Building a portal without a diamond pickaxe
A standard Nether portal frame is four blocks wide and five blocks tall in obsidian, with the four corners optional. That means the minimum cost is 10 obsidian. Light the inside with flint and steel or a fire charge and step through.
If you do not have a diamond pickaxe, you can cast the obsidian instead of mining it. Build a frame-shaped mould out of dirt or planks, pour lava into each cell one at a time, then pour water on top of the lava. The lava turns to obsidian in place. You never mine a single block, which also means you never risk dropping into the lava you are standing next to.
Do this over solid ground with a water bucket already in hand, and build the mould one cell at a time rather than filling the whole frame with lava at once. A single mistake with a full frame is a lot of lava to clean up.
The gear list before you step in
- At least one piece of gold armour. Wearing any gold piece stops piglins attacking you on sight. Gold boots are the cheapest option at four ingots.
- Flint and steel. A ghast fireball can put your portal out. Without a way to relight it you are trapped in the Nether, which is a much worse problem than it sounds.
- A lot of cobblestone or other building blocks. For bridging, sealing lava, and blocking ghast fireballs.
- Food, a bow, and a shield. A shield blocks a ghast fireball outright, and you can also knock fireballs back with a sword or arrow.
- No bed for sleeping. Beds explode in the Nether and the End. They are useful for blasting ancient debris and useless for anything else here.
Leave the diamond gear at home on the first trip if you have a reasonable iron set. The Nether is where gear goes to die, and the first visit is a scouting run, not a boss fight.
Coordinates: one Nether block equals eight overworld blocks
The Nether is compressed horizontally by a factor of eight. A Nether coordinate of (100, 64, 50) lines up with overworld (800, ?, 400). The Y coordinate does not scale at all. This is the mechanic that makes the Nether a transport network: a 100 block walk in the Nether covers 800 blocks of overworld distance.
To connect two portals properly, divide the overworld X and Z by eight and build the Nether portal at that spot. If the two portals end up within about 16 blocks of each other in the Nether, the game may link you to the wrong one, so space your overworld portals well apart before you start building shortcuts.
Getting along with piglins
- Gold armour stops them attacking on sight, but these actions still anger every piglin nearby: opening a chest, mining gold blocks or nether gold ore, and attacking any piglin.
- Throw a gold ingot on the ground and a piglin will inspect it for a few seconds, then toss you a random item. This is bartering, and the common results are ender pearls, fire resistance potions, obsidian, crying obsidian, Soul Speed books, string and quartz.
- Piglin brutes, the ones with axes guarding bastion remnants, ignore the gold armour rule completely. They attack on sight regardless of what you wear.
Bartering is the cheapest route to ender pearls if you have gold to spare. A stack of gold ingots usually returns a handful of pearls, which is enough to stop hunting endermen for a while.
Finding a fortress and getting blaze rods
Nether fortresses are the long dark red brick corridors that usually run along one axis. You need them for blaze rods, and you need blaze rods for both eyes of ender and brewing. Twelve eyes of ender require twelve blaze powder, so plan on at least seven blaze rods and take more if you can.
- Wall off or light up the area around a blaze spawner to cut down on the constant stream of blazes.
- Fight from behind cover and let blazes come to you. Their fireballs can be blocked with a shield, and standing in the open trading shots is how people die here.
- Fortresses also contain wither skeletons. Their skulls summon the wither, which is not a first trip activity. Avoid the corridors where they cluster.
Four habits that keep you alive
- Test strange ground before you trust it. The Nether has lava seas under thin crusts, and a block that looks solid from a distance may be one block over nothing.
- Do not trade shots with a ghast near a cliff edge. Knockback into lava is the single most common Nether death, and it is entirely avoidable.
- Wall in your portal with cobblestone. It stops ghasts destroying it and gives you a safe landing spot on every return trip.
- Use a respawn anchor. Six crying obsidian plus three glowstone makes one, and charging it with glowstone sets your respawn in the Nether. It is the only way to avoid a long walk back.
Next step: netherite
Once you can survive the trip, the Nether becomes a resource. Mine ancient debris around Y 15, smelt it into netherite scrap, then combine four scrap with four gold ingots for one netherite ingot. Upgrading diamond gear to netherite also needs a netherite upgrade smithing template, which only spawns in bastion remnant chests. After the first one, you can duplicate it with seven diamonds and one netherrack.
Do not chase netherite on your first visit. Get the blaze rods, learn the route, and come back with fire resistance potions and a plan.