How to Build a Nether Hub: Travel Faster in the Minecraft World

The Nether is not just a dimension full of eerie surprises, but it also serves a wonderful purpose that players have been utilising since the Alpha version. Through the Nether, you can travel to locations in the Overworld much faster! This saves you a lot of time and allows you to realise your creative ideas in the hellish dimension. There are many exciting structures you can create for a Nether Hub. We’ve already discussed surviving in the Nether in a previous article , but what if you want to establish a permanent base in the Nether? Today, we’ll take a closer look at how you can actively use a Nether Hub and how you can travel quickly over long distances.

Overworld and Nether: How Does the Travel Work?

You can reach the Nether through a portal made of obsidian. It’s a sort of hell, with red blocks and a creepy atmosphere. However, it’s also incredibly practical for travelling, as one block in the Nether corresponds to eight blocks in the Overworld. So, if you walk 100 blocks in one direction in the Nether and build a new portal there, you’ll end up approximately 800 blocks away from your starting point in the Overworld. This distance only applies to the X and Z coordinates. The height (Y coordinate) remains the same.

This mechanic is one of the coolest in the entire game and allows you to cover large distances in a short time. This is useful, for example, if you have structures in other biomes or simply like to travel through the world and want to get back home quickly.

Usually, a new portal is generated when you switch between dimensions and there’s no nearby portal. However, due to the terrain’s nature, these coordinates are not always accurate. The radius in the Overworld for automatically generated portals is approximately 300 blocks.

Tips for Connecting Portals

Perhaps you’ve already built one or more portals, but you want to network them more efficiently. We’ve compiled some tips for you.

• Don’t build portals too close together if you want to avoid errors.
• Always try to find the exact coordinates so they connect correctly.
• You should dismantle automatically generated portals and place them at the correct coordinates to avoid errors.
• The closer you are to the correct coordinates, the more likely you’ll appear at the correct portal.

The Fastest Travel Options

Now that you understand the general possibilities of the Nether and hopefully know why a Nether Hub is so important, let’s look at ways to further shorten travel time in the Nether. There are various options to increase your movement speed. We’ll introduce you to some of the best methods you can implement in your system.

Simple Paths

Your quickest and simplest option is to build simple paths and tunnels in the Nether to your desired portals. And for all the upcoming methods, you’ll need to do this anyway, so keep your pickaxe ready and get started! It’s worth first building in the four cardinal directions and then digging smaller side arms from there. With a pickaxe and efficiency, you can mine Netherrack in seconds, so the tunnels shouldn’t be a problem.

Through the tunnels, you can either walk or, if they are high enough, ride your horse. If the shafts are also wide enough, you can use your Elytra, which you can obtain after a fight with the Ender Dragon in the End.

Minecart System

You can also rely on a simple system with the old-fashioned minecarts, but this will cost you a lot of iron in the long run. Still, if you prefer simplicity, you can work with rails and some redstone. Use booster rails at intervals to maintain your speed.

Ice and Boats

The most efficient yet strange way to travel in the Nether is with an ice road and a boat. Yes, it sounds crazy, but it works! Lay down the ice alternately and use slabs and buttons on the ice to prevent monsters from spawning. The pattern also looks quite good.

Important: You can only use packed ice or blue ice in the Nether, as regular ice melts due to the heat. And water evaporates anyway, so you’ll need to mine the ice in the Overworld with Silk Touch. Blue ice is the fastest option but also the hardest to find and craft.

Ideas for Your Nether Hub

When building your base in the Nether, you have endless possibilities! Let your creativity run wild and choose a system that suits you best. A good idea is to work only with Nether blocks to create a spooky atmosphere.

Warped and Crimson stems and the wood derived from them look especially good in the Nether! You can also work with basalt and quartz to create a good contrast.

Main Hall

The most important thing for a Nether Hub is that your base, like in the Overworld, is protected. Therefore, you should avoid building your hub in the open. Come up with a great design that you can build symmetrically based on your travel tunnels. There are many great inspirations for fantastic Nether Hubs online! Here, you can also set up a small storage area for all the Nether blocks you collect along the way.

Various Paths

As mentioned above, the paths and tunnels are the main focus of your Nether Hub. These are often referred to as “Nether Highways.” Build these to specific points, with the best starting point being large tunnels in all four cardinal directions. However, it also depends on where your portals are and where you want to travel through the Nether.

Conclusion

A Nether Hub is not only a cool base in the hellish dimension but also a wonderful way to make long journeys in your Minecraft world easier. Use various blocks like ice to move faster and get from A to B quickly. Make travelling in your Minecraft world easier for you and your friends. Rent your own server and build a Nether Hub for maximum efficiency!