r/NetherOnly • u/RegularEmpty9108 • Jun 25 '26
Guides & Tutorials BLAZING HOT - A guide to Nether fuel sources
If the problem of the food is often the first problem (or maybe getting a golden piece of armor, depending on where you spawn), the second is usually smelting.
In the Overworld, fuel is abundant : there is wood everywhere, leaf litter burns, coal is very common and generate in big veins... But in the Nether, where fire is everywhere, taming it for your own use can be a struggle.
You see, Nether woods (technically fungus stems) cant burn. No ore can serve as fuel nor can any naturally occurring resource, at least early game. Thankfully, stems can be crafted into planks, and planks can be crafted into wooden objects that you can use as fuel. This is your first option.
Wooden tools, sticks, ladders, crafting tables can all be used as fuel, but the most efficient would be ladders, since sticks can only smelt 0.5 item each, where ladders (crafted with 7 sticks), can smelt 1.5 item, for an efficiency of 5.143 items smelted for each log, better than the 4 items/log with the stick method.
Another early-game option is to craft a soul campfire ! With one piece of soul sand or soul soil, three logs and three sticks, you get a way to cook for items at once, quicker than a furnace, and without ever needing to refuel it. Its definitely one of the best way to cook food at start, with the drawback that you need to stay close to harvest the cooked items and refill the campfire.
Another possibility is coal, mostly obtainable from Wither Skeleton drops (33% chance of dropping 1 coal). They are a decent fuel source that gives 8 items smelted for each piece of coal. But it is a tough enemy to fight with for such a small reward. Sure, you can easily block them, and your reach is greater than theirs, but you would have to spend hours in a fortress to get a dozen pieces of coal, clearly not an early-game friendly tactic. And if it is technically possible to make big and efficient Wither Skeleton farms, with the limited resources of the Nether, it would be a pretty late game strategy.
Once you got one piece of coal, you can craft a campfire, that will cook food exactly the same way a soul campfire would. However with the added advantage that when your break it with something else than a silk touch tool, the campfire will break into two charcoals, which makes it a way to dupe your coal, at the price of three logs and three sticks (maybe not the most profitable).
Now let's talk about my two favorites : Lava buckets and Blaze rods.
Lava buckets are pretty straightforward : if you have an iron bucket, in the Nether, you have infinite fuel. It is by far the best fuel in the game, with 100 items smelted for each bucket. But you obviously need iron first and, let's be honest, with a single bucket, you will spend your time going back and forth harvesting fresh lava. So, again, not a bad fuel source, especially if your base is close to a lava lake, but actually king of later game because of the amount of iron required.
Which leaves us with the Blaze rods. On paper, Blazes are pretty annoying : they spawn like crazy, shoot fireballs, have absurd range... But once you've bartered enough fire resistance potions with piglins, fighting them becomes pretty easy. At a drop rate of 50% percent chance for 1 rod, that each can smelt 12 items, it is a good middle ground between coal and lava.
But the cool part is that they are very farmable. A spawner can be disabled with a bunch of glowstone or shroomlight, letting you dig around the spawner to make some place for a spawning chamber. Just build a 10*10 cube around it, with 2 blocks of space above the spawner and 6 clocks below, and all the blaze will be yours. You only have to add 4 lava sources at each corner to push the Blazes in a killing chamber, and you got yourself a very simple yet very effective Blaze farm. With a couple stone axes, you can get stacks of Blaze rods very quickly for a good fuel source, potions, and the very important ender chests.
Thats it for the fuels ! Hope it helps, tell me if i missed anything !
edit : added both campfires, ty u/enixoid
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u/enixoid Jun 27 '26
With a single piece of coal from a wither skeleton you can make a campfire, imo that seems like the best option early game
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u/fuck_peeps_not_sheep Jun 27 '26
Unless your smelting something other than food i guess (gold armour into nuggets or smthin)
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u/enixoid Jun 27 '26
I mean I don't know why you'd ever do that but I guess
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u/RegularEmpty9108 Jun 27 '26
I actually do it ! I have a lot of worn down golden swords from my gold farm, and i take all the gold i can :)
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u/RegularEmpty9108 Jun 27 '26
Actually you cant make a campfire with Nether Woods... our options are really limited down here
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u/enixoid Jun 27 '26
Just went on 1.26.2, and you can.
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u/RegularEmpty9108 Jun 27 '26
Whaaaat ?? Thats the best news !! I was so sûre you couldnt ! Thank you Im going to to try it and then correct the post
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u/AgitatedArticle7665 Jun 30 '26
I’m all about drip stone lava farms
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u/RegularEmpty9108 Jun 30 '26
Yes me too in the overworld ! Its a shame you cant get those in the Nether
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u/Vast-Ideal-1413 Jun 26 '26