Page under construction: This page will probably be under construction forever as I get more experience with this playstyle, and due to the fact this is one behemoth of a page. Sorry!
Living in the nether is already difficult even starting in the overworld. It is very possible to survive the Nether (even the old one), but is it possible to thrive?
The information on this page applies only to the Java Edition of the game.
The most important step in Minecraft is getting wood. From tick 0, you’ll be met with hostile mobs. The most friendly of them are Endermen (spawning mostly in Warped Forests) and Zombie Pigmen, being neutral to the player.
You have a decent but not high chance of spawning near forests. Crimson Forests at the beginning are highly dangerous as unforgiving Piglins and Hogs inhabit them. Warped Fungi will keep Hoglins away from you, but not Piglins. To keep Piglins away from you, without gold armor, you’ll need Zombie Pigmen, which only spawn in Wastes. You can usually find Wastes neighboring Crimson Forests but there are no guarantees.
Warped Forests are safer, being mostly empty and whatever moobs there are only Endermen, who are interested only in taking the nylium.
You are going to get hungry fast and you will have to concern yourself with food. Dying is the fastest way to replenish hunger, and simultaneously the most punishing, as well as acting as Chorus Fruit.
Rotten Flesh is (or was) the most abundant food, has reliable spawns, but it has an 80% chance of giving you food poisoning (the hunger effect). It is also a byproduct of a necessary mob farm. However, it’s hard to obtain as they are dropped from Zombies and Zombie Pigmen, these attacking you as a group in retaliation.
Chicken is obtainable! But the mob is exceptionally rare (0.25%) as it only spawns when a baby Pigman (5%) decides to be a Chicken Jockey (5%) and, to dismay, those chickens do not lay eggs. Poultry is arguably the second best available food type excluding golden foods.
Porkchop may be your food type of choice, but the big pigs they drop from are hostile to and are hard-hitters on the player. You need skill and quick thinking to farm bacon. Hoglins can, however, be pacified by trapping them around Warped Fungi. Bacon is the best non-golden food available.
Mushroom Stew. Mushroom Stew is the vegetarian’s choice, made with Brown and Red Mushrooms (generated naturally), the only requirement is a wooden bowl. You will likely eat this when starting. Farming mushrooms is a slow activity, but absolutely doable.
Netherrack is waste. You can mine Quartz and Gold with just a wooden pickaxe. Quartz, however, is useless with building and XP being its only uses. Gold armor is vital for Piglins to not kill you on sight immediately, a single piece will suffice so adorn yourself with a golden crown. Golden tools are trash though.
Naturally, you’ll come across Blackstone splodges, those are your best friend. Those will grant you stone tools, furnaces, not much on their own but enough for the classic trio (chest, workbench, furnace). You’ll cherish Blackstone deposits until you have a good Gold farm.
The next tier is way beyond what we can achieve in the early game, Ancient Debris is quite literally unobtanium without Diamonds.
A basic Hoglin farm is inbound. It will be a deadly task without armor, but only two Hogs will be needed. Given the fact that Hoglins have massive reach, you’re better off tricking pathfinding than have them follow you into a fence pen. After you get your hogs in, adorn the pen with Warped Fungi. Crimson Fungi will breed them.
Furnaces will be lackluster because none of the wood available is flammable, although sticks, crafting tables, chests, ladders, tools, bowls, and other wooden products will do.
They’ll be doubly lackluster because, there’s very few items in The Nether that benefit from being cooked. The one you’ll cook the most is porkchop, and even then? Porkchop can be cooked in a soul campfire, effectively for free (if you consider silence of no value).
Soul Campfires are easily obtainable and are the easiest way to cook food. You may break Soul Campfires at will, they always drop one Soul Soil. For normal campfires, given that Crimson and Warped Logs aren’t flammable, getting charcoal will be difficult at first: you need to slay a Wither Skeleton and have them drop coal. You can then duplicate charcoal using campfires (intended game mechanic). Also, Blaze Rods are really good furnace fuel.
Once you have a lot of gold, you may wish to barter with Piglins. Their barter table is very wide, so you’ll need a significant amount of gold to be relatively sure you’ll walk away with 6 Crying Obsidian. Harvest some Glowstone and you’re ready to set your spawn. However, do note that it loses charge every time you die.
Additionally, with Silk Touch being (usually) off-limits, obtaining Glowstone blocks may be a menial task. Piglins no longer barter them so you have a limited amount of respawns.
With a considerable amount of gold, you’ll have a reasonable amount of iron nuggets. With 2.18% of barters dropping 10-36 nuggets, they can be quite expensive. You likely want at least 270 nuggets, enough for one full iron armor, one iron sword, one bucket and one shield.
Although I say that, you must consider the cost of a single iron ingot compared to the value you’d be getting out of it. Are you using a mod that increases the durability of gold tools inside The Nether? Do you have reactions fast enough that you could use the shield reliably (considering its 0.5s startup)? Do you have enough Blackstone deposits that stone tools are dirt cheap?
