These are things I picked up from both my own experiences and the advice of others. All of these I have tested on my own. I'll start with some basic tips and then move on to more advanced tricks further down. Even you nether pros might want to check out the lower half of tips here.
1.) BRING A FLINT AND STEEL!! Never not bring one. It is especially important to bring one on your first trip into the nether. If your flint and steel has less than 75% durability, bring another or three. If you ever don't have enough flint and steel, don't blame me for not warning you.
2.) DO NOT ATTACK THE ZOMBIE PIGMEN! If you hit a zombie pigman, it will attack you and all the other zombie pigmen in the area will also attack you. This goes for others that may be on the other side of netherrack where you cannot see them, or even in a cave under you. An aggressed zombie pigman can despawn but otherwise will never de-aggress until killed. If you get stuck in an endless cycle of them attacking you, you can set difficulty to peaceful briefly to despawn them (the easy way) or you can hide in an enclosed space until they all despawn.
3.) Bring cobblestone or any other type of hard stone block such as stone, stone bricks, bricks, or netherbrick. You can use these to mark your path and they don't get destroyed by ghast charges. Netherrack, sandstone, and dirt are soft and will invariably get blasted to bits by ghasts.
4.) First thing you do when you go through that nether portal is start surrounding the portal with stone. If a ghast is nearby or already shooting at you, step to the side of your portal so the ghasts attacks aren't coming at it, and build a 2-3 block high barricade to hide behind. As soon as the ghast can't see you it'll stop attacking. You can continue building a wall around your portal while hiding behind parts of the wall you have already built.
If your portal winds up floating over a lava pool, skip down to tip#17 real quick for advice, then come back up here when your situation is fixed.
5.) Bring a bow. Don't forget to bring arrows too. A fully charged arrow from an unmodified bow can take down a ghast in one hit, but having power on your bow is excellent because then you don't need to charge as long and it's a lot more reliable.
6.) Practice shooting arrows at long distances while in the overworld. Get good at hitting targets at least 50-75 blocks away without spending more than the bow's charge time to aim. Ghasts are big but they move fast and will assault you from really far away. I hear you can reel them in closer with a fishing rod but I haven't tested it yet, and it probably only works when they're pretty close anyway.
7.) When you start exploring, make sure you leave yourself very obvious landmarks made of cobblestone or another material easily seen and that ghasts won't destroy. I like to make myself little cobblestone towers with lit netherrack on top because they are really vivid and stand out dramatically at long distances.
8.) Netherrack fires can be your friend or your enemy. As you have probably figured out within your first few minutes in the nether, fires on netherrack never go out on their own. You can hit them (left click) to extinguish them, or use flint and steel to light them. Light the top of the block, not the side. Be careful not to step on any fires because you will burn much longer in the nether. I like to light fires here and there instead of placing torches. Fire is a bit brighter, it's cheaper (I think), and it's a nice change from using torches everywhere in the overworld.
9.) Nether lava is full of tricks! Touching the stuff briefly is often enough to light you on fire long enough for you to burn to death, even if you have most of your health intact when you get out. You can't pour water in the nether so you can't just put the fire out. If you're probably going to die from fire, just step at least 8-10 blocks away from any lava and then hit F3 to check your coordinates. You can run back and get your stuff. Also, there are lava source blocks embedded within the netherrack. Any time you go digging through that stuff, always stand back from your work. It's only a matter of time till you discover one, and lava in the nether flows like water in the overworld. So practice dealing with lava in the overworld before you get to diggy in the nether, and when you do dig in netherrack just be prepared to jump back quickly.
10.) Magma cubes are soft and cuddly. Well actually they DO deal damage to you, but it's not much and they are easy to defeat. They can drop magma cream which you will want later. (spoiler: it's for fire resist potions) When attacking a magma cube, the thing to be most wary about is your surroundings. You never know when you might accidentally strike a zombie pigman, or a ghast might pop out of nowhere and break open a lava pool over your head. But the magma cube itself is weak. You can beat em with a stone sword if you wanna be cheap, and the littlest ones go down with onetwo whacks with an empty hand. (corrected by anomie_x) I like to kill them with a torch because it looks cool and saves on sword durability.
11.) You want to find a nether fortress. These have excellent loot and are actually not all that dangerous to explore if you play it safe. The tricky part is often getting to one. You may have to traverse a lot of terrain to find one. Don't be too thorough--these things are very large and aren't likely to hide in a small crevice. If you find dark plum-colored bricks, you have found a nether fortress (unless you're on multiplayer and someone placed them there). (as of 1.7.9)
12.) Build bridges of stone. Sometimes you'll find while exploring that parts of the nether are basically inaccessible on foot. If you hold shift, you can walk out over a ledge and you won't be able to walk off it. (from anomie_x: you can still get blasted off of it by a ghast or blaze fireball!) This allows you to build stone off the side and extend a bridge out above the great lava lakes. Make sure you get good at this before you build a giant bridge over lava and accidentally fall off because you let go of shift before you let go of the movement button. Better yet, don't bring anything of value with you. A few stacks of cobblestone should be the most valuable asset you are risking--or iron armor if you have enough iron to spare it. Lastly, make sure you reinforce your bridges at least two or three blocks wide, and maybe put stone walls along the side. You can make the bridge one block wide if you float stone walls above and to the sides of it. This way you won't have to worry about falling into the lava or getting knocked off by a ghast charge. This will help you access new parts of the nether and will make finding a nether fortress easier.
