Nether Portal Linking

[jackatthekilns]

Can anything be done about Nether Portal linking? I just came back to the overworld for the first time and spawned more than 100 blocks away from the portal I built. I believe this is Vanilla behavior, but with the consequences of death in BTW so much higher, it would be nice to have more certainty where I will come back out.

[dawnraider]

I can certainly look into how portal linking is determined and see if there's something I can do about that particular scenario you mention. It doesn't happen often but it does come up every one in a while. I wouldn't expect much to come of it, but it's at least worth looking at.

Somewhat related, I do want to eventually figure out a way to properly link portals at some point, as doing so without coordinates is almost impossible.

[jorgebonafe]

Not to plug my addon (that's a lie) but Astrolabe can be used for that, it doesn't require coordinates. Although to be fair I haven't tested it after all the new releases, but I assume it still works since I heard no complaints.

[dawnraider]

I'll be honest, I've never tried astrolabe more than in passing just because of the lack of documentation on how the addon works.

But yeah if astrolabe does let you do that then that would definitely work, although it'd be nice to have a solution for people playing without it. I've thought about having iron beacons work across dimensions in a limited range, which would let you build an iron beacon on one side, then get close on the other and use a compass to pinpoint it. Not sure if that would be a good idea or not though.

[jackatthekilns]

This all sounds great for linking portals in those situations, but my immediate concern is the game deciding to create a new portal in the overworld rather than just sending me back to the portal I built in the first place. If there is some game mechanical reason it doesn't see my portal as valid, is there something I can do to correct that?

[dawnraider]

Well that's where the thing with portal linking comes in. That's happening because when the game tries to put the portal for the first time in the nether, it can't find a valid spot close by and so it puts it far enough away that it messes with the linking and make a new portal on the way back which actually lines up with the nether portal. The way in vanilla to fix that is to break the nether side portal and move it to the right spot to line up with the overworld portal. Without coordinates that's basically impossible right now without a system of determining location, and astrolabe is way way too late game to help either in this case.

[jackatthekilns]

Ah, I see, so I need to find a way to move the nether portal to a new spot. For the time being, I am ok with cheating a bit so that my portals work. Otherwise I will just be teleporting myself back to my portal room every time anyway.

[Hiracho]

the easy solution is to just move your nether sided portal a few block to the correct direction. if the portal in the overworld is made just 100blocks away or so, it means the portal in the nether is super close to connecting.. moving it by a block or 10 would be all it takes

The way they work is that it checks the overworld at the coordinates that correspond with your portal and looks if there is a portal in there(something like 5 chunks in each direction or more), if there's none, itll make a new one. else it will try teleport you to the nearest one..

So the steps to get your portal to connect is:
find out what direction your desired portal is compared to the newly spawned one
destroy the new portal
go back into your desired portal
move the nether side portal a couple blocks in the same direction as the desired portal was from the spawned one
(1/8th of the amount of blocks would be the best for future short cuts if you want, but only need a fraction of that to be in range for connecting)
go through it and see if it connects, if it made a new portal again, destroy it again and move the nether side a couple more

If you don't know what direction is what in the nether, just make a new portal some 20 blocks away from the first nether portal and see what direction you went in the overworld.

[Gilberreke]

The NetherPortalFix mod is MIT licensed, someone should look into porting it maybe.

https://github.com/ModdingForBlockheads/NetherPortalFix