Nether Fortress (Survival tip)

[Destinu]

With my new world (really hard one, with a spawn on an island surround by jungle islands btw), I meet again with the doubt when it would be the best time to look for the nether fortress. Just got my diamond pickaxe, and with 4 extra diamonds mining on a mineshaft... =D I got sustainable (chicken-pumpkin) food, but not sure if this is the time...so i would like to hear from you, when you do that, how do you decide the moment, etc.

[Mason11987]

With my new world (really hard one, with a spawn on an island surround by jungle islands btw), I meet again with the doubt when it would be the best time to look for the nether fortress. Just got my diamond pickaxe, and with 4 extra diamonds mining on a mineshaft... =D I got sustainable (chicken-pumpkin) food, but not sure if this is the time...so i would like to hear from you, when you do that, how do you decide the moment, etc.

The ease of a nether fortress to me seems to depend highly on how open-air it is.

Until you have the later game tools to deal with ghasts you're almost certainly screwed if several are in the air around you.

If you manage to come across a nether fortress you can mostly navigate in doors, you should be able to fairly safely get at least one blaze rod. The first one is always the hardest, but once you get your first I'd head out of there ASAP. With one rod you can get your first hibachi, and also use the other powder to get fire-resistance potions, which will make your next several rods far easier to get.

When you're exploring the fortress make sure to mark your path home, and at every cross road block the paths off that you aren't going down. Resist the urge to go out into an open-air path because you almost certainly will die.

I'd recommend taking nothing but a weapon and food into the fortress, no need to lose your shiny new pick.

[dawnraider]

Also always block off the ceiling to be two high occasionally, if you need to run from wither skeletons.

[ko_teknik]

There are some spoiler so dont click if you dont wanna know !

Spoiler

Show

If you look on workbench texture you can know where are the North / south ... So in the nether there are a lot more fortress if you go est / West direction. Try To get some piles of soul sand and dig safely just under the nether roof, sometimes use piles of soul sand, if a fortress are loaded in a chunk you will hear little soul sand noise like ghast and the direction are showed by particle. When you find the fortress just secure with some torch and dirt wall, you will get blaze really fast and safely .

[SterlingRed]

I wait until I have a couple of stacks of cobble available. I like having a ghast proof block to immediately wall the portal in and use to create short bridges if needed and markers in a fortress.

[Destinu]

There are some spoiler so dont click if you dont wanna know !

WOW...the second thing i did know...but the first one...you blow my mind...never ve think about it...=0 ...im feeling really noob right now ...thanks a lot

Also always block off the ceiling to be two high occasionally, if you need to run from wither skeletons.

that's another thing that a don't do, but should. ll try on my new nether hunt adventure =D

If you manage to come across a nether fortress you can mostly navigate in doors, you should be able to fairly safely get at least one blaze rod. The first one is always the hardest, but once you get your first I'd head out of there ASAP. With one rod you can get your first hibachi, and also use the other powder to get fire-resistance potions, which will make your next several rods far easier to get.

I'd recommend taking nothing but a weapon and food into the fortress, no need to lose your shiny new pick.

I loved the advice, I always try to get more than one, and it does not always end well.

[dawnraider]

Also, much more rarely than the wither skeleton-proofing barriers, I'll occasionally block off paths in an S-shape to block line of sight with blazes but still provide passage, like shown below:

#=block
[]=air

#[]###
#[][][]#
###[]#

[MisterFister]

For me, the first order of business is to get to the nether-roof. That means that once I get the d-pick and two portals' worth of obsidian, I stash it in my base and wait until I have at least a few stacks of cobble, ideally at least half an inventory of it.

In the overworld, I often have my portal location already staked out, with a mob-safe and torched shack around where I intend to build it. I always place at least two chests, and pre-supply them with ample food and stone axes, or even a decently durable iron sword if I'd procured one from a mob drop. Torches, two stacks of wood ladders, a few crafting benches, and at least a quarter stack of chests. And always always always at least one or two spare, virgin, unused lighters. (I once got stranded in the nether while relocating a portal. That sucked.)

Once I decide to build the portal, I hop through to build a blast proof shelter around it asap and then shuttle some supplies over. After which, I just bear down and grit my teeth and start verti-tunneling upward, building a cobblestone shaft upward with an interim roof every 3 or 4 or so, to preserve progress, laddering as I go. Often, I can only jump out and place a few cobble blocks at a time before a ghast crossfire becomes perilous, and after a very short amount of progress, the fatality will be from falling and not from aggro'd pigmen.

Once I burrow upward into netherrack, I relocate the portal to the roof, dismantle the lower one, relocate all of my supplies to the new portal, and then set out separately for soul sand armed with little more than a shovel. Once I have about half a stack, then I start tunneling toward a fortress.

Once I find a fortress, I feel it's very important to set up a new safe-room just like I did for the verti-tunnel with food, ladders, cobble, spare tools, a weapon or two, and some torches (mostly for marking paths I want to explore later, but also because I prefer to light the nether to overworld light levels for aesthetic reasons once I can afford to do so with nethercoal.) Ideally, I'd have grabbed some quartz by accident, and I almost always have clay on hand already back at home. With the first rod, I run home to make stuff happen, and then I return to the fortress to find a decent blaze farming spot (the last two worlds I made had fortresses featuring blaze spawners, so I was lucky.)