TO-DO: Elaborate why "never update" and the tragic consequences of the 1.20 update on the road to Netherite
Below are my opinions on mob farms, why you should or should not build them.
Blaze farms are a really good source of XP and fuel. A Blaze spawner can also be used a hostile mob switch! But you’ll need another player if you want to go far away from said switch. These farms are a little tough to build, but they are worth the cost.
Chicken farms will require a gargantuan Zombie Pigman farm for it to be any useful. So big it can probably lag the server, most likely it’s not feasible.
Endermen farms can be written off as unnecessary: the Warped Fungi provide plenty of cover for a manual Ender-genocide, Piglins will give you a reasonable amount of pearls, and they don’t have any use that would require thousands of them.
Endermite farms: reader hit the ground too hard.
Ghast farms are completely possible! The most boring part, however, is making a spawn-proof perimeter to increase the rates of said farm. That said, they can provide a lot of ghast tears and gunpowder. One’s useful for regen pots, the other is replaced by beds.
Hoglin spawns farms are possible too. similarly with the Ghast farm, the most menial part is the perimeter or spawn-proofing the area. These can provide a lot of already cooked porkchop and leather.
Hoglin breeding farms should definitely be considered early-game. They are easy to build and they provide a reliable source of porkchop, but they’re fiddly to set up and the entire process is manual.
Magma Cube spawns farms are relatively easy to build. All you need is a basalt delta and a pickaxe. These can potentially be a very good source of XP and Magma Cream.
Magma Cube spawner farms: idk about them, but they could probably be used as an easy mob switch.
There are no farmable crops in the traditional sense, but there are ways to farm non-animal living? things, some are even edible!
Fungus farms are the hellish tree farms, a requirement basically. However, fungi don’t naturally grow into giant fungi, you need bonemeal. Thankfully if you put the wart blocks of this farm into a composter, you’ll profit bonemeal.
Nether Wart farm: wart is needed for potions, but that’s about it. Farming for wart blocks has become obsolete, and they aren’t edible.
Mushroom spreads farm: is the slowest farm of them all and requires quite some maintenance with strict conditions, although… There are designs for manual mushroom spreads farms that appear to have decent rates even if you only collect mushrooms hourly.
TO-DO: Illustrate with mushroom spread farm designs
Mushroom bonemeals farm: is the fastest farm of them all and requires very little maintenance with loose conditions, although… Not all big mushrooms will be in a spot that’s easy to mine but that’s effectively the only complaint I have with them.
Carrots and Potatoes? Zombie Pigmen have a tiny chance of spawning Zombie reinforcements. These drop carrots and potatoes, but there’s no dirt in The Nether, which is needed to plant those, there’s no way to get anything that can be transformed into dirt in The Nether.
Since there are no diamonds in The Nether, the upgrade line is strictly disjointed, and has two starting points. You literally cannot mine for diamonds. Likewise, you can get a lucky spawn and find yourself a full diamond set in fortress and bastion loot. However…
In a modded Origins mod Nether-start playthrough, with my origin set as Blazeborn (fire immunity, strength from being on fire, but damaged by water, spawned in The Nether), I managed to get by with just wooden tools, stone sword, and golden armor.
I did not spawn near Basalt Deltas, so I had to rely on barters for Blackstone. I had bad luck in getting Blackstone, I had some blackstone, a bit over half-stack, but not enough for me to search and mine for gold ore and barter for Blackstone sustainably with stone tools. I had to rely on wooden tools.
Continuing the hook of my playthrough from my last point, I managed to get 12 obsidian alright, but I only managed to get some 80 iron nuggets, three ingots were used to craft a shield and two flint and steel (in this case used for a temporary boost in attack strength). I had considered upgrading from leather armor to iron, but I didn’t get enough iron from barters before I first left The Nether.
In the old Nether, while your only options were dangerously gotten Rotten Flesh and Mushroom Stew, you could find both types of mushrooms without walking too much. Now however, with the luminous Basalt Deltas, skeleton-infested Soul Sand Valleys, Warped and Crimson infestations, the original mushrooms became difficult to find. Also, the “Nether food” of 1.16 proves difficult to slay its bearer.
Despite how much I meme jeb_ for claiming there was no food in The Nether before the update, Mojang nerfed gathering for food in The Nether.
The earlier stages of survival are a question of hunger management - hiding from hostile mobs, no sprinting, mining the bare essentials, as well as looking for food. Hoglins are difficult to fight against on a level field with basic gear — they’re still annoying even with late game gear. The only way to safely cheese it is to build a 3 tall pillar, 2 high pillars are not good enough because of their extended range. Plus, you’ll have to sneak in order to be able to hit any hogs and they also have to be pretty much on you. By geometry alone, it’s difficult to land critical hits on one stationary hoglin, let alone a couple of them tracking you down and pushing each other about.
TO-DO: Talk about gold durability mods, datapacks and the slippery slope.
NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT BLOG POST. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT