Preparing for my first nether trip. (Spoilers)

[JakeZKAM]

Ok so I'm almost ready to get to the nether in my newest world and I haven't really managed to get there since well, before all of the Hardcore updates. So now I'm trying to prepare ahead of time with gear, strategies, and anything I need to prepare ahead of time.

To start with I've been thinking of a strategy that should put my first portal in a safe spot and not out in the open. Building up and putting my entry portal at a very elevated position would put it into a cave in the ceiling nether side right? (or at least that's what always happens to me >.>) So using this I can get a starter base in the ceiling of the nether to gather Netherrack, and maybe a little Glowstone without being a sitting duck :P.

Secondly I already have a spot picked out far away from my farms for my portal, the farms themselves are enough to feed me, and I have an excess of cobble, wood, and a fair bit of iron (Just need to get a hold of those diamonds.) but what else should I need?

Also other than gaining nether access/building a base there what other chokepoints in the tech tree do people tend to find the most difficult?

[Daisjun]

Unfortunately a lot of your entry into the nether will be down to luck. We were lucky enough to spawn our portal in our latest jump right into a corner of the nether and were able to close it off quickly without too much trouble. That should be your first priority, securing the area around the portal, bring plenty of cobble and get that area closed off as soon as you can. Secure the area around your safe zone by replacing all the netherrack on the floor with cobble so pigmen don't spawn. A cobble generator will help you massively. What you do from there will largely depend on the landscape around you.

Try not to take too many undue risks and progress slowly. Build cobble tunnels where you can to travel around. Cobble is definitely your friend in the nether. Good luck!

[FlowerChild]

A few tips from my own play:

-I consider getting yourself a vanilla enchanting table a priority upon first entering the nether . There's the old thing where you want to harvest a bit of netherrack quickly then GTFO to get your first Cauldron started, but accumulating the quartz for the table is probably what you want to do next. Mainly, this is because tunneling through the nether (which is likely what you'll want to be doing) eats through picks like crazy, and a diamond pick with a durability enchant may be your best friend as a result. BUT, it will also come in real handy once you make your way to a fortress if you manage to get low level enchants on all your equipment.

-I find doing a bit of diamond level branch mining before seriously tackling the nether (you might want to do your short trip to get the enchanting table first) to be extremely useful, for the massive amount of cobble you will get out of it, which, as was mentioned in the post above, comes in super handy for building tunnels.

-Also an early priority: getting some soul sand to help you track down your nether fortress. Despite the piles being short range, it can really cut down on how much random tunneling you have to do in order to find a fortress.

-It may be overkill but I built myself up to full iron armor before really hitting the fortress. I was missing a few pieces, but I prioritized melting down my tools to complete the set, and then enchanted it all, after killing my first blaze and before heading deeper into the fortress.

Anyways, not really stuff you can do beforehand, but it is stuff I find useful in laying out your plan of attack for once you get there. In general, take things slow, be cautious, make sure you have cover from ghasts as much as possible, and personally, I think an incremental approach where you grab what you can to improve your equipment and then head out again before proceeding again works well.

[JakeZKAM]

Will do on the utilize cobble/be paranoid as hell front ;) but as for the vanilla enchanter I didn't even consider it... Thanks for reminding me as you're right extra enchants and those thirty levels I've managed to gather will be very helpful. Oh and Iron Armor is far from overkill, I've already decided that other than the starting trip to try and gather some basic materials, there's no way I'm doing anything else in the nether without Iron level. Although diamond would probably make me feel even safer.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I was used to ignoring the vanilla enchanter almost entirely, but given I've taken steps to integrate it in the mod now, forced myself to consider when and how I'd use it this time around :)

The gap between first entering the nether and hitting a fortress seems like the ideal time, which is also why I rebalanced the recipe to coincide with it ;)

[weldaSB]

To start with I've been thinking of a strategy that should put my first portal in a safe spot and not out in the open. Building up and putting my entry portal at a very elevated position would put it into a cave in the ceiling nether side right? (or at least that's what always happens to me >.>) So using this I can get a starter base in the ceiling of the nether to gather Netherrack, and maybe a little Glowstone without being a sitting duck :P.

