Tutorial:Starting in the Nether
Reason: capitalization, structure etc.
Starting a world in the Nether is a great challenge and there are various ways to take it on. You can start in the Nether with the goal of building a portal to the Overworld, start in the Nether and explore the Overworld as if it was the "alien" dimension, or you could start in the Nether and stay in the Nether. If you're going to use Creative mode to build the portal to start, you can also give yourself a respawn anchor. It will take away some of the difficulty, making the challenge easier to complete. Nether survival is nearly unplayable otherwise, unless you're a really bold player or you get a really good starting location. You'll need diamond or netherite to break it, though. You can make more respawn anchors once you get crying obsidian from piglins. You can also use the /setworldspawn command if you're playing on 1.21.9 pre1 or above.
Getting to the Overworld (Optional)
If the goal for your challenge is to get to the Overworld, or get to explore the Overworld but treat the Nether as home, to start off, get yourself some wood from the fungus biomes, and then mine blackstone to craft stone tools, blackstone can be found near lava oceans and in basalt deltas, or through piglin bartering. Mine nether gold ore for gold nuggets and craft for yourself a pair of golden boots. It will help avoid attacks from piglins, keep mining gold and avoiding piglins, then craft gold ingots and barter with them until you obtain at least 10 obsidian and a fire charge. An alternative method is to loot through bastions and nether fortresses as they contain obsidian, and nether fortresses have flint and steel, but it is more dangerous than the piglin method
Exploring the Overworld (Optional)
Explore the overworld, but treat the Nether as your home base, funneling resources that you obtained while exploring the overworld back in there. You may bring back things like cacti, overworld crops, saplings, slimeballs, redstone components, or rarer resources like enchanted books and diamonds to help with surviving in the Nether, or if you really want to change everything, bring in at least two villagers.
Exploring the End (Optional)
Exploring the end, if allowed, would be largely similar to the overworld. You funnel resources that are found while exploring into the Nether, your home, like elytras, enchanted armor and tools, chorus flowers, chorus fruits, ender pearls, end stone related blocks, purpur blocks, obsidian, spire armor trims and end rods
Staying in the Nether
This challenge requires making use of limited resources in unusual and novel ways. Choosing the difficulty will be a trade off between mob attack strength and mob farming. Some end goals could be building and defeating the wither, building a full diamond/netherite beacon, or getting fully enchanted netherite armor and tools.
Basic goals
- Find a crimson (red) or warped (blue) forest biome and harvest the fungus stems for wood, then craft a crafting table, bowls, and wooden tools. Now you can mine blackstone for stone tools, Nether gold ore, and basalt because ghasts can't blow it up, but not gold blocks (you'll need iron for that).
- If you’re looking to raid a structure, don't forget about the blaze spawners, chests, and Nether wart in Nether fortresses.
- Wear gold armor so piglins don't attack you.
- If all your only goal is get to the Overworld, mine gold and kill zombified piglins, then barter with piglins until you get 10 obsidian and a fire charge.
- Don't forget about netherite. Once you upgrade your diamond tools and armor to netherite they will have substantially more durability.
- Make sure to conserve item durability, as armor and tools with Mending are rare, and enchanted books with Mending aren't obtainable without bringing in villagers
Nether biomes
- The warped and crimson biomes are essential for wood blocks to make a crafting table and wooden tools.
Warped Forests
- Only endermen spawn here, although mobs may wander in from other biomes.
Crimson Forests
- Piglins and hoglins spawn here. Hoglins drop porkchops, a great food source.
- Piglins can be bartered with for loot. They may give you arrows, obsidian, iron boots enchanted with Soul Speed, crying obsidian (for respawn anchors), and fire resistance potions, as well as iron nuggets which can be crafted into iron ingots and then into tools and armor.
Nether Wastes
- The Nether wastes make it easy to find exposed gold, and much easier to spot structures than fungus biomes due to the lack of trees and vegetation.
- Large expanses of netherrack with ghasts, piglins, and zombie piglins. Finding exposed Nether gold ore here is easy.
Basalt Deltas
- Basalt deltas also have blackstone, a replacement for cobblestone in many crafting recipes. Basalt is a nice building block that ghasts can't destroy.
- Polished basalt is a nice, craftable building block which ghasts can't blow up.
- Blackstone is often just under the surface, and in large blobs.
- The basalt columns can protect you from ghasts while you're working around the area, but still keep an eye out for magma cubes, and don't fall in lava.
Soul sand valleys
- Skeletons and ghasts spawn here. Not much here besides Nether fossils, which rarely have Dried ghasts and occasional basalt columns.
Nether Fortresses
- Build a blaze spawner farm using blocks. Build it 9 blocks down then funnel in by one block each row until you get to a one block hole. Drop the hole down two or three blocks and then leave a one block gap at the bottom so you can kill them and collect the blaze rods. This gives you blaze rods and blaze powder (to make an ender chest with!).
- Nether fortress chests may contain useful loot.
Piglin bartering
Nether fortress farms
- Build a Blaze spawner farm without redstone
- Build in a diamond shape with 1 block of air above, 4 blocks on each side, and 9 blocks below the monster spawner, then (at the bottom) funnel in by one block each row down until you get to a one block hole. Drop the hole down two or three blocks and then leave a one block gap at the bottom so you can kill them and collect the blaze rods. This gives you blaze rods (craft blaze powder to make an ender chest with!).
- Blaze Farm With ZERO REDSTONE by Prowl8413
- Build crash bars across walk ways
- Put blocks across the hall way the third block up to prevent Wither Skeletons from coming through.
- Take the chest too.
- Break the chest and mark the spot where it was. Sure, you have unlimited wood; but at least you'll know which areas you've already been in.
- Farm spawning locations
- On Bedrock, Nether fortresses have specific spawning locations spread throughout the fortress, probably corresponding to the individual structural components.
- silentwisperer - Using glass panes or fences
- FoxyNoTail - Using command blocks or guessing based on structure
Bastion Remnant
There are 4 types of these: bridges, housing, hoglin stables, and treasure. Choose the one you are most familiar with, or housing if you are not familiar with any.
Here are some tips:
- Make gold armor. One piece is enough to keep the piglins away from you. It will save you a lot of trouble, especially inside of bastion remnants.
- Take as much gold as you can when you when enter and leave. It is useful for bartering with piglins. If the chests don't have enough gold then spend some time digging around the bastion walls, usually there are gold blocks generated on them. Also, gilded blackstone may drop gold nuggets, but it's not the best source of gold.
- Make a magma cube farm after finishing for an endless supply of magma cream.
- Only applies to treasure room bastions.
- A lava bucket can quickly flush out rooms with piglins in them as they are not immune to burning, and can slow down and kill piglin brutes
- The chest loot is usually decent, with treasure room bastions having the best loot. However, it is the most dangerous bastion. Gather as many weapons, food, and blocks as possible to deal with the piglins, but leave some space for loot.
Potions
Nether Fortress and Bastions
- Gather Nether wart, they can be found near the stairs in Nether fortresses and in the Bastion's housing unit. You can start a farm from just a single Nether wart, but if you have time you can gather more.
- Farm blazes and magma cubes for potion ingredients. If you can't find a spawner or don't want to deal with it, build dividers in the passage ways and leave a one block hole in the center to kill blazes.
- Make sure you have a reliable way to return to the farm if you need to return for more blaze rods and magma cream.
- Craft a brewing stand using blackstone in place of cobblestone.
Piglins can give potions of Fire Resistance. If you drink these, you'll get the bottle back, but it's not very useful as you can't find water in the nether. They also give water bottles. Its not recommended to drink those, as they are your only source of water in the Nether. You can also go to the overworld and make water bottles there.
After this, you can find the following potion ingredients in the Nether:
- Base Recipe
- Nether Wart (Awkward potion, creates basically every other potion)
- Gunpowder (from ghasts) (Splash potions)
- Effect Recipe
- Blaze Powder (potion of Strength)
- Ghast Tear (potion of Regeneration)
- Magma Cream (potion of Fire Resistance)
- Glistering Melon Slices (Instant Health potion)
- Golden Carrots (potion of Night Vision)
- Power Recipe
- Glowstone dust (Level 2 potions)
Mob farms
=== Java Edition Almost all the Nether gold farms on Youtube only work on Java, so you're in luck. Bedrock doesn't have the same agro mechanics for zombie piglins as Java does, so they're not really possible on Bedrock. Definitely build yourself a Nether gold farm. The insane rates are totally worth it.
= Bedrock Edition
You can build a regular mob farm and the spawns will depend on the biome you're in. If you want to farm only zombie pigmen, build the spawning platforms out of magma blocks instead of regular blocks, but make sure you're in a biome that spawns zombie pigmen.
- If you build the farm at the top of the Nether (Y=120), you can just have the mobs drop off and die from fall damage, and then run around below them picking up the drops.
- The list of air blocks that mobs think they can pathfind over tends to change over time, it seems, so make sure the method you're using actually works the way you expect. They still drop off without any fake blocks, it just might take longer.
