How to walk on lava in Minecraft?

One of the most dangerous liquids in Minecraft is lava. When you first enter a new world, you will spawn in the Overworld realm, filled with different biomes, structures, and terrain generations. As you traverse through them, you will begin to find pockets of lava either spilling from mountains or generating underground. The second realm, called the Nether, will be filled with massive lava lakes and falls, along with many mysterious and dangerous creatures.

If your in-game character even touches lava, it will instantly start burning and die. Hence, you need to be careful at all times whenever you are near lava. However, there are a few ways to walk or travel through the extremely hot liquid.

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Methods to walk or travel through lava in Minecraft

1) Using fire resistance status effect

The fire resistance status effect completely negates the burning damage from lava or fire in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

If you want to walk on lava purely in the vanilla version, the best way is to have a fire resistance status effect on you and essentially swim at the surface of the lava. Fire resistance is a powerful status effect that can be applied through enchanted golden apples or fire resistance potions. This status effect completely negates any and all damage taken from burning lava or fire.

Hence, the simplest way to walk on lava is to drink a fire-resistance potion and start swimming at the surface of the lava.

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2) Lava walker enchantment data pack

Lava Walker is a data pack that adds a new enchantment which allows players to walk on lava (Image via 9Minecraft)

If you want to specifically walk and run on top of lava, you will need to download and install a custom datapack that will let you do so since there is no method in the vanilla version of the game.

The data pack is called Lava Walker, and it adds a custom enchantment that will allow you to walk on water by converting lava into basalt blocks. However, it is quite an expensive enchantment to obtain since it requires an enchanted golden apple and netherite boots.

Once you have both, you need to throw them together from your inventory to essentially combine them. Small blue flames will appear around the boot, indicating that it has been enchanted with the custom Lava Walker enchantment.

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3) Ride on a strider

Striders in Minecraft are a decent mode of transportation on lava in the Nether realm (Image via Mojang)

If you solely want to travel through lava without roasting your in-game character, you can ride striders in the Nether realm. Though this is technically not a straightforward method of walking on lava, you can still try it since it is in the vanilla version of the game.

You will need a saddle and a warped fungus on a stick to be able to ride Striders in the Nether. Though it might look quite daunting, it is safe if you do not accidentally dismount yourself. Always keep a fire resistance potion on hand for those kinds of emergencies.