Deepslate icon PNG

Deepslate in Minecraft: the deepest layer

Deepslate is the stone of the depths. Regular stone is gradually replaced by it between levels 8 and 0, and below Y=0 it makes up almost all solid terrain. It works like stone but takes twice as long to mine, which you really notice when digging long tunnels down there.

Without Silk Touch it drops cobbled deepslate, just as stone drops cobblestone, and with anything other than a pickaxe it drops nothing. Smelting the cobbled version gives deepslate back. It places in three orientations like logs, and silverfish can hide in it too.

Ores change in that layer: nearly all have a deepslate variant that is slower to mine, and that is where diamonds and the big iron and copper veins live. Ancient cities are built from huge amounts of it.

During development it was called grimstone. According to Brandon Pearce, it changed because grim had too many negative connotations, and deepslate described better where it is found. When old worlds were updated, the bedrock layer between Y=0 and Y=4 became deepslate.

Sources: minecraft.wiki/Deepslate