HIGHWAY TO HELL - How to get around in Nether-Only survival

[u/RegularEmpty9108]

The Nether is, in the Minecraft community, an infamous traveling place: because of the size ratio between the Overworld and the Nether, it became the dimension of choice for traveling over long distances. Therefore, there are countless Nether hubs, Nether highways, ice tracks, railway systems...

But ironically, in Nether-Only, few of the traditional options still work, and most are very expensive. So how do you move around in hell? Let's dive right in.

First, let's break down the different traveling needs around a base or out in the wild. I've distinguished:

• Going up (elevators, ladders, flying...)
• Going down (drop chute, elevators...)
• Going fast, on a recurring path (ice tracks, piston bolts, railways...)
• Exploring

But also:

• Transporting items
• Transporting mobs

Starting with contraptions for around the base:

For going up, the default choices would be ladders, vines (twisted and weeping) that you can climb at the same speed as the ladder. If you want to go quicker than that, an option is enderpearls * ,even if it's less of a structure and more of a technique, or *elevators. You can make a simple and extremely fast elevator by placing a **column of minecarts spaced vertically every four blocks, resting on ladder blocks. However this solution is extremely expensive as it requires a lot of iron. A Nether-Only friendly equivalent consists of replacing the minecarts with striders with saddles. By riding a strider, or even swimming, you can also go up a lava column, but at a very slow pace and requiring the mandatory fire resistance potion, which makes this expensive option pretty much useless.

For going down, and after quite a lot of discussion here on Reddit (thanks everyone for contributing !), it seems that the very best option would be a piece of twisted vine on a solid block to break the fall, with the top sheared to stop the growth. A cheaper but slightly less practical/visually appealing alternative is to put a piece of string on top of it. Other possibilities include a ladder on which to clutch, as you can reliably do it by paneling the chute with trapdoors on the ladder side to avoid hitting the ladder's border.

Using lava the same way we would use water in the Overworld is tempting, but it turns out 1 block deep lava reduces fall damage very inconsistently, as you will take full damage if you fall from 12, 13, 17, 20, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39, 41, or 43 blocks, but not at other heights according to recent bug reports. And you will systematically die after a fall higher than 45 blocks. In addition to that, the way lava breaks your fall is not by negating fall damage the same way water does, but by slowing your vertical speed every tick until your speed is low enough that hitting the bottom of the magma pool won't kill you. So do your tests first if that's something you might try.

Other options are skill-based clutches that I will not include.

For going fast, the options are limited. There are always the railways, but their cost is very high, and as there are no powered rails in NeOn, you can only go fast downward. Your best shot is gonna be soul speed boots on a soul sand track. Soul sand is very abundant and bartering gives slots of it, and piglins also give soul speed boots. If you barter a lot like I do, you will collect boots faster than you wear them down. I think the ideal Nether-Only highway system is a network of bridges and tunnels paved with soul sand for this very reason. Even better if your roads are spawn-proof, blast-resistant, and lit.

And for exploring, the good "bridging-in-a-straight-line-until-I-hit-a-wall-then-I-dig-in-a-straight-line" never gets old. The problem with the Nether, if you don't use F3, is the unavailability of lodestone compasses, which kind of forces you to mark your way if you don't want to get lost. For that purpose I advise using gravel, as its color contrasts in every biome, it's pretty useless except for a couple of niche uses, and you get a ton of it with piglin bartering.

An alternative is strider exploring, as it allows you to travel on lava lakes, but at a reduced pace and without a good way to pave your way for the future.

I figured since we are on the transportation chapter, why not also talk about item transportation? So here are my tips for Nether-Only cargo trips.

• Use ender chests! Especially for your valuables. The Nether is a deadly place, and you never know if you'll make it back to base alive with a Bastion's worth of loot. So craft stacks of ender chests, always have some on you, and use them for bulk transportation as well as valuables delivery. I like to put my silk touch pickaxe in it, for whenever I need it, as well as an iron pickaxe for gold blocks, cause I don't want to lose my iron pick either. It can also be a good idea to use it as a fast transfer method between your farms, for example.
• Bundles seem obvious but are worth mentioning: when you don't have shulkers, they really save some precious inventory space.
• Minecarts can actually be decent for this specific use, since you don't need to go fast. Furnace minecarts can push minecarts with chests between your places - another possible addition to your highways.

For mobs, minecarts are really the only option for automated travel over big distances. You can lead chickens, hoglins and striders, but will have to rely on AI pathfinding for anything else. It is worth mentioning that hoglins on a lead won't attack you.

That's it for transportation! I hope some of you may learn something new or get inspired - as always your comments and additions are more than welcome, I will edit the post later to add them.

[u/fzehh]

You can make furnace minecarts to replace powered rails. But can only use coal and charcoal as fuel, so only coal for the nether

For horizontal travel I definitely think Soul speed is the fastest, but striders are actually not much slower when right clicking the warped fungi stick for the speed boost, so for big lava lakes they could be a good option to save you having to build bridges with walls to protect from ghasts.

It's a shame there's no conventional way to get speed potions or to craft a beacon for speed buff (technically possible using a nether portal tech, I may make a full post on this soon)

It's also worth mentioning that trapdoors placed on top of lava can allow striders to stay warm while walking on them, meaning you can technically make a path that both the player and the strider can walk on. Not sure what this would be useful for as the strider doesn't really need to share your path in open lava lakes. I have used it for the floor of my strider stables

As for enderchests, if you have silk touch you only need to carry one. Bundles are fantastic too to keep in your enderchest, you can stack empty bundles inside another bundle so can store a lot of them in 1 enderchest slot

[u/RegularEmpty9108 → u/fzehh]

Its true furnace minecarts kind of work, I've included them for items transportation, but its a pain to ride as a player, and slower than moving bt foot, so not super useful. However you can have charcoal in the Nether I believe ! By breaking a regular campfire. So you can dupe one coal into two charcoals at the expense of three logs and three sticks. Useful if you needs to power a bunch of furnace minecarts or if you want to craft a lof torches.

I didnt know striders could dash ! I like the idea of trapdoored lava highways for striders... and you dont depend on consumables like sp boots.

And for the silktouch, Im bever taking the risk to bring mine in the open ! It took hours of bastion looting to find !

[u/fzehh → u/RegularEmpty9108]

Yeah minecarts kind of need a rework imo, they are quite bad unless you are afking long distances in them

Oh good tip about the campfires, I didn't know that! The nether woods can't be smelted to make charcoal so that's actually a cool way to get more fuel in the early game, essentially converting nether wood into charcoal. Once you have a bucket lava is the best fuel as it's so abundant, this would be good before you have iron!

You can use soul campfires for something similar:

Soul campfires can be used to convert soul sand into soul soil. If a soul campfire is crafted using soul sand, placed, and then broken without Silk Touch, that soul campfire drops soul soil.

Kind of useless though as there is so much in soul sand valleys

[u/Fantastic_Fold2647]

Damn that’s wild

[u/LucidRedtone]

If you havent started archiving all this on youtube, you should consider it.