As question above - just wanna see how minecrafters travel in general...
For me im also tempted to start building proper roads with a railway track in survival. That way i can either take the rail or use a horse. Still having trouble finding a aesthetically pleasing yet cheap design for it though lol
For short distances I run. I don't bother with making the land easier to travel on except for the path in front of my house. If I need to travel a long distance, I will make a railway that sometimes goes around obstacles and other times goes straight through them. One time I found a small mountain while I was building a railroad to a swamp, and I decided to make the railroad spiral around it.
If you want to maximize aesthetics and minimize cost, a dirt path and a horse is the best way to go.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome, incredibly magnificent world in itself"-Henry Miller
For short distances I run. I don't bother with making the land easier to travel on except for the path in front of my house. If I need to travel a long distance, I will make a railway that sometimes goes around obstacles and other times goes straight through them. One time I found a small mountain while I was building a railroad to a swamp, and I decided to make the railroad spiral around it.
If you want to maximize aesthetics and minimize cost, a dirt path and a horse is the best way to go.
good to know i wasnt the only one walking everywhere without roads....
Underground railroad is what we use. Clear out or block off caves and you can get a snack while you travel in game. You do not need to worry about being attacked while you are away from the computer. Next up is a nether railroad to places more than a 1000 blocks away.
I link my bases together with railways, otherwise I just walk (occasionally, boat, but I mostly stay around land) to and from where I've been caving, which changes all the time as I explore around, so it doesn't make any sense to have any form of infrastructure (I build new secondary bases about 1000 blocks apart so 500 blocks is more or less the limit for "too far to walk"; in my current world I've gone up to twice this distance from a single main base but I use a modded double-size ender chest so I can cave for twice as long before it fills up).
In any case most of the distance I walk is while caving, around 17.5 km per play session, which only covers an area of about 100 chunks or 160x160 blocks so it takes me months to explore even a level 4 map, which is likely considered small these days given how far you have to travel to find many of the newer biomes and structures (my largest world is about 6500x6500 blocks and has 143 days of playtime, many others only have a single base since I never went so far that I felt that it was needed):
This is a map of the world with rail lines highlighted, along with each base (MB = main base, others are numbered in the order I built them in)
For comparison, this is an underground map of explored caves (chunks without torches were trimmed away) to give you an idea of how much I've traveled underground:
I link my bases together with railways, otherwise I just walk (occasionally, boat, but I mostly stay around land) to and from where I've been caving, which changes all the time as I explore around, so it doesn't make any sense to have any form of infrastructure (I build new secondary bases about 1000 blocks apart so 500 blocks is more or less the limit for "too far to walk"; in my current world I've gone up to twice this distance from a single main base but I use a modded double-size ender chest so I can cave for twice as long before it fills up).
In any case most of the distance I walk is while caving, around 17.5 km per play session, which only covers an area of about 100 chunks or 160x160 blocks so it takes me months to explore even a level 4 map, which is likely considered small these days given how far you have to travel to find many of the newer biomes and structures (my largest world is about 6500x6500 blocks and has 143 days of playtime, many others only have a single base since I never went so far that I felt that it was needed):
im pretty sure i wont travel such insane distances like you - or more accurately unless its to find a specific biome i want lol
and i surely wont bother to cave everything out in a minecraft world XD
Underground railroad is what we use. Clear out or block off caves and you can get a snack while you travel in game. You do not need to worry about being attacked while you are away from the computer. Next up is a nether railroad to places more than a 1000 blocks away.
considering how badly im getting wrecked by ghasts and other weird looking mobs who spit out fire at me in the nether, i highly doubt i will want to build anything there
was originally intending to use the nether as a source of lava buckets for smelting my stuff but i guess its not so practical now :/
I walk or fire a rocket with an elytra for short distances, fly for moderate ones, and use a Nether tunnel for the long travels. I never bothered with horses, but do have rails for automatic travel if I want to go while also having to go somewhere away from the computer.
im pretty sure i wont travel such insane distances like you - or more accurately unless its to find a specific biome i want lol
btw do you cave in the nether at all?
I'm under the impression that a few thousand blocks is nothing these days, what with Elytra and all (with Elytra you can travel at greater than 30 blocks per second, taking just 110 seconds to cover 3300 blocks, the furthest I've ever traveled from spawn. For comparison, it takes close to 7 minutes by minecart).
As far as the Nether goes, I only explore it to find a fortress, then mine quartz to get XP for enchanting, after which I abandon it; while I've been modding the Overworld for over 5 years only recently have I modded the Nether, adding more and more varied caves, ravines, and other features, partly because I spend so little time in it (same for the End, whose sole purpose for me is the dragon fight, and I haven't done anything with it yet).
Here is a rendering of one of my worlds that shows the relative amounts I explore in each dimension (I built 3 bases in the Overworld; my main base just north of 0,0 and two secondary bases around 0, 1024 and 1024, 0). I played on this world for about 5 months, most of it spent caving, with about 12000 chunks explored out of a total of 18000 generated, while a level 4 map is 16384 chunks:
considering how badly im getting wrecked by ghasts and other weird looking mobs who spit out fire at me in the nether, i highly doubt i will want to build anything there
That's why you build underground, or at least cover your nether base and rail tracks. Fire protection and blast protection armor also helps. If you hold your bow in your off-hand with a looting sword in your main hand you can get the looting bonus for bow kills, and that's a great way to take out ghasts and blazes (you get loads of ghast tears and blaze rods).
im pretty sure i wont travel such insane distances like you - or more accurately unless its to find a specific biome i want lol
and i surely wont bother to cave everything out in a minecraft world XD
btw do you cave in the nether at all?
considering how badly im getting wrecked by ghasts and other weird looking mobs who spit out fire at me in the nether, i highly doubt i will want to build anything there
was originally intending to use the nether as a source of lava buckets for smelting my stuff but i guess its not so practical now :/
As Courageous_Marinade said, build walls and roofs for your nether railroad.
We build a base around the nether portals so you have a place to hide if needed. We will build mini-bases near something that we want to mine if it's going to be awhile.
Get your lava from a source in the overworld. We have emptied many a lava pool in a cave or mine one bucket at a time.
For short distances, I'll build a path and walk. The path is mostly for aesthetics, but it also gives me a chance to clear a path of trees and other obstacles.
For longer distances of a few thousand blocks, I'll use an elytra.
If it's more than 8,000 blocks away I build a nether tunnel. This nether tunnel usually consists of a 9x9 hallway, a path made of packed/blue ice, and some rails on top of the ice. I'll fly through with an elytra or use a boat depending on my mood, or use rails if I need to transport villagers.
Those tunnels can be easily hollowed out with a slime block tunnel bore.
When I imported my older world into 1.9+ I was reluctant to resummon the dragon because I had built things on the end island that I didn't want destroyed, so I built a rail track across the void to the outer end islands.
It takes roughly 2 minutes to cross the void by minecart. I've been meaning to build some floating sculptures in the void to make the ride more interesting (space ships, mythical creatures, etc.) but I've just been too busy (translation, busy=lazy).
My play style is centered on distant adventures. Distant, as in more than 1,000 blocks from my main base near the spawn point. For example, I once rode a horse more than 20,000 blocks one way looking for a jungle in my large-biome survival world. On horseback, I believe I considered 1,000 blocks a "short trip," 2,500 medium-length travel, 5,000 long-distance travel. Anything less than 1,000 blocks would take less than a Minecraft day to make a round trip on foot overland from Point A to Point B. That's not really "travel" in most standard vanilla worlds.
On routes between points, I construct little "waypoints" or larger "outposts" every so often depending on the terrain. I have several waypoints of various sizes and function out to about 5,000 blocks in each cardinal direction from spawn.