- Your drop platform should be made of blackstone bottom slabs. That way ghasts can't blow it up and piglins and hoglins won't spawn on it.
- If you spawn proof with lava, then striders spawn, ruining the rates, so find a place with enough area that you can actually stop things from spawning if you stand at the right place. Build a standard mob farm with the AFK spot near the roof. You'll need to find the sweet spot between being high enough above the lava lake, and low enough the mobs don't despawn as they drop. You can also spawn proof with half slabs if you want.
Here's a truly bedrock episode by silentwisperer where they build a gold farm
Resource conservation
- Iron tools are your best friend right now, as piglins can barter iron nuggets, which can be crafted into at most four ingots. It's low compared to looting structures, but when you have a gold farm then you can have a steady supply of iron ingots through piglin bartering.
- Stone tools also work, but they aren't really that useful once you have iron, blackstone should be reserved for brewing stands, furnaces, building
- Finding weapons and armor with mending on is rare, so if you don't have them, try not to waste the durability of diamond and netherite tools to make it last.
- Since fungus trees have to be bone mealed to grow, after chopping down a tree, destroy all the wart blocks and shroomlights that comes with it to compost to bone meal more fungus and grow them
- As said earlier, enchanted books with anything other than Soul Speed are nonexistent in the nether without villagers, so you are going to rely on enchanted armor and loot from bastion remnants and ruined portals
- Food is crucial for nether survival as the dimension is dangerous and unforgiving, try not to waste any food unless you urgently need to heal, here are food items that can be found in the nether, ranked from best to worst:
- Enchanted golden apples: Eating one gives you Absorption, Regeneration, Fire Resistance, and Resistance. They can be useful in tricky situations but they aren't useful as conventional food. It can only be rarely found in bastions and ruined portals. However, it is non-renewable. It is not a reliable source of food due to it's rarity.
- Golden Apple: A weaker version of the Enchanted apple, while more common and can be found in the same places as the enchanted apple, it'sl non-renewable if overworld access is not allowed, but if dirt and oak saplings are allowed in, it's renewable
- Golden Carrot: Quickly refills your hunger and saturation, it's the most common of the golden foods, can be found in large quantities in the same places as the golden and enchanted apple, it's not renewable if overworld access isn't allowed, although if dirt and carrots are allowed in, it's renewable
- Cooked Porkchop: Not too hard to obtain in large quantities if you build a hoglin farm, and is quite nourishing, you can expect this to be the main food items in every nether playthrough
- Mushroom stew: It's decently nourishing, and is much safer to obtain than fighting hoglins and trapping them to breed, it's likely also going to be used commonly in every playthrough
- Rotten flesh: Leftovers from gold farms or fighting Zombified Piglins, you really shouldn't eat those unless you're about to starve and ran out of other food items
Random tips
- Ghasts drop gunpowder, which is used to make splash potions.
- Once you get some coal from wither skeletons, you can use it to build a campfire. When you break it you should get two charcoal every time, doubling the initial coal/charcoal amount.
- Use fence gates instead of doors. Magma cubes can't jump over them, but you can hit over them. Piglins can open doors but not fence gates, so put a trapdoor above the fence so you can flip it down if piglins or blazes are shooting at you over the gate.
- Don't let Hard mode burn you out. Try Easy mode just to see what it's like, even if you're used to Hard mode. It can make a difference, especially earlier in the game. Roll a dice and set it accordingly, if you like.
Useful items to bring from the overworld
If you want to keep things simple but somehow bring a little extra, here are a few ideas.
- Dirt. Grows just about everything else.
- A few saplings. Wood can be smelted for charcoal.
- Sugar cane. Can't grow it in the Nether. And an elytra?
- Cactus. Makes a really good AFK magma cube farm with hoppers.
- Bamboo For scaffolding.
- Carrots and melons. For potions.
- Ice to make a basalt generator.
- Two wolves. Alternative to trident killers.
- Stone for grindstones, stone cutters, blast furnaces, and armor stands
- Sand for glass to make beacons and TNT to make finding netherite easier.
- Turtle eggs. For the gold farm.
If you want to completely change the experience bring these.
- Two Villagers.
Helpful addons
- Foxy's markers (armor stand spawning sphere) by FoxyNoTail.
- Remove particle effects by FoxyNoTail.
- Xray pack by d6b (good for spawn proofing or finding ores).
- Nether Spawn addon.
Gallery
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Soul sand valley biome. -
Nether wastes biome. -
Crimson forest biome. -
Nether fortress with blaze spawner and some blazes. -
Warped forest biome with some endermen. -
Basalt delta biome with Nether fortress. -
Bastion remnant in Nether wastes biome.
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