One of these improved villagers is the Cleric, who offers a base rate of one emerald for three gold ingots, which may be a fairly expensive option for emeralds, but gold farms easily make this a steal.

5 Beacon Base

An Expensive Effect Booster

Beacons are one of the most valuable endgame and post-endgame blocks in Minecraft, and while the direct construction of the Beacon block doesn’t feature gold in the recipe, it can easily be used as both a block and an item to power up the Beacon.

Iron and gold easily make up most Beacon pyramids, as well as the actual activator for turning the block on or switching up one of its various boons. Given how necessary fully-powered Beacons are for large-scale building projects, and with how easily-farmable gold is, mixing the two creates a winning combination.

4 Piglin Bartering

The Best Way To Gamble With Gold

Truly, the most exciting and engaging use of gold ingots in Minecraft is bartering, effectively gambling, with Piglins. While these random trades don’t offer the same value as Villager trades, along with an added air of danger given the hostility of these Nether inhabitants, for certain players, Piglin bartering is truly the better of the two options.

For speedrunners, the prospect of obtaining the elusive Ender Pearls from Piglins is one of the major make-or-break factors in killing the Ender Dragon in a timely fashion. Ender Pearls remain valuable outside a speedrun setting, and with no other way of obtaining the mystical Soulspeed enchantment, bartering is one of the better uses for gold.

3 Golden Carrots

The Best Food In The Game

Simply put, golden carrots are the best food item in the game. They are easily farmed, even for non-technical players, provide the highest saturation of stackable food items, and only require gold nuggets to craft, as opposed to the nine times more expensive gold ingots.

Beyond their incredible use as a food, these carrots also act as a potion ingredient for night vision potions, easily one of the most useful potions in the game. With how relatively cheap golden carrots are and how many uses they offer, these vegetables easily make the top of the list for gold’s many uses.

2 Golden Apples

The Best Effect-Boosting Food In The Game

Golden carrots may be the best food in the game, but golden apples are certainly the best special food in the game. While the saturation provided isn’t anything special, the fighting and villager applications of this valuable apple are where it truly shines.

When consumed, the golden apple offers Absorption and Regeneration effects, making any players with this fancy fruit extremely difficult to kill. The enchanted variant may offer better and additional effects, but as it cannot be crafted, it doesn’t count. Beyond that, golden apples are a key component to curing zombie villagers, making them especially valuable for keeping trade prices low.

1 Crafting Netherite

The True Value of Gold

The material to finally overtake the iconic diamond. Netherite armor, tools, and swords are easily worth the effort it takes to construct, and with gold ingots playing a major role in the multistep process, it is certainly the best use for gold, in any iteration.

A single Netherite ingot requires four gold ingots, which is somewhat expensive, but given that the other crafting ingredient is Netherite Scrap, it is hardly the main concern for Netherite, not to mention finding the titular Upgrade and needing pre-existing diamond equipment to obtain Netherite at all. With the immense protection, efficiency, or damage offered by Netherite, there is practically no debate as to what gold is best used for.