The big debate in regard to distant overland travel in survival from one point to another in an established Minecraft survival world is "elytra vs. Nether railway." Again, that would be for regular or semi-regular travel between two fixed points (e.g., between a large base and a smaller outpost).
In that argument, I firmly maintain the opinion that elytra, especially after firework rockets became a form of propulsion, make all other forms of distant overland travel—especially minecarts, but unfortunately horses as well—utterly and completely obsolete. My derelict Nether hub fell into disuse years ago. My beloved horses are now pasture ornaments, though for years, two fast and strong mounts still stand armored and ready to ride at a hitching rail near the entrance to my main base. What took me multiple full days of gameplay composed of nothing but overland travel by hoof now takes about 15 minutes or so on rocket-powered wings.
Any work on a Nether hub to reduce overall time spent on travel is wasted if it's not more efficient, of course. (Other than the fact that time spent having fun while playing the game is never wasted.) If it takes less time to get from Point A to Point B by overland travel than it does by Nether railway, then obviously, one should travel overland. For instance, seldom does one make a Nether railway to go just 250 blocks!
Both sides of the debate clash at longer distances. Going through the Nether reduces the physical distance between two points by about eight times! That's unquestionably a very significant reduction in distance traveled—I will surrender that argument's ground immediately.
If one is going to walk or ride a horse across rough terrain any distance 1,000 blocks or greater with regularity, one must consider a number of things; logistics like food, first and foremost. Riding 1,000 blocks and back again doesn't requite any, but by foot, one wouldn't want to leave home without at least some. A bed should be taken along with a number of other pieces of standard and emergency equipment such as equipment and tools, wood, a bucket of water—and an ender chest if available (I also always carry a fire resistance potion on my hotbar).
At the very least, one would want to clear away pesky tree branches on an established overland route. If there's a large gap or ravine in the way of the quickest distance between the two points, one will probably want to erect a bridge or other form of crossing there. Light terraforming is common.
There's a whole lot more work involved in creating a Nether railway. There's the actual rails, including powering them, but there's also a lot of tunneling and bridging to construct a railway in the Nether. On top of that, an infrastructure to defend against a ghast's rail-blasting explosive fireballs must be at least considered. Pigmen like to wander onto an open railway as well. With fire resistance potions, it may not be much more dangerous than an overland project, but it sure is a slog. One wrong step sends a bridge builder into an ocean of lava. The Nether can just be a pain.
The elytra's drawback is the entry fee. One must slay the Ender Dragon first before obtaining a set, usually. After that, finding an airship port in the End can be even more dangerous than building in the Nether, possibly a lot more. Then, elytra really need to be enchanted with Mending and Unbreaking III before use—their extremely-low durability practically requires both.
Unlike horses, rocket-powered elytra require jet fuel in the form of gunpowder and paper. Thankfully, both can be farmed, but even without farms, neither is a harsh requirement. I have an automatic sugarcane farm for paper, but I don't have any sort of farm for gunpowder. Casual game play produces enough for me. I can easily go though a stack of rockets in a day playing Minecraft, but it's building that burns through the most by far, not travel!
Play style is going to be a strong factor in deciding between the two, making the debate largely subjective. There's plenty numbers to crunch, but what variables should be included are also contended.
I may someday make a Nether hub to the jungle in my large-biome survival world, but it will be designed for flight, not railway, and I don't plan to start the project any time soon. There's little chance I would consider building a Nether hub for distances of less than 10,000 or so blocks.
Here are some pictures I found looking through my screenshots folder of just plain old pathways I have used for the five years I've been playing the same vanilla large-biome world. They aren't fancy by any means.
(Above) Hauling horses back home from a far-off plains biome Oct. 23, 2016. "Home" is roughly X=-500/Z=0. I found them around X=700/Z=1,700. About 2,000 blocks one way.
(Above) Taken more than a year ago while flying on elytra, this is Longbridge, which connects the Twilight Watchtower on the left (west) with my first and main base in the world, Castle Midgard. Render distance 32. It's right at 1,000 blocks of travel one way by road and bridge between the two bases. On horseback, I can make it there and back between sunrise and sunset if I hurry.
