Just make a mold to make sure the obsidian happens to be created in the exact shape needed for a nether portal. The secret to building a nether portal without diamonds is relatively simple: obsidian is formed when water hits a lava source block. Once you have that out of the way, follow the steps below, and you'll have a perfect portal in no time. First off, make sure you're familiar with the basic build of a nether portal by referring to the section above. Once you've rounded up all your materials, it's time to get started. Assuming you chose cobblestone as your material of choice, you'll need a pickaxe to mine it when you're done. It's extremely easy to craft, however, just requiring one piece of flint (found from gravel) and one iron ingot to get the job done. You can craft iron buckets with 3 iron ingots (smelted from iron ore.)įlint and steel: A fire starter is a necessity for lighting a nether portal once it's built, so you'll need to have flint and steel handy. In this case, from wherever you're getting the liquid to your nether portal construction project. Iron buckets: Buckets are handy for transporting liquid from one place to another. It doesn't burn, it's easily accessible, and it isn't affected by gravity (like sand or gravel.) This can really be anything you want, but I recommend cobblestone. As long as you only extract water from one corner at a time, you now have an ever-full well!Įxtra building blocks. You'll notice the final corner automatically fills up. You can build an infinite well by digging a four block by four block hole in the ground and emptying a bucket of water into three of the corners.
That means you'll need a replenishable source of water to complete this. A water source: Obsidian is formed when water comes in contact with a lava source block.Fortunately, lava is relatively common in Minecraft, both above and below ground. You can import that lava from faraway places if you have a plethora of iron buckets, but you'll want to have at least ten buckets of lava. You'll have to find a natural reservoir of lava to draw from, and you can't rely on having an infinite source. Bear in mind, there are some limitations to this method.Ī lava source: This one is a little harder to come by. While it's true that obsidian, the primary ingredient in building a nether portal, cannot be broken or mined by the player with anything but a diamond pickaxe, there are ways around that if you want a little shortcut. How do you build a nether portal without diamonds in Minecraft?Ĭontrary to popular belief, it is possible to construct a functional nether portal without harvesting those elusive diamonds. Thus, traveling long distances in the Nether and then building another nether portal to return isn't a bad idea. This means that a player can build multiple nether portals in multiple locations, with the understanding that those portals will always transport you to the same relative location in the other dimension. You can build multiple nether portals.If there isn't a nether portal already there, one will be generated automatically. When a player travels through the nether portal, that portal will take them to the same relative location in the Nether. In a similar vein to the last point, nether portals aren't all connected to one another. This means that using the Nether can be an effective means of traveling huge distances quickly. Every block you traverse in the Nether is actually the equivalent of eight blocks in the Overworld. Distance in the Nether works differently.There are a few more things to keep in mind regarding nether portals and how traveling through them works: This is also a way for someone to spruce up their nether portal with some decorative corners if they wanted to. A nether portal is still fully functional even without the corners, saving you some obsidian in the process. Partial nether portal: However, as you can see from the image above, the corners are optional.