Minecraft Nether Guide: Portals, Biomes, Fortresses, Bastions and Netherite

Building and lighting a portal

A Nether portal is a rectangular frame of obsidian, at least 4 blocks wide and 5 tall on the outside (giving a 2×3 interior), and at most 23×23. The corners can be left out, which brings the minimum to ten obsidian. Light the inside with flint and steel or a fire charge and the purple portal fills the frame.

Obsidian needs a diamond pickaxe to mine, but you do not need to mine it. Find a lava pool, and pour water over lava source blocks — the ones that are still, not flowing — to make obsidian in place. The reliable method with a single bucket: build the frame shape out of any cheap block, place lava (carried in buckets) in each frame position, and pour water to convert it, block by block. Ruined portals, which generate across the Overworld, often contain enough obsidian and a chest with a flint and steel or gold items; they are the quickest start if one is near your base.

How portals link, and how to control it

The Nether is compressed: moving one block there equals eight blocks in the Overworld. When you enter a portal, the game takes your coordinates, divides X and Z by 8 (or multiplies, going the other way), and searches for an existing portal near that point — within 128 blocks in the Overworld and 16 blocks in the Nether. If it finds one, you come out there. If not, it builds a new one at the nearest safe spot.

The 128-block Overworld search radius is why a second Nether portal built anywhere near your base often dumps you at the first one. To force portals to pair up, build the Nether-side portal at the exact scaled coordinates of the Overworld one: Overworld X 800, Z −1600 pairs with Nether X 100, Z −200. Y does not scale; match it where you can. Our Nether portal calculator gives the exact numbers, including the rounding the game uses.

What to bring

Leave water buckets behind: water placed in the Nether evaporates instantly. Also leave anything you cannot afford to lose. Lava is everywhere and item drops in it are gone forever.

The five Nether biomes

• Nether Wastes. The classic red netherrack landscape. Zombified piglins, ghasts, magma cubes, piglins. Fortresses and bastions both generate here.
• Soul Sand Valley. Blue-grey fog, soul sand and soul soil, bone-block fossils. Skeletons and ghasts spawn here in numbers, and soul sand slows you. Soul Speed boots exist for this biome. Fewer piglins, more danger from range.
• Crimson Forest. Red fungus forest with hoglins, piglins and huge crimson stems. Hoglins are a food source (they drop pork), but they charge on sight. Crimson stems are wood that does not burn, which makes them the best building material for Nether structures.
• Warped Forest. Teal fungus forest, and the safest biome: the only hostile spawns are endermen and the occasional strider. This is where you farm ender pearls in the Nether, and where to set up a base if you build one.
• Basalt Deltas. Grey basalt columns and blackstone, lava pockets everywhere, and dense magma cube spawns. Rich in blackstone and basalt for building; miserable to cross. Fortresses do not generate here.

Every Nether mob and how to handle it

Finding and looting a fortress

Nether fortresses are the dark red-brick structures with long bridges, and they generate in bands running north–south. Travel along the X axis (east or west) to cross those bands rather than along Z. In Java, fortresses generate in every biome except basalt deltas; the soul sand valley is a good place to spot one because its fog is thin. You can also use the /locate structure fortress command if commands are allowed — see the commands cheat sheet.

Once inside, look for three things: blaze spawners on the open balconies (fence them in so blazes cannot see out and farm rods from the side), nether wart growing on soul sand beside staircases (take some and the soul sand to start a farm), and chests in the corridors that can contain diamonds, obsidian, saddles, horse armour and flint and steel. Wither skeletons spawn on the brick anywhere in the fortress bounding box, so the whole area stays dangerous.

Blaze rods matter more than anything else here. They become blaze powder, which fuels brewing stands and combines with ender pearls to make the Eyes of Ender you need to find the stronghold. Twenty rods is a comfortable first haul.

Bastion remnants and piglin bartering

Bastions are huge blackstone ruins full of piglins, gold and — in the treasure room type — chests that can hold ancient debris, netherite scrap and the Netherite Upgrade smithing template you need to make netherite gear. There are four layouts (bridge, hoglin stables, housing units, treasure room); the treasure room is the one with the lava pit in the middle and the best loot, and the most piglin brutes.

Wear gold. Then remember the three things that break the truce anyway: opening any chest or barrel while a piglin can see you, breaking a gold block, and hitting a piglin. Brutes attack regardless. The usual approach is to clear brutes from a pillar with a bow, then loot while nobody is looking, or simply block yourself in around each chest.

Bartering is the other reason to visit: throw a gold ingot to a piglin (or drop it near one) and it gives you a random item. The outcomes include ender pearls, fire resistance potions, string, obsidian, crying obsidian, quartz, gravel and leather. Ender pearls come often enough that a gold farm plus a bartering setup is a standard way to gather them. Piglins that go through a portal to the Overworld zombify within seconds, so barter on the Nether side.

Ancient debris and netherite

Ancient debris is the Nether’s rarest ore and the only route to netherite, the best gear tier. It generates between Y 8 and Y 119 with most of it around Y 15, usually hidden inside solid netherrack rather than exposed. It is blast-proof, floats in lava, and needs a diamond pickaxe.

The efficient method is to clear large volumes at Y 12–16 with explosions and pick up the debris that survives:

1. Tunnel to Y 15 well away from lava lakes (which sit at Y 31 and below in pockets — dig carefully).
2. Dig a 1-wide tunnel. Every few blocks, place a bed, step back, and right-click it. It explodes with more force than TNT, clearing a sphere of netherrack.
3. Walk the crater looking for the dark brown ore. Repeat.

Each bed costs three wool and three planks; you will find one or two debris per dozen beds on average. Alternatively strip-mine at Y 15 with an Efficiency V pickaxe — slower per block but no risk of blowing yourself into lava. Whichever way, wear fire resistance.

To make netherite: smelt each debris into a netherite scrap; four scrap plus four gold ingots craft one netherite ingot. Then at a smithing table, combine a Netherite Upgrade template (from a bastion chest — the treasure-room bastion always has one), the diamond item and the ingot. The template is consumed, but you can duplicate a template with seven diamonds and a netherrack block, so find one and copy it. Upgrading keeps every enchantment on the item.

Using the Nether for fast travel

Because of the 1:8 ratio, a tunnel of 1,000 blocks in the Nether covers 8,000 in the Overworld. Players link distant bases with a “Nether hub”: a central portal, and tunnels lined with blocks (so nothing can see you and ghasts cannot reach you) leading to a portal for each destination at the scaled coordinates. Ice or blue ice on the floor lets a boat travel at over 40 blocks per second in these tunnels, which combined with the ratio is the fastest way to cross a map before elytra. The distance calculator will tell you how long any trip takes by each method.

On Java, the Nether roof — the bedrock layer at Y 128 — is a favourite place for these tunnels because nothing spawns above it. Getting up there requires an ender pearl through the bedrock gaps or careful use of the portal-placement rules; Bedrock Edition does not allow building on the roof at all.

Frequently asked questions