(Above) A picture of the path that connects Longbridge with the Twilight Watchtower. The other bridge in the picture is Rose Hill Bridge. It leads to the Ranch 34 outpost, barely visible at the top of the image.
(Above) Here's a random bridge probably built in mid-2016, I think near what would later be discovered is a double mob spawner. I left little toches on the ground to act as flares to guide me home from a distant adventure.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
That's why you build underground, or at least cover your nether base and rail tracks. Fire protection and blast protection armor also helps. If you hold your bow in your off-hand with a looting sword in your main hand you can get the looting bonus for bow kills, and that's a great way to take out ghasts and blazes (you get loads of ghast tears and blaze rods).
ok thanks didnt know one could actually dual wield a bow
My play style is centered on distant adventures. Distant, as in more than 1,000 blocks from my main base near the spawn point. For example, I once rode a horse more than 20,000 blocks one way looking for a jungle in my large-biome survival world. On horseback, I believe I considered 1,000 blocks a "short trip," 2,500 medium-length travel, 5,000 long-distance travel. Anything less than 1,000 blocks would take less than a Minecraft day to make a round trip on foot overland from Point A to Point B. That's not really "travel" in most standard vanilla worlds.
On routes between points, I construct little "waypoints" or larger "outposts" every so often depending on the terrain. I have several waypoints of various sizes and function out to about 5,000 blocks in each cardinal direction from spawn.
The big debate in regard to distant overland travel in survival from one point to another in an established Minecraft survival world is "elytra vs. Nether railway." Again, that would be for regular or semi-regular travel between two fixed points (e.g., between a large base and a smaller outpost).
In that argument, I firmly maintain the opinion that elytra, especially after firework rockets became a form of propulsion, make all other forms of distant overland travel—especially minecarts, but unfortunately horses as well—utterly and completely obsolete. My derelict Nether hub fell into disuse years ago. My beloved horses are now pasture ornaments, though for years, two fast and strong mounts still stand armored and ready to ride at a hitching rail near the entrance to my main base. What took me multiple full days of gameplay composed of nothing but overland travel by hoof now takes about 15 minutes or so on rocket-powered wings.
Any work on a Nether hub to reduce overall time spent on travel is wasted if it's not more efficient, of course. (Other than the fact that time spent having fun while playing the game is never wasted.) If it takes less time to get from Point A to Point B by overland travel than it does by Nether railway, then obviously, one should travel overland. For instance, seldom does one make a Nether railway to go just 250 blocks!
Both sides of the debate clash at longer distances. Going through the Nether reduces the physical distance between two points by about eight times! That's unquestionably a very significant reduction in distance traveled—I will surrender that argument's ground immediately.
If one is going to walk or ride a horse across rough terrain any distance 1,000 blocks or greater with regularity, one must consider a number of things; logistics like food, first and foremost. Riding 1,000 blocks and back again doesn't requite any, but by foot, one wouldn't want to leave home without at least some. A bed should be taken along with a number of other pieces of standard and emergency equipment such as equipment and tools, wood, a bucket of water—and an ender chest if available (I also always carry a fire resistance potion on my hotbar).
At the very least, one would want to clear away pesky tree branches on an established overland route. If there's a large gap or ravine in the way of the quickest distance between the two points, one will probably want to erect a bridge or other form of crossing there. Light terraforming is common.
There's a whole lot more work involved in creating a Nether railway. There's the actual rails, including powering them, but there's also a lot of tunneling and bridging to construct a railway in the Nether. On top of that, an infrastructure to defend against a ghast's rail-blasting explosive fireballs must be at least considered. Pigmen like to wander onto an open railway as well. With fire resistance potions, it may not be much more dangerous than an overland project, but it sure is a slog. One wrong step sends a bridge builder into an ocean of lava. The Nether can just be a pain.