Accordind to the minecraft wiki(if i read it correctly), the portal system checks with the y value when finding a currently created portal, but does not when creating a portal, so this plan would be useless, unless you are using it to get away from your farms. i have not been to the nether recently though, so I cannot give any other tips.

Source:http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Nether_portal

[EpicAaron]

All you really need to beat the nether is a Bloodwood sapling. Plant one of those babies and chant "UBERDRASIL. UBERDRASIL. UBERDRASIL." Use Souls for faster results.

EDIT: Surrounding Pigmen will rejoice at the sight of you planting the sapling and come to your aid if you need it.

[JakeZKAM]

All you really need to beat the nether is a Bloodwood sapling. Plant one of those babies and chant "UBERDRASIL. UBERDRASIL. UBERDRASIL." Use Souls for faster results.

EDIT: Surrounding Pigmen will rejoice at the sight of you planting the sapling and come to your aid if you need it.

Yeeeaaaah that's rather low on my to-do list ;)

[FlowerChild]

EDIT: Surrounding Pigmen will rejoice at the sight of you planting the sapling and come to your aid if you need it.

Hey! Trolling players into horrible deaths is my job! :)

[EpicAaron]

Hey! Trolling players into horrible deaths is my job! :)

Sorry, I have been so obsessed with my great Bloodwood tree that I just had to share it. A beautiful feature that I hardly ever see people talk about.

On a more useful note: If you can get one to grow in an open area, they make great deployable tree houses (as long as a ghast doesn't burn it). A more midgame tech tree feature, but may be very handy for setting up a direct path to the Nether Roof without stairs.

[jkievlan]

All you really need to beat the nether is a Bloodwood sapling. Plant one of those babies and chant "UBERDRASIL. UBERDRASIL. UBERDRASIL." Use Souls for faster results.

EDIT: Surrounding Pigmen will rejoice at the sight of you planting the sapling and come to your aid if you need it.

I recently planted my first bloodwood tree and it's growing beautifully. On my way back to base a couple of pigmen kindly assisted me in finding a random location for my next overworld base.

[Daisjun]

Another bit of nastiness I've found recently are the random pockets of lava throughout the nether. I've only just noticed them since we've started excavating and I don't remember them being there a few months ago. I'm not sure if this was a vanilla or BTW update or that they've always been there, but it certainly can make tunnel digging dangerous if you're not on your guard.

[DiamondArms]

Lava Pockets are vMC 1.5 content. Turns out it's vMC saying tunneling is not orthodox behaviour.

I'm a very heavy nether tunneler, since the nether spawn regulations FC made. Digging through the nethermass and paving the whole way made more sense that trying to replace a cavern floor. It's also a good way to a) get netherrack for grinding/fireplaces and b) making a subway system to expand territory. It's also cheaper to pave a floor than build floor, walls and ceiling.

Pro tip for tunneling: dig the blocks in front and diagonally below you. The lowered ground prevents sudden lava pockets from filling the tunnel/burning you to death and simplifies paving after all lava pockets are secured. External nether portals can be embedded in the sides of the tunnel for convenience.

Pro tip for overland exploring: kill all fire slimes you see, if you can. they're not an extremely difficult threat and they drop magma slimes for fire resistance potions. An absolute life-saver if you can get them, especially now that stills/brewing stands are no longer blaze-dependant.

Late game, whitestone makes a very cheap and pretty nice looking marble floor. Cement buckets are also good for covering any cavern you tunnel into and towering down from ceiling holes. Investing in rails and powered rails make a rapid transport system simple.

[PatriotBob]

Last I remembered, pigmen spawned on EVERYTHING. (except slabs)
Did FC make a change to this? Everyone keeps talking about paving the floor for spawning reasons.

[ryoloth]

FC changed their spawning things so that they only spawn on netherack and netherbrick so that you can build cobble pathways and stuff and they wouldnt get in the way

[JakeZKAM]

Yup. They only spawn on blocks that can be found in the nether now. Also a bit of an update, I've been continually postponing the trip (since I'm scared of ruining my no death track record >.>) But I think I'm all ready now. Gonna head in, grab some netherrack, and gtfo :)

Edit: Aaaaaaaand success :) managed to grab a stack of netherrack, some quartz, and I the area my portal spawned in was fairly well set up :)