How to make a Nether Portal in Minecraft

The Nether is one of two current dimensions accessed through portals in vanilla Minecraft.

This hellish dimension has so much to discover, from hidden chests of treasures in Nether Fortresses and Bastions to five different biomes to explore. With so many amazing things to find and uncover, like the rare ancient debris buried amongst the lowest levels of the world, there’s bound to be a tremendous amount of danger. From lava lakes to firey mobs, there’s so much to avoid and defeat in this biome, but it's so worth the trip when you get the materials to make the portal.

Items you need to make a nether portal

The materials you will need in order to craft a nether portal are: 

1. A minimum of 10 Obsidian
2. Flint and Steel

How to make a Nether Portal with obsidian in hand?

To make a nether portal, the first thing you will need to do is collect your obsidian.

Obsidian takes a while to collect, and can only be broken with a diamond or netherite pickaxe. 

Obsidian can be created by pouring water over lava, but it can also be found naturally in caves below the surface. 

Make sure you mine at least 10 pieces of obsidian, but 14 would be best to make the full portal.

Once you have your obsidian, you need to make your flint and steel.

To make a flint and steel, you need both flint and a piece of iron. 

Iron ore can be smelted down, as shown below, to make an iron ingot. 

Flint can be collected through breaking gravel. Every few pieces of gravel broken will drop a flint.

Then, in your survival crafting inventory, you can make a flint and steel by placing the two ingredients diagonal from or next to each other in the 2x2 crafting grid. That will make the flint and steel you require to light the portal once constructed. You can also do this in a crafting table.

Now you have to make your portal. The portal shape can be shown below. If you do not have 14 pieces of obsidian, you can use substitute blocks to fill in the four corner pieces. This will still work.

Right click your portal with the flint and steel to light it.

It should start glowing purple, and then you can enter the new dimension.

How to make a Nether Portal without obsidian in hand?

Some players, especially speedrunners and experienced Minecraft players, will use the game’s mechanics to their advantage to make their nether portal in the fastest possible way.

They do this by using a bucket of skillfully placed water by a lava pool.

Lava pools can be found in desert and plains biomes, but are most common in desert biomes.

This technique is a bit tricky and takes a lot of practice, especially if players want to do it quickly as speedrunners do, but it’s completely worth it and cuts game time down significantly.

Given are the step-by-step instruction to follow to make a Nether Portal without obsidian in hand, or you can watch this video for a quick demo.

First, the player needs a bucket. You can make a bucket using three pieces of iron, and since you still need to collect the iron for a flint and steel.

If players spawn in a desert biome, they might be lucky enough to find a desert temple nearby with iron in it too!

First, to make the portal you must build out a block into the lava pool.

Now you have to place water beside the block as indicated. This will make the first bit of obsidian.

Now you can mine that block you placed to make the base of your portal.

Then make an upside down L-shape with more blocks as demonstrated.

Then you place two blocks horizontally as shown below:

Using the now empty bucket, you can start filling the portal shape block by block with the lava surrounding you. Make each of the sides 3 blocks high and the base and top of it 2 blocks wide.

After collecting the water with the bucket once again, you can light your portal with your flint and steel and enter the Nether.

Explainer Video

FAQs on Nether Portal

Q. Do nether portals have to be 4x5?

Nether portals have to be at least 4x5, but they can be bigger. They can actually go up to a size of 23x23 blocks. The one thing to keep in mind when making Nether Portals, however, is that they must be either rectangular or square. They do not work in any other shape.

Q. Can items travel through nether portals?

Yes they can! Almost every type of entity can travel through a nether portal, from players to mobs to dropped items. Even unoccupied minecarts (including storage, furnace, and hopper minecarts, too) and boats can travel through portals.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have now succeeded in making a Nether Portal! There is so much to explore in the Nether, especially since the Minecraft 1.16 Update. The generated structures in the Nether are really interesting to discover and search around, but make sure you aren’t killed by any of the mobs, as it will be a struggle getting back to your belongings. A lot of the mobs in the Nether are fire-oriented, as well, so it’s quite easy to lose your dropped items to a rogue blaze fire. 

Be careful, and happy exploring!

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