Our First Trip to the Nether

So now it’s time to head to the Nether. We geared up for an extended trip because there are several materials we need to gather. Our goal is to get a decent amount of quartz, blackstone, soul sand, basalt and hopefully both warped and crimson nylium to bring back.

Building the Portal

We are using the broken portal by the mansion to start our trips to the Nether. I already have a design in mind for the portal but it will use blocks from the nether so we will just be fixing the broken pieces for the first trip. To open the portal we simply fixed the gaps, filled in some lava pools, and replaced the crying obsidian blocks with regular obsidian.

Broken Nether Portal repaired and functional.

Exploring the Nether

The portal brought us to a ledge with a large lava ocean and plenty of basalt and blackstone. Using torches to mark our path back we started exploring out and found a Soul Sand Valley with fossils and a Crimson Forest.

Basalt and soul sand valley in the nether — Soul Sand Valley with Fossils

Minecraft Crimson Forest Biome — Crimson Forest

We kept exploring hoping to find the warped forest and ran across a small Fortress half buried in Netherrack. We only explored the first few hallways but scored with a Blaze spawner. We may build a blaze farm here later but it depends on if we find a better location later on. For now we built a simple cobblestone shelter within spawning distance and used our bows to get a few blaze rods for making potions.

Minecraft Nether Fortress Bridge — Spotted the bridge section of the Nether Fortress

Minecraft Nether Fortress Intersection — Nether Fortress intersection leading out to blaze spawner.

We built a small hideout type cabin for farming a few Blaze rods.

Blaze spawner farm with rail for kids — Take them out with a Bow or just let them spot you and they will come and try to slip through the door. The kids had a blast with this. The block rail is there because there is lava under that side of the bridge.

We also found the Nether Wart we will need.

Nether Wart for potion making — Nether Wart for getting potions started.

Warped Forest and Bastion Remnant

Minecraft Nether Biomes - Crimson and Warped Forest — Warped Forest Bordered by Crimson Forest

It took a while longer, but we finally found the warped forest, completing our list of materials. Next to it is another crimson forest as well. It turned out great that we had to go completely around to find it because we also found a Bastion Remnant! We found what seems to be the foundations of it so there were not many mobs and we were able to mine some cracked blackstone bricks and gilded blackstone bricks as a bonus for the trip. These will work great on the portal update. Loaded up with the materials we headed back to base.