13.) Secure your nether fortress. Once you have found one, make sure you have a clear and easily-traversible path to and from it, marked so you can see the path. I then like to make a waystation just inside the fortress where I can place a chest to drop loot so I don't have to ferry it all the way home. Don't bother placing a bed, you can't use those in the nether. I also like to build a nether portal when I'm really far away from my main portal just for a free transport to a new location in the overworld. You'll get transported 8x as far in the overworld as you traveled in the nether, but more on that later.
14.) Find a blaze spawner. You can find these up on the balconies and bridges at the top of the nether fortress. They will be up on a raised platform with stairs leading up to it. Be careful fighting these or just avoid them for now, but you want to get a blaze rod to make a brewing stand. Once you have just one blaze rod, you can make that brewing stand and if you have any magma cream, you can craft fire resist potions. These make you immune to fire as well as the blast effect from ghast charges and blaze fireballs. They also make you immune to lava. Once you have your first fire resist potions, it becomes easy to farm blazes at the spawner for easy exp and more blaze rods, which are also used in strength potions which increase your melee damage by a lot.
15.) Watch out for wither skeletons. These mobs aren't too hard to fight when you get them one at a time (you usually do), but they do hit pretty hard so try not to let them sneak up on you. If you hear the crackling bones of a skeleton while you're in the nether fortress, look in the direction of the sound. If you face the skeleton and swing rapidly in the air, you can knock it back so it can't hit you.
16.) You can use nether portals to travel quickly in the overworld. This can help you reach new biomes you have yet to explore. When you craft and light a nether portal in the overworld, the game attempts to create one in its corresponding location in the nether at the same y coordinate with x and z coordinates divided by 8--or it will link up to an already existing portal within 125 (128?) blocks from that point in the nether. Likewise, placing and lighting a portal in the nether will attempt to create one in it's corresponding location in the overworld at equal y coordinate, with x and z coordinates multiplied by 8--or it will link to an already existing portal within 1000 (1024?) blocks. It usually ends up putting the portal a ways away from this exact point, because it tries to find a spot on open ground nearby. So if you build an easy-to-follow path in the nether to a location over 125 blocks from your portal, you can create a new portal to a more distant place in the overworld. If you place them too close, you get weird portal mechanics that can be exploited for quick travel, and I'm not going to go into how that works. There are plenty of videos on the subject.
17.) My portal spawned over lava/water! This happens sometimes. You get a tiny obsidian ledge to walk out onto when this happens. Just hold shift and walk out of the portal to take a look around. You can use the ledge-hopping trick (tip #12) to build a bridge to a safe spot. Unfortunately there's not really a way to build steps going down from a floating ledge. You can use a water chute in the overworld but not in the nether. Worst case scenario, you can just go back to the overworld and travel some 1250 blocks in any direction and try again. Or you can cut the obsidian off the portal and die, and avoid the overworld travel but that will cost you a diamond mining pick. That would allow you to construct a new portal a much shorter distance from your original one and have a second chance of getting it in a better spot. It's probably easier to just get a horse or boat to travel further though.
18.) Nether travel is more than 8 times as difficult as overworld travel. What I mean by this is that you should try to avoid placing nether portals at key points you found in the overworld, and instead place them from the nether. Say you're traveling a long distance (a few thousand blocks) over land and you come across something special you want easy access to in the future. Don't just build a nether portal here. Instead write down the coordinates and go back home. If you build a nether portal here, chances are you will spend more time trying to find a way back to your original portal than you would have just running in the overworld. The way I make portals is I go into the nether and convert the coordinates of the location I want to go to (1/8th x and z, equal y) and try to get to those x and z coordinates. Matching the Y is a bonus but is ultimately unimportant. What you really want is something matching 1/8th of the x and z coordinates of your destination but in a part of the nether that you find easy to get to. Then when you make your portal, it's usually over land anyway but if it's in a cave it's not so hard or dangerous to dig your way out. The first time I tried this I was aiming for a NPC village I found and I had the coordinates so exact that the portal wound up just inside the outskirts of the village. I kind of wish I'd offset it a bit but I can move it later to a nearby location without a problem due to the way the portals link up.
19.) If you do find yourself digging a path to get directly between two points in the nether (less running around/over/under obstacles), just make sure you have fire resist potions or at least armor with fire protection. Even just a point or two of fire protection often shortens the time you spend on fire enough to make the difference between life and death. With potions you can simply keep them in your inventory or hotbar until you catch fire, then drink one quickly to stop taking damage. Also watch out for ghasts attacking your path any time you are making a bridge or the path opens up anywhere. If you build it close to the top (y=128) or bottom (y=0) of the nether, you find fewer openings, if that's how you want to do it. Reinforce your bridges with stone an extra block or two up onto the ledge you're building from just to make sure ghast fireballs won't disconnect it from the ledge.