The elytra's drawback is the entry fee. One must slay the Ender Dragon first before obtaining a set, usually. After that, finding an airship port in the End can be even more dangerous than building in the Nether, possibly a lot more. Then, elytra really need to be enchanted with Mending and Unbreaking III before use—their extremely-low durability practically requires both.
Unlike horses, rocket-powered elytra require jet fuel in the form of gunpowder and paper. Thankfully, both can be farmed, but even without farms, neither is a harsh requirement. I have an automatic sugarcane farm for paper, but I don't have any sort of farm for gunpowder. Casual game play produces enough for me. I can easily go though a stack of rockets in a day playing Minecraft, but it's building that burns through the most by far, not travel!
Play style is going to be a strong factor in deciding between the two, making the debate largely subjective. There's plenty numbers to crunch, but what variables should be included are also contended.
I may someday make a Nether hub to the jungle in my large-biome survival world, but it will be designed for flight, not railway, and I don't plan to start the project any time soon. There's little chance I would consider building a Nether hub for distances of less than 10,000 or so blocks.
Here are some pictures I found looking through my screenshots folder of just plain old pathways I have used for the five years I've been playing the same vanilla large-biome world. They aren't fancy by any means.
(Above) Hauling horses back home from a far-off plains biome Oct. 23, 2016. "Home" is roughly X=-500/Z=0. I found them around X=700/Z=1,700. About 2,000 blocks one way.
(Above) Taken more than a year ago while flying on elytra, this is Longbridge, which connects the Twilight Watchtower on the left (west) with my first and main base in the world, Castle Midgard. Render distance 32. It's right at 1,000 blocks of travel one way by road and bridge between the two bases. On horseback, I can make it there and back between sunrise and sunset if I hurry.
(Above) A picture of the path that connects Longbridge with the Twilight Watchtower. The other bridge in the picture is Rose Hill Bridge. It leads to the Ranch 34 outpost, barely visible at the top of the image.
(Above) Here's a random bridge probably built in mid-2016, I think near what would later be discovered is a double mob spawner. I left little toches on the ground to act as flares to guide me home from a distant adventure.
lmao your bridge already looks way better than mine XD
For short distances, I'll build a path and walk. The path is mostly for aesthetics, but it also gives me a chance to clear a path of trees and other obstacles.
For longer distances of a few thousand blocks, I'll use an elytra.
If it's more than 8,000 blocks away I build a nether tunnel. This nether tunnel usually consists of a 9x9 hallway, a path made of packed/blue ice, and some rails on top of the ice. I'll fly through with an elytra or use a boat depending on my mood, or use rails if I need to transport villagers.
Those tunnels can be easily hollowed out with a slime block tunnel bore.
is the slime block tunnel bore some kind of new feature? im playing on 1.12 for now. no intention of updating it
Nether network built at Y 122. Everything slabbed to prevent spawning. Corridors are 2 wide 3 tall, floor slabbed on one side, and alternating slabs/ice on the other. Ice being transparent, no mobs spawn on it either. 40 block/sec speed is nice.
Short trips are mostly elytra + rockets. Also trips to one-off locations.
I like to travel by railway and roads on the overland. I have no ambitions to ever acquire elytra. I won't make a nether hub because I don't care to spend time in the Nether. I prefer blue skies, fluffy clouds, green grass and pretty flowers, all of which I can see when walking across my lands :-)
Being that several players seem to be obsessed with faster, I'm surprised that using /tp has the backlash it does. Then again, these people love to cheat using methods that are harder, slower, more finicky, and generally more frustrating rather than doing it immediately, painlessly, and efficiently in Creative...go figure.
Being that several players seem to be obsessed with faster, I'm surprised that using /tp has the backlash it does. Then again, these people love to cheat using methods that are harder, slower, more finicky, and generally more frustrating rather than doing it immediately, painlessly, and efficiently in Creative...go figure.
Building a nether hub or a piston bolt network is a lot of work, even if we use "cheats" like TNT duplicators to do it. In that sense, we've earned it.
