The truth is that they’re both good. Charcoal is better if you want to make a lot of iron and or diamonds, but coal is better if you want to make a lot of gold or diamond hoes.

I’m not going to go into detail about the differences between the two because there are so many variables. The best advice I can give you is to experiment on your own, but here are some tips:

Only use charcoal in a furnace with exactly 2 blocks of space above it (or 1 block above and 2 blocks below). This ensures that all of the charcoal burns completely and doesn’t leave any ash behind.

If you have a lot of coal, smelt it into charcoal before using it in your furnace (see below). Don’t worry about wasting coal; you’ll only need 5 pieces of charcoal per furnace load, so if you have 20 pieces of coal, just smelt them into 5 pieces of charcoal first before smelting those 5 pieces into iron ingots.

If you don’t have enough coal to smelt all of your iron ore into ingots at once, take some time out from mining and build a large area around your furnace that’s 4 blocks long by 3 blocks wide by 4 blocks tall.

Last modified: August 7, 2022