20.) You can knock zombie pigmen off ledges and kill them with fall damage to collect their loot. They drop rotten flesh, gold swords, gold ingots, and the occasional gold armor (I think) in addition to their rarer drops. I had to slip this one in at the end.
Hope you guys found something useful here. o/
Tips from other posters (in my own words):
From participle38: You can use wood to re-light a portal if you have no flint and steel. With a bucket you can pour lava near the wood to light it, or you can build a wood path to carry the fire from lava to the portal.
Also, while a ghast fireball can put the portal out, it can just as easily ignite the portal. You can hit the ghast charge in midair (left click) to deflect it. This method can be used to aim the charges at the base of the portal or even to hit em back at the ghast and kill it.
From TuisRyche: it can be a good idea to carry iron ingots with you into the nether. These can be fashioned into whatever iron item you might need when you need it, and will save on inventory space until then. (always bring a crafting table or wood) You can also obtain flint from the gravel found in the nether.
If you get stuck in the nether without flint and steel or iron ingots, there is one more way to get out: nether fortress chests often have iron ingots in them. You can craft the flint and steel without a crafting table.
From anomie_x: multiple points:
1.) distance to Ghasts (or any target) reduces an arrow's power. A bow with power 2 can reliably kill a Ghast in one hit from midrange, perhaps 2-3 chunks distance (32-48 blocks).
2.) light level doesn't matter for normal mob spawns in the nether: zombie pigmen, ghasts, and magma cubes, or for blazes at a blaze spawner. You can keep blazes and wither skeletons from spawning throughout a nether fortress by lighting it adequately. Otherwise, lighting netherrack is just good for making it easier to see, or marking stuff.
3.) anomie_x claims you can connect to new areas by making your next portal as few as 128 blocks away in the overworld, or 16 blocks in the nether, though this also may rely on the placement of the portal (specifically, the offset from the one it connects to). This is probably accurate but I haven't tested it. If you make your portals a lot further apart than this, you won't have to think about it and your portals should always work flawlessly.
4.) advanced Nether Portal placement: build a nether portal at an ideal location in the overworld, mark its coordinates but don't light it. Then build a nether portal in the nether within 16 blocks of its nether equivalent coordinates, also at an ideal location. When lit, they will link up as long as no other portals are close enough to interfere.
You can also move one end of the portal to a suitable location and re-ignite, but you must be careful not to move it out of range or you might create a new portal at the other end.
5.) you can re-ignite your portal with a fire charge, which is crafted from blaze powder (from a blaze rod, dropped by blazes), gunpowder (dropped by ghasts), and coal (dropped by wither skeletons). Nether fortresses also sometimes have flint and steel, and you can also find blazes in them. So nether fortresses are loaded with ways to re-light a portal.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
7/2/2011
Posts:
63
Minecraft:
participle38
Member Details
Nice guide!
If you don't bring Flint & Steel and your portal is turned off,
but you do have a bucket and wood (or another block that can catch fire from adjacent lava),
either dig out or build a one-block hole directly behind or in front of your portal
so that the bottom of the hole is level with the bottom of the portal's lowest obsidian blocks
and one side of the hole is the side of one of those obsidian blocks.
Fill the hole with lava
and place the wood/flammable block directly above the lava.
Wait a minute and it'll catch fire (unless you're playing on a server where fire spread has been disabled).
Wait another minute and the portal will reactivate.
^ Sounds like a weird and rare case, but if you're using mods that change the Flint and Steel recipe to require actual steel instead of iron and you haven't made any steel yet, it's very easy to get into this situation.
Carry raw materials everywhere like iron ingots and wood - the lava near a wood block trick saved my ass when a ghast immediately blasted my nether portal upon entry. At least have some iron on hand - you may also find gravel in the nether that you can use to harvest flint.
I hear you can reel them in closer with a fishing rod but I haven't tested it yet, and it probably only works when they're pretty close anyway.
Yes, the fishing rod doesn't have much range. If the ghast is close enough that you can hook it, you'd do better to shoot it.
You can also bat a ghast's fireball back at it for a kill, but (1) aiming is difficult and (2) if you time it wrong you'll get hit. I've also noticed that if you swing at the fireball twice, the first hit will deflect it and the second will strangely deflect it right back at you.
I like to make myself little cobblestone towers with lit netherrack on top because they are really vivid and stand out dramatically at long distances.
Cobblestone is good, but netherrack is not so great since the Nether is already full of lit netherrack. I find torches around the top of the pillar stands out a bit better. Neither torches nor netherrack will survive a ghast hit.
It costs flint and steel durability. If you have a tree farm and make torches from charcoal, I'd consider that cheaper.
Also note that light level doesn't matter at all for general Nether mob spawning. It does matter in fortresses (for blazes and wither skeletons), but there you'll be needing to place the netherrack yourself and then light it.
or it will link to an already existing portal within 1000 (1024?) blocks [in the overworld].
