Minecraft, as many players know, has a dark side lying underneath the surface of creativity and exploration and fun. Not only are there monsters, but a whole other dimension carefully tailored to giving you hell: The Nether. Needing to construct a portal to access it, players need the Nether for late-game ingredients and materials. But could you actually live in the Nether in Minecraft?
How to live in the Nether in Minecraft
The Nether is an unforgiving and very hostile place to live, no matter where you go. But if you wanted to live in the Nether, or simply have forgotten where your portal is and need to quickly set up shop, then you may find the hellscape habitable.
To start, you will need to find one of the Nether’s Crimson Forest Biome, which pretty much looks like a sprawling red forest, with trees and fungus and glowing shroomlight. Many mobs will spawn in this biome.
I am going to proceed as if you have started the world in the Nether, so have no items to your name.
Acquiring shelter
In the Crimson Forest, great trees will cover the precarious setting. This wood, thankfully, is exactly like the wood in the Overworld, so it can be broken with your fist and turned to planks. With wood, you can pretty much do anything.
Make a crafting table to make a set of wooden tools is what you’ll need to do. For an emergency shelter, the wood will serve you to some extent, but do not rely on this as it is extremely flammable. Instead, you can use your wooden pickaxe to mine a bunch of netherrack and make an emergency shelter. It is weak, but it won’t burn down. Just eternally.
For a more permanent shelter, you will have to find yourself a Basalt Delta, the volcanic, grey, stoney biome.
In the Basalt Delta, you will find darkstone, a block that can be harvested with a wooden pickaxe as a substitute for cobblestone. With darkstone, you can make stone tools and construct a blast-and-fire-proof base. So make sure to haul as much darkstone as you can to your forest of choice to build your base.
With a darkstone shelter and stone tools, you will have a place to stay that will keep you safe which is step one in survival.
Finding a reliable source of food
You may be safe from the elements, but you still gotta eat. In the Crimson Forest, you may have noticed large horned mobs that like to charge at you. Those beasts are called Hoglins. Despite being very dangerous, they are integral to your survival in the Nether.
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Funnily enough, the Hoglins, once dead, drop raw porkchops. Which, if you hadn’t figured out, is a fantastic food item. With your furnace and charcoal, you can cook up some great food. But the problem remains of the sustainability of your food source.
With only stone weapons, going toe-to-toe with the Hogline frequently may seem difficult. Instead of hunting the Hoglins, you may consider herding and breeding them.
Hoglins have an interesting relationship with fungi. They are petrified of warped fungi, the green fungus that grows in the green warped forest, so you can place them down to scare them off and force them in one direction. However, they love crimson fungi, the fungus that grows in the crimson forest. Using crimson fungi, players can actually breed Hoglins, starting a little brute family.
With your Hoglins penned, you have a reliable and sustainable source of food.
Expected quality of life
So, the answer is yes, you can live in the Nether in Minecraft. However, don’t expect it to be a fun time. Despite having the essentials down perfectly, a good source of food and a great shelter, your tools are limited to the stone quality and there is no available armour.
That is under the assumption you don’t raid any Bastions or Fortresses. If you manage to loot those structures, you may find yourself entitled to some fantastic quality gear. But because such loot is finite and not sustainable, I will not consider those luxuries when stating that the Nether is a livable place, but not a great place to live.
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