As question above - just wanna see how minecrafters travel in general...
For me im also tempted to start building proper roads with a railway track in survival. That way i can either take the rail or use a horse. Still having trouble finding a aesthetically pleasing yet cheap design for it though lol
For short distances I run. I don't bother with making the land easier to travel on except for the path in front of my house. If I need to travel a long distance, I will make a railway that sometimes goes around obstacles and other times goes straight through them. One time I found a small mountain while I was building a railroad to a swamp, and I decided to make the railroad spiral around it.
If you want to maximize aesthetics and minimize cost, a dirt path and a horse is the best way to go.
good to know i wasnt the only one walking everywhere without roads....
Underground railroad is what we use. Clear out or block off caves and you can get a snack while you travel in game. You do not need to worry about being attacked while you are away from the computer. Next up is a nether railroad to places more than a 1000 blocks away.
I link my bases together with railways, otherwise I just walk (occasionally, boat, but I mostly stay around land) to and from where I've been caving, which changes all the time as I explore around, so it doesn't make any sense to have any form of infrastructure (I build new secondary bases about 1000 blocks apart so 500 blocks is more or less the limit for "too far to walk"; in my current world I've gone up to twice this distance from a single main base but I use a modded double-size ender chest so I can cave for twice as long before it fills up).
In any case most of the distance I walk is while caving, around 17.5 km per play session, which only covers an area of about 100 chunks or 160x160 blocks so it takes me months to explore even a level 4 map, which is likely considered small these days given how far you have to travel to find many of the newer biomes and structures (my largest world is about 6500x6500 blocks and has 143 days of playtime, many others only have a single base since I never went so far that I felt that it was needed):
This is a map of the world with rail lines highlighted, along with each base (MB = main base, others are numbered in the order I built them in)
For comparison, this is an underground map of explored caves (chunks without torches were trimmed away) to give you an idea of how much I've traveled underground:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
im pretty sure i wont travel such insane distances like you - or more accurately unless its to find a specific biome i want lol
and i surely wont bother to cave everything out in a minecraft world XD
btw do you cave in the nether at all?
considering how badly im getting wrecked by ghasts and other weird looking mobs who spit out fire at me in the nether, i highly doubt i will want to build anything there
was originally intending to use the nether as a source of lava buckets for smelting my stuff but i guess its not so practical now :/
I walk or fire a rocket with an elytra for short distances, fly for moderate ones, and use a Nether tunnel for the long travels. I never bothered with horses, but do have rails for automatic travel if I want to go while also having to go somewhere away from the computer.
Stay fluffy~
I'm under the impression that a few thousand blocks is nothing these days, what with Elytra and all (with Elytra you can travel at greater than 30 blocks per second, taking just 110 seconds to cover 3300 blocks, the furthest I've ever traveled from spawn. For comparison, it takes close to 7 minutes by minecart).
As far as the Nether goes, I only explore it to find a fortress, then mine quartz to get XP for enchanting, after which I abandon it; while I've been modding the Overworld for over 5 years only recently have I modded the Nether, adding more and more varied caves, ravines, and other features, partly because I spend so little time in it (same for the End, whose sole purpose for me is the dragon fight, and I haven't done anything with it yet).
Here is a rendering of one of my worlds that shows the relative amounts I explore in each dimension (I built 3 bases in the Overworld; my main base just north of 0,0 and two secondary bases around 0, 1024 and 1024, 0). I played on this world for about 5 months, most of it spent caving, with about 12000 chunks explored out of a total of 18000 generated, while a level 4 map is 16384 chunks:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
That's why you build underground, or at least cover your nether base and rail tracks. Fire protection and blast protection armor also helps. If you hold your bow in your off-hand with a looting sword in your main hand you can get the looting bonus for bow kills, and that's a great way to take out ghasts and blazes (you get loads of ghast tears and blaze rods).
As Courageous_Marinade said, build walls and roofs for your nether railroad.
We build a base around the nether portals so you have a place to hide if needed. We will build mini-bases near something that we want to mine if it's going to be awhile.