Also 128, same as traveling to the Nether.
The 1024 you're probably thinking of is that if you have have a portal at certain coordinates in the Nether, any Overworld portal within 1024 blocks of the corresponding coordinates in X or Z would link to that portal rather than creating a new one.
So if you build an easy-to-follow path in the nether to a location over 125 blocks from your portal, you can create a new portal to a more distant place in the overworld.
Actually, in the Nether you only need to travel 16 blocks away in both X and Z from the coordinates corresponding to your Overworld portal. Keeping in mind, as you mentioned, that the actual portal in the Nether may not be exactly at the corresponding coordinates.
It actually turns out that the Nether side of the portal can be created so far away from the corresponding coordinates that it will create a new Overworld portal the first time you try to use it.
If your only goal is to destroy the portal, you can spend several minutes punching an obsidian block to destroy it. Also, I recommend destroying one of the top blocks, or else your next portal might well be created on top of the destroyed one.
Also, if you can identify directions (e.g. by looking at the texture on certain blocks or using F3), before killing yourself you should look to see if you can spot flat land to know which direction to head in when you're back in the overworld.
Don't just build a nether portal here. Instead write down the coordinates and go back home.
Better: build the nether portal and secure the area around it, but don't go through it. Then when you travel to the corresponding Nether coordinates you know exactly where you'll come out because the game won't have to search for a corresponding location to create one. This is particularly useful if the Overworld side is in a snowy biome, because snow cover prevents portal spawning which means you're practically guaranteed to wind up in a cave.
19.) If you do find yourself digging a path to get directly between two points in the nether (less running around/over/under obstacles), just make sure you have fire resist potions or at least armor with fire protection.
Not necessary. Just stand back from where you're digging.
20.) You can knock zombie pigmen off ledges and kill them with fall damage to collect their loot. They drop rotten flesh, gold swords, gold ingots, and the occasional gold armor (I think) in addition to their rarer drops. I had to slip this one in at the end.
Indirect kills will only get you rotten flesh and gold nuggets. To get equipment drops and rare ingot drops you have to kill them directly, which will anger any others nearby.
You can use wood to re-light a portal if you have no flint and steel. With a bucket you can pour lava near the wood to light it, or you can build a wood path to carry the fire from lava to the portal.
Also, while a ghast fireball can put the portal out, it can just as easily ignite the portal. You can hit the ghast charge in midair (left click) to deflect it. This method can be used to aim the charges at the base of the portal
It'd probably be easier to just stand in front of the portal and dodge when the ghast shoots at you.
If you get stuck in the nether without flint and steel or iron ingots, there is one more way to get out: nether fortress chests often have iron ingots in them. You can craft the flint and steel without a crafting table.
Possibly worth mentioning that gravel spawns in the Nether, so you can get the needed flint.
Blaze shots also work. Or you can use your wood path to lead fire from netherrack as well as you can from lava. Or you can find flint and steel in fortresses too. Or you can combine coal (which wither skeletons drop), blaze powder (crafted from blaze rods, which blazes drop), and gunpowder (ghasts drop this) to make a fire charge.
it can be a good idea to carry iron ingots with you into the nether. These can be fashioned into whatever iron item you might need when you need it, and will save on inventory space until then. (always bring a crafting table or wood) You can also obtain flint from the gravel found in the nether.
I wouldn't bother. The only time I bring raw iron is in block form when I'm building a very long railway. I tend to use stone tools rather than iron when digging through netherrack.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
3/1/2014
Posts:
47
Member Details
I strongly disagree with not attacking zombie pigmen. Zombie pigmen are now my primary source of gold and XP. I don't even use my bow, I prefer to run around with a stone sword in leather armour and test my skill. The only thing I don't like about zombie pigmen is that all too often after 5 minutes of killing they're all gone and start popping friendly. If you don't have the chops to take a swing or two at a zombie pigman at least once then you're missing out on one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game! If you're good you can take-on 4 zombie pigmen at a time, I like to knock them in-front of each other to impede them from charging me all at once. Often I use walls to get them temporarily stuck and buy myself a little time. The funniest thing is up until I first tried it everyone told me to never ever attack a zombie pigman!!!!!!!11111eleventy-one111. Obviously they were full of bunk when they said that!
Also I think building bridges over seas of magma is unwise considering for the length of time you're dangling on a ledge you're bound to be knocked-off by a Ghast at least once while you're building it. Usually it's just fine to go somewhere else, and I find digging upwards is easier, just have some blocks in the slot next to your pick to quickly plug a magma spring should you find one and keep a distance while digging.
False. Fire protection on armor doesn't reduce the amount of time you burn for, it just reduces the damage you take.
