The Nether



The Nether is a hell-like dimension, filled with fire, lava, and dangerous mobs.

Accessing


To access the Nether, the player must construct a Nether portal in the Overworld (portals created in the End will not activate). To create the portal, one must first construct a rectangular obsidian frame, ranging in size from a minimum of 4×5 to a maximum of 23×23. Once the frame is constructed, it can then be activated by placing fire within the frame.

An activated portal will allow most entities (with the exception of the wither, the ender dragon, and entities riding or being ridden by another entity) to be transported to a corresponding portal in the Nether. If there is no corresponding portal, a new portal will be created. The portal can be destroyed by breaking the obsidian frame, by a nearby explosion, or by placing water or lava into it with a bucket or dispenser.

Environment
The terrain is largely composed of netherrack that forms complex platforms and niches, with frequent lava oceans, 'lavafalls', and rivers of lava. Lava sources hidden in the netherrack are also common, making large mining projects dangerous. Random fires across the netherrack are yet another hazard to the unwary player.

Bedrock comprises the top (below layer 127) and bottom 4 layers in a rough pattern. The Nether is horizontally infinite, except on the Console Edition, where bedrock will be found at the world border.

Glowstone clusters generate on ceilings, and mushrooms grow abundantly on the ground. There are patches of floating gravel and soul sand. Small caverns form in the netherrack, which contain random nether quartz deposits. Near the level of the lava oceans, patches of magma blocks generate within the netherrack, making travel difficult and potentially damaging to armor.

Nether fortresses, the Nether's only naturally occurring structures, provide valuable loot, and are the only places where blazes and wither skeletons will naturally spawn. Nether fortresses are also the only place where nether wart naturally generates (in the Console Edition, nether wart will naturally generate anywhere on soul sand).

The Nether has no day-night cycle and no weather. Natural sources of light include fire, lava, portals, and glowstone. Even with a light level of 0, the Nether has a dim ambient light (roughly equivalent to light level 8 in the Overworld). Light otherwise functions exactly the same as it does in the Overworld and the End.

If the player dies in the Nether, they will respawn in the Overworld; any surviving items will remain in the Nether where the death occured.

Locations in the Nether correlate to Overworld coordinates, but horizontal Overworld distances are scaled down by a ratio of 8:1 for travel in the Nether. Therefore, traveling one block in the Nether means traveling eight blocks in the Overworld. For example, in a perfect scenario, if the player builds and enters a portal in the Overworld at x:0, z:0, travels to x:1000, z:1000 in the Nether, then returns to the Overworld, they will be at x:8000, z:8000. This makes portals a useful tool for travelling very long distances in the Overworld.



Most items and blocks in the Nether function the same as they do in the Overworld, with a few notable exceptions:


 * Beds will explode and cause fires when a player attempts to sleep in one.
 * The explosion is larger than that of TNT.
 * There is no way to place liquid water in the Nether in survival mode without the use of cheats, besides the usage of a cauldron.
 * Using water buckets will only produce steam particles and a hissing sound, leaving the player with an empty bucket.
 * Ice that is melted or smashed in the Nether will not produce water.
 * Lava flows twice as far (8 blocks) and much faster in the Nether than in the Overworld.
 * Grass blocks and leaves take a dead-looking brownish color, since the Nether is a warm biome.
 * Maps will only generate a brown-gray static pattern.
 * The player's direction indicator will spin randomly, although its location is still relative to the players location in the Nether.
 * Compasses and clocks spin wildly, making it impossible to tell the time while in the Nether.
 * Building snow golems is essentially useless, as they will rapidly take fire damage and die, due to the Nether being a warm biome.

Mobs
The Nether is home to its own share of mobs, most of which are fire- and lava-proof. Skeletons, chickens, and endermen are the only Overworld mobs that can naturally spawn in the Nether; wither skeletons have a 20% chance of spawning as a regular skeleton instead, and baby zombie pigmen may spawn as chicken jockeys.

Other Overworld mobs do not naturally spawn in the Nether, but can be teleported through portals (with the exception of withers and ender dragons).

Naturally generated
Naturally generated blocks includes those that are created through the world seed.

Naturally created
Naturally created blocks are created through a combination of events that lead these blocks to be placed by natural causes, not by the player.

Structures
These blocks are generated as part of nether fortresses, but only when the "generated structures" option is on.

Technical information
The Nether is saved in the same way normal worlds are, in the following locations by default:

Windows:

Mac:

''Note: This Library folder is not the one in Macintosh HD, but the one inside your home folder. The only way to access this is to go to the Go menu, and select Go To..., and type ~/Library'', or to go to the Go menu, hold the Option key, and select the "Library" option.

Linux:

On all systems, be sure to replace "worldname" with the name of your world.

Note that DIM-1 does not contain its own level.dat; the level.dat in the parent folder is used for all dimensions. This means that even if a player changes the level data in the /world folder for a particular save, Nether portals will still take the player to the Nether world originally generated for that save and vice versa.

Deleting the DIM-1 file will reset the Nether, so that all player-made changes and buildings in that dimension will be undone.

Trivia

 * Upon entering the Nether in singleplayer, the Overworld will essentially freeze, and resume when the player returns. This is due to chunks loading and unloading.
 * Pressing in the Nether will display the biome as "Hell".
 * In the Console Edition, everything in the Nether is renewable due to the fact the Nether can be restarted any number of times from the main menu using the "Reset Nether" button. This can be done on PC only by deleting your save folder's DIM-1 file, which resets the Nether.
 * The numbers for the 3 dimensions are: -1=The Nether, 0=The Overworld, 1=The End. This implies that the Nether is the next dimension over from the Overworld in the "down" direction and The End is the next dimension over in the "up" direction.
 * The Nether — an endless cave filled with masses of air — appears to be an inversion of the End, an endless sky with a central mass of end stone.
 * In the Console Edition, the nether music in the festive mash-up pack is actually different from the original nether music, with some minor differences.