Get your lava from a source in the overworld. We have emptied many a lava pool in a cave or mine one bucket at a time.
For short distances, I'll build a path and walk. The path is mostly for aesthetics, but it also gives me a chance to clear a path of trees and other obstacles.
For longer distances of a few thousand blocks, I'll use an elytra.
If it's more than 8,000 blocks away I build a nether tunnel. This nether tunnel usually consists of a 9x9 hallway, a path made of packed/blue ice, and some rails on top of the ice. I'll fly through with an elytra or use a boat depending on my mood, or use rails if I need to transport villagers.
Those tunnels can be easily hollowed out with a slime block tunnel bore.
When I imported my older world into 1.9+ I was reluctant to resummon the dragon because I had built things on the end island that I didn't want destroyed, so I built a rail track across the void to the outer end islands.
It takes roughly 2 minutes to cross the void by minecart. I've been meaning to build some floating sculptures in the void to make the ride more interesting (space ships, mythical creatures, etc.) but I've just been too busy (translation, busy=lazy).
My play style is centered on distant adventures. Distant, as in more than 1,000 blocks from my main base near the spawn point. For example, I once rode a horse more than 20,000 blocks one way looking for a jungle in my large-biome survival world. On horseback, I believe I considered 1,000 blocks a "short trip," 2,500 medium-length travel, 5,000 long-distance travel. Anything less than 1,000 blocks would take less than a Minecraft day to make a round trip on foot overland from Point A to Point B. That's not really "travel" in most standard vanilla worlds.
On routes between points, I construct little "waypoints" or larger "outposts" every so often depending on the terrain. I have several waypoints of various sizes and function out to about 5,000 blocks in each cardinal direction from spawn.
The big debate in regard to distant overland travel in survival from one point to another in an established Minecraft survival world is "elytra vs. Nether railway." Again, that would be for regular or semi-regular travel between two fixed points (e.g., between a large base and a smaller outpost).
In that argument, I firmly maintain the opinion that elytra, especially after firework rockets became a form of propulsion, make all other forms of distant overland travel—especially minecarts, but unfortunately horses as well—utterly and completely obsolete. My derelict Nether hub fell into disuse years ago. My beloved horses are now pasture ornaments, though for years, two fast and strong mounts still stand armored and ready to ride at a hitching rail near the entrance to my main base. What took me multiple full days of gameplay composed of nothing but overland travel by hoof now takes about 15 minutes or so on rocket-powered wings.
Any work on a Nether hub to reduce overall time spent on travel is wasted if it's not more efficient, of course. (Other than the fact that time spent having fun while playing the game is never wasted.) If it takes less time to get from Point A to Point B by overland travel than it does by Nether railway, then obviously, one should travel overland. For instance, seldom does one make a Nether railway to go just 250 blocks!
Both sides of the debate clash at longer distances. Going through the Nether reduces the physical distance between two points by about eight times! That's unquestionably a very significant reduction in distance traveled—I will surrender that argument's ground immediately.
If one is going to walk or ride a horse across rough terrain any distance 1,000 blocks or greater with regularity, one must consider a number of things; logistics like food, first and foremost. Riding 1,000 blocks and back again doesn't requite any, but by foot, one wouldn't want to leave home without at least some. A bed should be taken along with a number of other pieces of standard and emergency equipment such as equipment and tools, wood, a bucket of water—and an ender chest if available (I also always carry a fire resistance potion on my hotbar).
At the very least, one would want to clear away pesky tree branches on an established overland route. If there's a large gap or ravine in the way of the quickest distance between the two points, one will probably want to erect a bridge or other form of crossing there. Light terraforming is common.
There's a whole lot more work involved in creating a Nether railway. There's the actual rails, including powering them, but there's also a lot of tunneling and bridging to construct a railway in the Nether. On top of that, an infrastructure to defend against a ghast's rail-blasting explosive fireballs must be at least considered. Pigmen like to wander onto an open railway as well. With fire resistance potions, it may not be much more dangerous than an overland project, but it sure is a slog. One wrong step sends a bridge builder into an ocean of lava. The Nether can just be a pain.