This is stated in the wiki, told in some instructional videos on youtube, and tested by my own observations. Fire protection reduces burn time apparently by more than it reduces fire damage, or perhaps any level of fire protection confers the same burn time reduction. It is especially noticeable in the nether, where I find that touching lava will cause me to burn for about 90% of full health in damage or more without fire protection, but 60% or less with fire protection. Also, blast protection reduces knockback from blasts (I haven't confirmed this yet) and projectile protection reduces knockback from arrows (I think I have confirmed this but have not done extensive testing).
It is very possible that the reduced burn time I have observed is due to reduced fire damage taken. I have confirmed that how long you burn after stepping out of fire is directly related to how long you stand in it, and this is also true for lava. If you use a fire resistance potion and swim in lava for a while, you will burn for a long time after stepping out. Increased burn times in the nether may be due to greater fire and lava damage, though I have not confirmed that these do hurt more and in fact I suspect they do not.
I strongly disagree with not attacking zombie pigmen.
My advice is for newer folks who are first going into the nether. They can attack the Zombie Pigmen at their own discretion once they have a footing established.
You can also farm pigmen for gold nuggets and other loot. Find a place with many pigmen. Build and stand on a 3 block high tower in the middle of them. Crouch down so you dont fall off. Shoot 1 pigman with an arrow to draw the mob around you. Then whack the pigmen in the head from above with a sword. They cannot jump up high enough to attack you.
1.) BRING A FLINT AND STEEL!! Never not bring one. It is especially important to bring one on your first trip into the nether. If your flint and steel has less than 75% durability, bring another or three. If you ever don't have enough flint and steel, don't blame me for not warning you.
2.) DO NOT ATTACK THE ZOMBIE PIGMEN! If you hit a zombie pigman, it will attack you and all the other zombie pigmen in the area will also attack you. This goes for others that may be on the other side of netherrack where you cannot see them, or even in a cave under you. An aggressed zombie pigman can despawn but otherwise will never de-aggress until killed. If you get stuck in an endless cycle of them attacking you, you can set difficulty to peaceful briefly to despawn them (the easy way) or you can hide in an enclosed space until they all despawn.
3.) Bring cobblestone or any other type of hard stone block such as stone, stone bricks, bricks, or netherbrick. You can use these to mark your path and they don't get destroyed by ghast charges. Netherrack, sandstone, and dirt are soft and will invariably get blasted to bits by ghasts.
4.) First thing you do when you go through that nether portal is start surrounding the portal with stone. If a ghast is nearby or already shooting at you, step to the side of your portal so the ghasts attacks aren't coming at it, and build a 2-3 block high barricade to hide behind. As soon as the ghast can't see you it'll stop attacking. You can continue building a wall around your portal while hiding behind parts of the wall you have already built.
If your portal winds up floating over a lava pool, skip down to tip#17 real quick for advice, then come back up here when your situation is fixed.
5.) Bring a bow. Don't forget to bring arrows too. A fully charged arrow from an unmodified bow can take down a ghast in one hit, but having power on your bow is excellent because then you don't need to charge as long and it's a lot more reliable.
6.) Practice shooting arrows at long distances while in the overworld. Get good at hitting targets at least 50-75 blocks away without spending more than the bow's charge time to aim. Ghasts are big but they move fast and will assault you from really far away. I hear you can reel them in closer with a fishing rod but I haven't tested it yet, and it probably only works when they're pretty close anyway.
7.) When you start exploring, make sure you leave yourself very obvious landmarks made of cobblestone or another material easily seen and that ghasts won't destroy. I like to make myself little cobblestone towers with lit netherrack on top because they are really vivid and stand out dramatically at long distances.
8.) Netherrack fires can be your friend or your enemy. As you have probably figured out within your first few minutes in the nether, fires on netherrack never go out on their own. You can hit them (left click) to extinguish them, or use flint and steel to light them. Light the top of the block, not the side. Be careful not to step on any fires because you will burn much longer in the nether. I like to light fires here and there instead of placing torches. Fire is a bit brighter, it's cheaper (I think), and it's a nice change from using torches everywhere in the overworld.
9.) Nether lava is full of tricks! Touching the stuff briefly is often enough to light you on fire long enough for you to burn to death, even if you have most of your health intact when you get out. You can't pour water in the nether so you can't just put the fire out. If you're probably going to die from fire, just step at least 8-10 blocks away from any lava and then hit F3 to check your coordinates. You can run back and get your stuff. Also, there are lava source blocks embedded within the netherrack. Any time you go digging through that stuff, always stand back from your work. It's only a matter of time till you discover one, and lava in the nether flows like water in the overworld. So practice dealing with lava in the overworld before you get to diggy in the nether, and when you do dig in netherrack just be prepared to jump back quickly.