From there I start strip mining in the overworld for a full kit of diamond tools, build out a serviceable mechanized workshop, expand my farm, and then set out in search of a village.

[ion]

may I ask what's the reason of the nether roof digging. I have always made the tunnels at or under lava lakes level in the nether. so when i spawn a nether portal the overground portal would spawn most of the times deep underground

[magikeh]

may I ask what's the reason of the nether roof digging.

I believe it's a 'social norm' stemming from how portals work, wherein a portal at a higher y-coordinate in the nether is more 'attractive' than one at a lower y-coordinate when travelling from the overworld to the nether. So players would place portals higher in the nether to get them to 'work' more often than not.
My portal mechanics are a bit dusty on the specifics here, but I'll have another poke at those tonight to confirm once again.

That and when digging nearer the roof of the nether (we're talking right up against the ceiling) there are few and far in between lakes, caves and other things which pose a danger to the player. So it's easy to create safe passages around the nether with little (construction) work required.

[ion]

how do you find a fortress then? i find it safer to dig underground and poke my head outside from a burrow that to dig down and fall

[Taleric]

I make rushes on the surface to spot. Also I make cobble tunnels in the air to cross to the next flat area.

[magikeh]

how do you find a fortress then? i find it safer to dig underground and poke my head outside from a burrow that to dig down and fall

Personally I like to run and gun the nether with lots of food, cobblestone and ladders. When a nether fortress is located I'll create a vertical shaft to the ceiling from one of the more abandoned halls (easier to secure) then I'll dig my way back to the general direction of the portal. Sometimes it takes branch mining perpendicular to where I know the fortress is, at the portal so when mining towards it from the fortress I can collide with something.

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, what Magik says, I roof tunnel, check for places where I can get out, roam the surface a bit to spot a fortress, if I can't, go back into the roof tunnel and continue. The reason I go roof is just because I can keep digging forever and you never encounter anything but netherrack. When digging down below, I always run into lava lakes, cave systems, etc, which I do not want. Maybe I've never dug low enough?

[ko_teknik]

yes roof be really safely and to check if there are a fortress just use soul sand...

But keep care sometimes with SHIFT key ^^ There are extremely rare hole... really rare but you will die :p

[FlowerChild]

But keep care sometimes with SHIFT key ^^ There are extremely rare hole... really rare but you will die :p

Same for lava pockets. I always try to remind myself to dig at a distance when in the nether so I can see the hazards coming :)

[Gilberreke]

Same for lava pockets. I always try to remind myself to dig at a distance when in the nether so I can see the hazards coming :)

At this point, that's become so ingrained in my playstyle. I learned how to mine from max distance so long ago, that I even notice myself doing it in the overworld too.

[ko_teknik]

At this point, that's become so ingrained in my playstyle. I learned how to mine from max distance so long ago, that I even notice myself doing it in the overworld too.

I'm scared with pig silverfish in the nether !

[technophobia]

I like to dig three high tunnels in the netherrack ceiling, and use stone slabs to make the walkway as I go. This gives a faster movement rate, and also if you slab as you go, if you do open a lava block, it stops at the stone slab, so at worst I'm only one or two blocks away and can close off the lava easily. Though if I have glass blocks, I sometimes move my tunnel over in a zig zag and block the lava off with glass, lights up the tunnel nicely.

[Niyu]

I like to dig three high tunnels in the netherrack ceiling, and use stone slabs to make the walkway as I go. This gives a faster movement rate, and also if you slab as you go, if you do open a lava block, it stops at the stone slab, so at worst I'm only one or two blocks away and can close off the lava easily. Though if I have glass blocks, I sometimes move my tunnel over in a zig zag and block the lava off with glass, lights up the tunnel nicely.

I do the same but with full blocks of stone, so later I can lay rails easily. I always avoid using slabs for general construction and only use them for stairs or decorations.

[Gilberreke]

Quote from another thread, but I figured it was off-topic there.

(I have still not tried this "ceiling" mining trick)

For those people that weren't aware of the "Morlock strategy": I didn't even know it was a strategy, I've instinctively been hiding in the ceiling since I saw Coe do it when the nether was first released. There's one thing to be really careful of: lava pockets. For me, it's second nature to mine at arm's length and run back when I see lava, but it's somewhat of a learned skill. Be careful out there. Wouldn't want you to try out mining in the ceiling, only to die to the super rapid nether lava.

[Niyu]

Be extremely careful when diging diagonal lines to make stairs. In a flat tunel lava is mannageable, lava flooding the entire stairs not so much.

[Gilberreke]

Be extremely careful when diging diagonal lines to make stairs. In a flat tunel lava is mannageable, lava flooding the entire stairs not so much.

I should try that, I think I can handle it, as I start spamming blocks as I back off and I think you still run faster than lava, but that sounds tough indeed.