Redstone Dust

Redstone Dust is the dust redstone ore drops, laid on the ground as a wire that carries redstone power.

Obtaining

Mining

Redstone ore drops four or five redstone when mined with an iron or diamond pickaxe. Placed dust drops one when broken.

Dungeon loot

Redstone is found in dungeon chests.

Usage

Placing

Redstone is placed as dust on top of a full, opaque block, which rules out glass, ice, leaves, TNT, slabs and stairs. It can take the place of a snow layer. Dust drops as an item when the block beneath it goes.

Crafting ingredient

Result	Recipe
Note Block
Powered Rail	6
Detector Rail	6
Redstone Torch
Redstone Repeater
Clock
Compass
Dispenser
Piston

Behaviour

Power level

Dust holds a power level from 0 to 15, and is off at 0. Dust is at 15 when a power source beside it powers it, or a strongly powered block is beside it. Other dust takes the highest level of the dust it connects to, less 1, so power runs 15 blocks along a line of dust.

Connections

Dust connects to dust beside it, and to dust one block up or down:

• up, when the block beside it is solid and the block above the dust is not;
• down, when the block beside it is not solid.

It also connects to a lever, button, pressure plate, detector rail or redstone torch beside it, and to the front or back of a repeater.

What it powers

Dust carrying power powers the block beneath it, and the blocks it points into:

Shape	Points into
A dot, with no connections	all four blocks around it
A line, or the end of one	the block past each end
A corner, T or cross	nothing

A solid block powered by dust is only weakly powered, and passes no power to other dust.

Dust sends no block updates when its shape changes but its level does not. A lever placed beside the end of a line bends the end into a corner, which points into nothing, yet whatever the line powered through the block ahead gets no block update. See missed updates.

Update order

Dust that turns on or off sends its block updates from an update list of seven positions: itself and the six positions touching it. The list's order comes from a hash of the coordinates, and from the biggest network switched off since the game started. Switching on runs depth first: a dust that turns on works through its whole list before the dust that turned it on carries on. Switching off works through one list for the whole network. See Predicting Dust Update Order.

Data values

• Block ID: 55
• Item ID: 331
• Translation key: tile.redstoneDust, item.redstone

The game calls the block Redstone Dust and the item Redstone.