10.) Magma cubes are soft and cuddly. Well actually they DO deal damage to you, but it's not much and they are easy to defeat. They can drop magma cream which you will want later. (spoiler: it's for fire resist potions) When attacking a magma cube, the thing to be most wary about is your surroundings. You never know when you might accidentally strike a zombie pigman, or a ghast might pop out of nowhere and break open a lava pool over your head. But the magma cube itself is weak. You can beat em with a stone sword if you wanna be cheap, and the littlest ones go down with
onetwo whacks with an empty hand. (corrected by anomie_x) I like to kill them with a torch because it looks cool and saves on sword durability.11.) You want to find a nether fortress. These have excellent loot and are actually not all that dangerous to explore if you play it safe. The tricky part is often getting to one. You may have to traverse a lot of terrain to find one. Don't be too thorough--these things are very large and aren't likely to hide in a small crevice. If you find dark plum-colored bricks, you have found a nether fortress (unless you're on multiplayer and someone placed them there). (as of 1.7.9)
12.) Build bridges of stone. Sometimes you'll find while exploring that parts of the nether are basically inaccessible on foot. If you hold shift, you can walk out over a ledge and you won't be able to walk off it. (from anomie_x: you can still get blasted off of it by a ghast or blaze fireball!) This allows you to build stone off the side and extend a bridge out above the great lava lakes. Make sure you get good at this before you build a giant bridge over lava and accidentally fall off because you let go of shift before you let go of the movement button. Better yet, don't bring anything of value with you. A few stacks of cobblestone should be the most valuable asset you are risking--or iron armor if you have enough iron to spare it. Lastly, make sure you reinforce your bridges at least two or three blocks wide, and maybe put stone walls along the side. You can make the bridge one block wide if you float stone walls above and to the sides of it. This way you won't have to worry about falling into the lava or getting knocked off by a ghast charge. This will help you access new parts of the nether and will make finding a nether fortress easier.
13.) Secure your nether fortress. Once you have found one, make sure you have a clear and easily-traversible path to and from it, marked so you can see the path. I then like to make a waystation just inside the fortress where I can place a chest to drop loot so I don't have to ferry it all the way home. Don't bother placing a bed, you can't use those in the nether. I also like to build a nether portal when I'm really far away from my main portal just for a free transport to a new location in the overworld. You'll get transported 8x as far in the overworld as you traveled in the nether, but more on that later.
14.) Find a blaze spawner. You can find these up on the balconies and bridges at the top of the nether fortress. They will be up on a raised platform with stairs leading up to it. Be careful fighting these or just avoid them for now, but you want to get a blaze rod to make a brewing stand. Once you have just one blaze rod, you can make that brewing stand and if you have any magma cream, you can craft fire resist potions. These make you immune to fire as well as the blast effect from ghast charges and blaze fireballs. They also make you immune to lava. Once you have your first fire resist potions, it becomes easy to farm blazes at the spawner for easy exp and more blaze rods, which are also used in strength potions which increase your melee damage by a lot.
15.) Watch out for wither skeletons. These mobs aren't too hard to fight when you get them one at a time (you usually do), but they do hit pretty hard so try not to let them sneak up on you. If you hear the crackling bones of a skeleton while you're in the nether fortress, look in the direction of the sound. If you face the skeleton and swing rapidly in the air, you can knock it back so it can't hit you.
16.) You can use nether portals to travel quickly in the overworld. This can help you reach new biomes you have yet to explore. When you craft and light a nether portal in the overworld, the game attempts to create one in its corresponding location in the nether at the same y coordinate with x and z coordinates divided by 8--or it will link up to an already existing portal within 125 (128?) blocks from that point in the nether. Likewise, placing and lighting a portal in the nether will attempt to create one in it's corresponding location in the overworld at equal y coordinate, with x and z coordinates multiplied by 8--or it will link to an already existing portal within 1000 (1024?) blocks. It usually ends up putting the portal a ways away from this exact point, because it tries to find a spot on open ground nearby. So if you build an easy-to-follow path in the nether to a location over 125 blocks from your portal, you can create a new portal to a more distant place in the overworld. If you place them too close, you get weird portal mechanics that can be exploited for quick travel, and I'm not going to go into how that works. There are plenty of videos on the subject.
17.) My portal spawned over lava/water! This happens sometimes. You get a tiny obsidian ledge to walk out onto when this happens. Just hold shift and walk out of the portal to take a look around. You can use the ledge-hopping trick (tip #12) to build a bridge to a safe spot. Unfortunately there's not really a way to build steps going down from a floating ledge. You can use a water chute in the overworld but not in the nether. Worst case scenario, you can just go back to the overworld and travel some 1250 blocks in any direction and try again. Or you can cut the obsidian off the portal and die, and avoid the overworld travel but that will cost you a diamond mining pick. That would allow you to construct a new portal a much shorter distance from your original one and have a second chance of getting it in a better spot. It's probably easier to just get a horse or boat to travel further though.
18.) Nether travel is more than 8 times as difficult as overworld travel. What I mean by this is that you should try to avoid placing nether portals at key points you found in the overworld, and instead place them from the nether. Say you're traveling a long distance (a few thousand blocks) over land and you come across something special you want easy access to in the future. Don't just build a nether portal here. Instead write down the coordinates and go back home. If you build a nether portal here, chances are you will spend more time trying to find a way back to your original portal than you would have just running in the overworld. The way I make portals is I go into the nether and convert the coordinates of the location I want to go to (1/8th x and z, equal y) and try to get to those x and z coordinates. Matching the Y is a bonus but is ultimately unimportant. What you really want is something matching 1/8th of the x and z coordinates of your destination but in a part of the nether that you find easy to get to. Then when you make your portal, it's usually over land anyway but if it's in a cave it's not so hard or dangerous to dig your way out. The first time I tried this I was aiming for a NPC village I found and I had the coordinates so exact that the portal wound up just inside the outskirts of the village. I kind of wish I'd offset it a bit but I can move it later to a nearby location without a problem due to the way the portals link up.
19.) If you do find yourself digging a path to get directly between two points in the nether (less running around/over/under obstacles), just make sure you have fire resist potions or at least armor with fire protection. Even just a point or two of fire protection often shortens the time you spend on fire enough to make the difference between life and death. With potions you can simply keep them in your inventory or hotbar until you catch fire, then drink one quickly to stop taking damage. Also watch out for ghasts attacking your path any time you are making a bridge or the path opens up anywhere. If you build it close to the top (y=128) or bottom (y=0) of the nether, you find fewer openings, if that's how you want to do it. Reinforce your bridges with stone an extra block or two up onto the ledge you're building from just to make sure ghast fireballs won't disconnect it from the ledge.
20.) You can knock zombie pigmen off ledges and kill them with fall damage to collect their loot. They drop rotten flesh, gold swords, gold ingots, and the occasional gold armor (I think) in addition to their rarer drops. I had to slip this one in at the end.
Hope you guys found something useful here. o/
Tips from other posters (in my own words):
From participle38: You can use wood to re-light a portal if you have no flint and steel. With a bucket you can pour lava near the wood to light it, or you can build a wood path to carry the fire from lava to the portal.
Also, while a ghast fireball can put the portal out, it can just as easily ignite the portal. You can hit the ghast charge in midair (left click) to deflect it. This method can be used to aim the charges at the base of the portal or even to hit em back at the ghast and kill it.
From TuisRyche: it can be a good idea to carry iron ingots with you into the nether. These can be fashioned into whatever iron item you might need when you need it, and will save on inventory space until then. (always bring a crafting table or wood) You can also obtain flint from the gravel found in the nether.
If you get stuck in the nether without flint and steel or iron ingots, there is one more way to get out: nether fortress chests often have iron ingots in them. You can craft the flint and steel without a crafting table.
From anomie_x: multiple points:
1.) distance to Ghasts (or any target) reduces an arrow's power. A bow with power 2 can reliably kill a Ghast in one hit from midrange, perhaps 2-3 chunks distance (32-48 blocks).
2.) light level doesn't matter for normal mob spawns in the nether: zombie pigmen, ghasts, and magma cubes, or for blazes at a blaze spawner. You can keep blazes and wither skeletons from spawning throughout a nether fortress by lighting it adequately. Otherwise, lighting netherrack is just good for making it easier to see, or marking stuff.
3.) anomie_x claims you can connect to new areas by making your next portal as few as 128 blocks away in the overworld, or 16 blocks in the nether, though this also may rely on the placement of the portal (specifically, the offset from the one it connects to). This is probably accurate but I haven't tested it. If you make your portals a lot further apart than this, you won't have to think about it and your portals should always work flawlessly.
4.) advanced Nether Portal placement: build a nether portal at an ideal location in the overworld, mark its coordinates but don't light it. Then build a nether portal in the nether within 16 blocks of its nether equivalent coordinates, also at an ideal location. When lit, they will link up as long as no other portals are close enough to interfere.
You can also move one end of the portal to a suitable location and re-ignite, but you must be careful not to move it out of range or you might create a new portal at the other end.
5.) you can re-ignite your portal with a fire charge, which is crafted from blaze powder (from a blaze rod, dropped by blazes), gunpowder (dropped by ghasts), and coal (dropped by wither skeletons). Nether fortresses also sometimes have flint and steel, and you can also find blazes in them. So nether fortresses are loaded with ways to re-light a portal.
I want
ocean content(thanks Möjang!),nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).If you don't bring Flint & Steel and your portal is turned off,
but you do have a bucket and wood (or another block that can catch fire from adjacent lava),
either dig out or build a one-block hole directly behind or in front of your portal
so that the bottom of the hole is level with the bottom of the portal's lowest obsidian blocks
and one side of the hole is the side of one of those obsidian blocks.
Fill the hole with lava
and place the wood/flammable block directly above the lava.
Wait a minute and it'll catch fire (unless you're playing on a server where fire spread has been disabled).
Wait another minute and the portal will reactivate.
^ Sounds like a weird and rare case, but if you're using mods that change the Flint and Steel recipe to require actual steel instead of iron and you haven't made any steel yet, it's very easy to get into this situation.
I hope you don't mind if I add your tip to the OP. I'll credit you for it.
I want
ocean content(thanks Möjang!),nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).I've seldom had this work, since distance tends to reduce the arrow's power.
Yes, the fishing rod doesn't have much range. If the ghast is close enough that you can hook it, you'd do better to shoot it.
You can also bat a ghast's fireball back at it for a kill, but (1) aiming is difficult and (2) if you time it wrong you'll get hit. I've also noticed that if you swing at the fireball twice, the first hit will deflect it and the second will strangely deflect it right back at you.
Cobblestone is good, but netherrack is not so great since the Nether is already full of lit netherrack. I find torches around the top of the pillar stands out a bit better. Neither torches nor netherrack will survive a ghast hit.
This appears to be false.
It lights a 1-block-larger taxicab radius. But you have to avoid the central block.
It costs flint and steel durability. If you have a tree farm and make torches from charcoal, I'd consider that cheaper.
Also note that light level doesn't matter at all for general Nether mob spawning. It does matter in fortresses (for blazes and wither skeletons), but there you'll be needing to place the netherrack yourself and then light it.
False. They have intrinsic armor (unlike slimes), so it takes two hits.
But a ghast could still shoot you and knock you off, so watch out.
128. Specifically a cuboid with X and Z sides 257 blocks long (128 "radius") at the full height of the target dimension.
Also 128, same as traveling to the Nether.
The 1024 you're probably thinking of is that if you have have a portal at certain coordinates in the Nether, any Overworld portal within 1024 blocks of the corresponding coordinates in X or Z would link to that portal rather than creating a new one.
Actually, in the Nether you only need to travel 16 blocks away in both X and Z from the coordinates corresponding to your Overworld portal. Keeping in mind, as you mentioned, that the actual portal in the Nether may not be exactly at the corresponding coordinates.
It actually turns out that the Nether side of the portal can be created so far away from the corresponding coordinates that it will create a new Overworld portal the first time you try to use it.
If your only goal is to destroy the portal, you can spend several minutes punching an obsidian block to destroy it. Also, I recommend destroying one of the top blocks, or else your next portal might well be created on top of the destroyed one.
Also, if you can identify directions (e.g. by looking at the texture on certain blocks or using F3), before killing yourself you should look to see if you can spot flat land to know which direction to head in when you're back in the overworld.
Better: build the nether portal and secure the area around it, but don't go through it. Then when you travel to the corresponding Nether coordinates you know exactly where you'll come out because the game won't have to search for a corresponding location to create one. This is particularly useful if the Overworld side is in a snowy biome, because snow cover prevents portal spawning which means you're practically guaranteed to wind up in a cave.
Not necessary. Just stand back from where you're digging.
False. Fire protection on armor doesn't reduce the amount of time you burn for, it just reduces the damage you take.
Indirect kills will only get you rotten flesh and gold nuggets. To get equipment drops and rare ingot drops you have to kill them directly, which will anger any others nearby.
It'd probably be easier to just stand in front of the portal and dodge when the ghast shoots at you.
Possibly worth mentioning that gravel spawns in the Nether, so you can get the needed flint.
Blaze shots also work. Or you can use your wood path to lead fire from netherrack as well as you can from lava. Or you can find flint and steel in fortresses too. Or you can combine coal (which wither skeletons drop), blaze powder (crafted from blaze rods, which blazes drop), and gunpowder (ghasts drop this) to make a fire charge.
I wouldn't bother. The only time I bring raw iron is in block form when I'm building a very long railway. I tend to use stone tools rather than iron when digging through netherrack.
Also I think building bridges over seas of magma is unwise considering for the length of time you're dangling on a ledge you're bound to be knocked-off by a Ghast at least once while you're building it. Usually it's just fine to go somewhere else, and I find digging upwards is easier, just have some blocks in the slot next to your pick to quickly plug a magma spring should you find one and keep a distance while digging.
This is stated in the wiki, told in some instructional videos on youtube, and tested by my own observations. Fire protection reduces burn time apparently by more than it reduces fire damage, or perhaps any level of fire protection confers the same burn time reduction. It is especially noticeable in the nether, where I find that touching lava will cause me to burn for about 90% of full health in damage or more without fire protection, but 60% or less with fire protection. Also, blast protection reduces knockback from blasts (I haven't confirmed this yet) and projectile protection reduces knockback from arrows (I think I have confirmed this but have not done extensive testing).
It is very possible that the reduced burn time I have observed is due to reduced fire damage taken. I have confirmed that how long you burn after stepping out of fire is directly related to how long you stand in it, and this is also true for lava. If you use a fire resistance potion and swim in lava for a while, you will burn for a long time after stepping out. Increased burn times in the nether may be due to greater fire and lava damage, though I have not confirmed that these do hurt more and in fact I suspect they do not.
My advice is for newer folks who are first going into the nether. They can attack the Zombie Pigmen at their own discretion once they have a footing established.
I want
ocean content(thanks Möjang!),nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).I want
ocean content(thanks Möjang!),nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).You can also farm pigmen for gold nuggets and other loot. Find a place with many pigmen. Build and stand on a 3 block high tower in the middle of them. Crouch down so you dont fall off. Shoot 1 pigman with an arrow to draw the mob around you. Then whack the pigmen in the head from above with a sword. They cannot jump up high enough to attack you.