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How does one get to The Nether area in Minecraft?

I heard that portals would be used to teleport around the map, but in order to use the portals you have to go through The Nether area.

4 Answers 4

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You will need to create an upright portal, consisting of an obsidian frame, leaving an 2x3 area free on the inside and use flint & steel to set the inside on fire.

After you have set the inside on fire, the inside will change in a purple swirly portal.

just for reference, Obsidian can be made from flooding water on top of lava and mining it with a diamond pickaxe. (or if you're truly hardcode, make the obsidian in place using lava and water buckets)

Before setting fire to it

enter image description here

(note that the complete bottom of the portal is also obsidian.)

After setting fire to it

enter image description here

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  • 9
    I have heard that you don't actually need the corners -- 10 blocks of obsidian is enough. Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 2:28
  • @RavenDreamer that might be a bug in the current implementation. Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 3:00
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    Keep in mind you need to stay in the portal. Simply going through it is not enough.
    – badp
    Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 9:55
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    An important thing to remember is that making the obsidian in place doesn't require a diamond pick. Between not having to find diamonds and not having to mine the obsidian you can save a lot of time (if you have enough buckets).
    – Fambida
    Commented Oct 9, 2011 at 23:28
  • @lunboks I added replacement images. The old images weren't hosted on Stackexchange, but the new ones are, so hopefully they shan't need to be replaced a second time. Commented Oct 10, 2011 at 1:22
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You need to make a portal.The easiest way to make a portal is to follow these steps:

  1. Try to find a cave.

  2. If you find a cave,start digging and digging (down) in that cave.(RULE NUMBER 1 IN MINECRAFT: NEVER EVER DIG STRAIGHT DOWN!!

  3. Try to find materials like redstone,gold,iron,coal and more.

  4. IF you get lucky,you could find some diamonds...

  5. Another way to find diamonds,if you find lava lakes and water lakes there is a VERY BIG chance of finding diamonds somewhere near.Everytime i find a lava/water-cave i find diamonds somewhere near.

  6. Just keep searching for the diamonds.If you find 3 or more (you really need 3 or more if you want this to work), try to find the way back to your house/spawn point or something. WARNING!! Try not to fall into the lava!! ;)

  7. Once you get back to your home/spawn point the make a workbench and get your diamonds and some sticks.

  8. When you get to your workbench, follow these instructions: D=Diamonds S=Sticks

       D D D
         S
         S
    
  9. Now you should have a diamond pickaxe. Next step is to find some obsidian.

  10. You will need 12 obsidian blocks. When you find obsidian take the 12 blocks with your diamond pickaxe. WARNING: You can only mine obsidian with a diamond pick.I ts just takes a few seconds! :D

  11. When you got the obsidian,you also need flint and steel, if you already have flint and steel,skip to step 14.

  12. To make flint and steel you have to get flint and iron. All minecraft players know that you can get iron in caves and stuff like that. To get flint you need to find some gravel. You don't always get flint when you mine gravel, in fact you almost never get it! But just keep on mineing that gravel and you will get flint in the end.You only need 1 flint and 1 iron.

  13. When you got the flint and iron, you have to melt the iron in a furnace. If you don't know how to make a furnace just go to the Minecraft wiki where you can alsol find many other information about minecraft that you need. Then you make the flint and steel like this with the following instructions: (I=iron, F=flint)

          I
           F
    
  14. When you got flint and steel, go and find a place you want your portal to be on.

  15. When you found a place for your portal place obsidian on the ground like this: (O=Obsidian)

         O O O O
         O     O
         O     O
         O     O
         O O O O
    
  16. When you got that all set up,g et your flint and steel and light the middle up by right clicking with your mouse on the middle og the portal and light it on fire. When thats done you should have a portal.

  17. Enjoy :D

P.s.I know this may be a little hard, but it's worth it :) When you get to the nether you can collect netherrack and glowstone and see lots of cool stuff!!

But remember...the nether is very dangerous...even on peaceful! It contains ghasts and zombie-pigmen if your playing easy, normal or even hard mode!!

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  • Hi, Julia, welcome to site. This question has already been adequately answered by alexanderpas's answer as indicated by the green check, so posting a new answer isn't useful. Also, it seems that some of your information is wrong, like the shape of the portal. Commented Mar 11, 2011 at 22:19
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    I wouldn't go so far to say that posting an answer any time there's already an accepted answer "isn't useful", but in this case, you do have the shape of the portal wrong. Commented Mar 11, 2011 at 23:42
  • @RavenDreamer: Yeah, I've done it before, but I would say that usually it isn't, and that this accepted answer's good. Commented Mar 12, 2011 at 0:25
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PCGamer received an early version of the Halloween update game and have made this video.

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The way you make a portal to the nether is: First you have to have 10 blocks of obsidian. Then you make a 4 by 5 ring of obsidian. (4 on the top/bottom and 5 going up) Yes, it is very big, so do it outside not in your house. Then light the inside of the ring of obsidian using flint and steel and you will have your portal to the nether.

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  • It takes 14 to make a full ring, unless you leave out the corners. Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 20:23

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