The elytra's drawback is the entry fee. One must slay the Ender Dragon first before obtaining a set, usually. After that, finding an airship port in the End can be even more dangerous than building in the Nether, possibly a lot more. Then, elytra really need to be enchanted with Mending and Unbreaking III before use—their extremely-low durability practically requires both.
Unlike horses, rocket-powered elytra require jet fuel in the form of gunpowder and paper. Thankfully, both can be farmed, but even without farms, neither is a harsh requirement. I have an automatic sugarcane farm for paper, but I don't have any sort of farm for gunpowder. Casual game play produces enough for me. I can easily go though a stack of rockets in a day playing Minecraft, but it's building that burns through the most by far, not travel!
Play style is going to be a strong factor in deciding between the two, making the debate largely subjective. There's plenty numbers to crunch, but what variables should be included are also contended.
I may someday make a Nether hub to the jungle in my large-biome survival world, but it will be designed for flight, not railway, and I don't plan to start the project any time soon. There's little chance I would consider building a Nether hub for distances of less than 10,000 or so blocks.
Here are some pictures I found looking through my screenshots folder of just plain old pathways I have used for the five years I've been playing the same vanilla large-biome world. They aren't fancy by any means.
(Above) Hauling horses back home from a far-off plains biome Oct. 23, 2016. "Home" is roughly X=-500/Z=0. I found them around X=700/Z=1,700. About 2,000 blocks one way.
(Above) Taken more than a year ago while flying on elytra, this is Longbridge, which connects the Twilight Watchtower on the left (west) with my first and main base in the world, Castle Midgard. Render distance 32. It's right at 1,000 blocks of travel one way by road and bridge between the two bases. On horseback, I can make it there and back between sunrise and sunset if I hurry.
(Above) A picture of the path that connects Longbridge with the Twilight Watchtower. The other bridge in the picture is Rose Hill Bridge. It leads to the Ranch 34 outpost, barely visible at the top of the image.
(Above) Here's a random bridge probably built in mid-2016, I think near what would later be discovered is a double mob spawner. I left little toches on the ground to act as flares to guide me home from a distant adventure.
My short story-like journals; quick-and-easy reads:
My Quest for Elytra Complete! (Pic Intense, End-Game Spoilers)
[Journal & Pics] After a Year and a Half, I Finally Found a Jungle
FrozenCore: Hardcore Death; 3/20/15 to 5/3/15; Eight Weeks on a Frozen World in Pictures
ok thanks didnt know one could actually dual wield a bow
lmao your bridge already looks way better than mine XD
is the slime block tunnel bore some kind of new feature? im playing on 1.12 for now. no intention of updating it
Nether network built at Y 122. Everything slabbed to prevent spawning. Corridors are 2 wide 3 tall, floor slabbed on one side, and alternating slabs/ice on the other. Ice being transparent, no mobs spawn on it either. 40 block/sec speed is nice.
Short trips are mostly elytra + rockets. Also trips to one-off locations.
I like to travel by railway and roads on the overland. I have no ambitions to ever acquire elytra. I won't make a nether hub because I don't care to spend time in the Nether. I prefer blue skies, fluffy clouds, green grass and pretty flowers, all of which I can see when walking across my lands :-)
Being that several players seem to be obsessed with faster, I'm surprised that using /tp has the backlash it does. Then again, these people love to cheat using methods that are harder, slower, more finicky, and generally more frustrating rather than doing it immediately, painlessly, and efficiently in Creative...go figure.
Building a nether hub or a piston bolt network is a lot of work, even if we use "cheats" like TNT duplicators to do it. In that sense, we've earned it.
That would be a complicated self propelling redstone machine for making tunnels, usually using T.N.T. (often using an exploit to duplicate the T.N.T.)
Just testing.