One of the first major goals you’ll have in Minecraft is to build a Nether portal. Once you craft a Nether portal, you’ll be able to travel freely between the main world in Minecraft (known as the Overworld) and the Nether, a fiery and lava-filled dimension filled with dangerous creatures. Sounds fun! Let’s go there!
You can craft a Nether portal with Obsidian, which is created when lava meets water. It order to mine Obsidian, however, you’ll need a Diamond Pick axe. Getting diamonds in Minecraft can be challenging, but it’s a lot easier if you know where to look.
Diamond ore is found deep underground, below “y-level” 16 in the game. You’ll need an iron pickaxe to mine it successfully. It is relatively rare, but if you go to the “bottom” of the Earth in Minecraft — where you start encountering bedrock — you’ll find some diamond ore soon enough.
A Diamond pickaxe needs 3 diamonds and 2 sticks to craft. One you have it you can mine Obsidian.
Obsidian can be found naturally wherever lava and water meet. If you’re a little lucky, you might find a waterfall near a pool of lava, which will make it easy to bring them together. Otherwise, you can craft an iron bucket to transport one to the other.
- To put lava or water into your empty bucket, just equip the bucket and right-click on the water or lava.
- To empty it, right-click again.
In the scene below, we brought water in two iron buckets over to a natural lava pool and then brought them in contact to make rows of Obsidian. These were then mined with the Diamond Pickaxe.
Once you have a minimum of 10 obsidian, you can build a Nether Portal. This is known as the “economical” version. Most Nether Portals use 14 Obsidian to create a full frame. The actual portal will measure a minimum of three blocks high by two blocks wide. If you’re up to the challenge, you can build an even larger Obsidian frame for your portal. It can be as much as 23×23 blocks in size.
The fully-constructed “economical” Nether portal looks like this once it’s complete.
The final step is to activate the portal by lighting a fire inside the frame. To do this, use a Flint and Steel (constructed with an Iron Ingot and a piece of Flint) to start a fire. Equip the Flint and Steel and click on the inside of the frame. It’s easiest to click on the top of one of the bottom blocks in your frame.
The portal will light up with a purple glow on the inside, and now it is an active portal. Simply step inside and wait four seconds to be teleported between dimensions. If you step outside of the portal during that time, the teleportation will be aborted.
And now, you’re in the Nether. Remember, it is a dangerous place to wander, so be prepared!
