Nether portal

A nether portal is a manufactured structure that acts as a gateway between the Overworld and the Nether dimensions.

Creation[]

Build schematics

Full version	Minimal version

A nether portal is built as a vertical, rectangular frame of obsidian (4×5 minimum, 23×23 maximum). The four corners of the frame are not required, but portals created by the game always include them, resulting in 4 free/extra obsidian. The obsidian can be placed in any manner, e.g. by placing mined obsidian, by completing a ruined portal, or by casting it in place using lava and water. Adjacent portals can share obsidian blocks. A nether portal cannot be built horizontally like an end portal.

Once a frame is constructed, it is activated by fire placed inside the frame. This creates portal blocks inside the frame, resembling a vortex. The fire can be placed in any manner, including use of flint and steel or a fire charge, the impact of a fireball or small fireball, a lightning strike, or natural spread of fire to flammable material adjacent to the portal. Nether portals can be activated only in the Overworld or the Nether; they cannot be activated in the End and customized dimensions.

The fire must be the last placed block in the structure—a fire on an incomplete frame does not result in the portal activating upon the placement of the last obsidian block.

When a portal is used by a player, if no corresponding portal within range exists in the other dimension, one is created there; see § Portal search and § Portal creation. There is an infinitesimal chance of failure for the corresponding portal to generate in the Nether, leaving the player trapped until death or until another portal can be constructed, either in the Nether or by another player in the Overworld.

Behavior[]

When a player in the Overworld or the Nether stands in a nether portal block for 4 seconds, the player is taken to the other dimension. The player can step out of a portal before it completes its animation to abort the teleport. However, in Creative, the wait time is one game tick (¹⁄₂₀ second) for the player to transfer between dimensions. If there is already an active portal within range (about 128 blocks) in the other dimension, the player appears in that portal. Otherwise, a portal is created at or near the corresponding coordinates. If a portal is deactivated, and the matching portal in the other dimension is used before it is re-activated, a new portal may be created (unless there is another active portal within range). The usual cause for this is when the player's Nether-side portal is deactivated by a ghast, and then the player dies in the Nether, spawns, and then re-enters the Nether through the Overworld-side portal. However, multiple portals can be exploited to farm obsidian.

Most entities can travel through portals, including mobs (except the wither and ender dragon), thrown items, and transportation with passengers including boats, minecarts and horses. Unlike players, other entities travel through portals instantly, and once they reach the other side, there is a cool-down time for 300 game ticks (15 seconds), in which they cannot go through any nether portals. Therefore, an entity can only travel though nether portals again, once it is not touching any nether portal for 15 seconds. In Bedrock Edition, a parrot on the player's shoulder prevents the player from going through the portal.^[1]

Zombified piglins have a chance to spawn on the bottom frame of the portal in the Overworld in Java Edition if any nether portal block above receives a block tick. In Bedrock Edition they spawn in certain squares adjacent to the portals in the Overworld, not inside them. Zombified piglins spawned in this way have a full 15-second portal cooldown, meaning they can't go through the portal they are spawned in unless they leave the portal for a while. They spawn twice as often on Normal difficulty as on Easy, and three times as often on Hard difficulty as on Easy. No other mobs can be spawned by nether portals in this way, in any dimension.

Active portals also repel hoglins.

Chunk loading[]

Whenever an entity is teleported through a nether portal, the chunk at the linked portal gets load ticket with load level of 30, meaning that it is fully loaded and can process entities. This load level also spreads to adjacent chunks but they get lower for each chunk. This results in 8 more fully loaded "entity ticking" chunks with gradually fewer loaded chunks further out.

These chunks remain loaded for 15 seconds but this timer gets refreshed each time the entity passes through the portal (including mobs wandering through it from either direction). This can be used to permanently load chunks, creating a "chunk loader". Permanently-loaded chunks created using chunk loaders create a considerable amount of lag.

Portal linkage between Overworld and Nether[]

Coordinate conversion[]

Horizontal coordinates and distances in the Nether are proportional to the Overworld in a 1:8 ratio. That is, by moving 1 block horizontally in the Nether, players have moved the equivalent of 8 blocks on the Overworld. This does not apply to the Y-axis. Thus, for a given location (X, Y, Z) in the Overworld, the corresponding coordinates in the Nether are (floor(X ÷ 8), Y, floor(Z ÷ 8)), and conversely, for a location (X, Y, Z) in the Nether, the matching Overworld coordinates are (X × 8, Y, Z × 8).

The Java floor() method used in these conversions rounds down to the largest integer less than or equal to the argument (toward smaller positive values and toward larger negative values), so a coordinate of 29.9 rounds to 29, and one of −29.9 to −30.

Both the X and Z coordinates in this conversion are constrained to be between −29,999,872 and 29,999,872 (inclusive); this affects travel to the Overworld from the Nether at X or Z beyond ±3,749,984.

Portal search[]

When an entity starts colliding with a nether portal block, the game records the coordinates of the entity.

The game then converts those coordinates into destination coordinates as above: The entry X- and Z-coordinates are multiplied by 8 if the entity is in the Nether or divided by 8 if the entity is in the overworld, while the Y-coordinate is not changed.

Starting at these destination coordinates, the game looks for all nearby portal points of interest (POI). The point of interest can be within 257×257 blocks in the Overworld and 33×33 blocks in the Nether^[2] centered on the converted coordinate and the full map height.

If any candidate portal POI is found, then the game selects the closest one as determined by its distance in the new coordinate system (including the Y coordinate, which can cause seemingly more distant portals to be selected), and teleports the entity to the location in the new portal calculated by a special algorithm. Note that the calculated distance is Euclidean distance, not taxicab distance. The distance computation between portals in the range is a straight-line distance calculation, and the shortest path is chosen, counting the Y difference.

The algorithm used for determining the position of the entity inside the destination portal to teleport to is as follows:

• Portal rectangle dimensions are determined for both source and destination portals. (Not counting the obsidian)
• Entity hitbox dimensions are subtracted from those rectangles' width and height, meaning that the entity can now be considered as a point, to avoid problems with preserving the hitbox dimensions in a goemetrical transformation.
• Distance between the bottom of the source portal and the bottom of the entity hitbox is measured, similar is done for distance to one of the sides of the portal.
• Those offsets are then multiplied by the ratio of the reduced sizes of the portals and used to get the position in the destination portal.
• If one of the dimensions of entity hitbox is larger than the portal, the corresponing dimension falls back to bottom-middle of the destination portal, the other dimension is still calculated using the algorithm.
• If the destination portal is at 90° to the source portal, entity yaw and velocity are rotated 90° clockwise, interestingly regardless of the direction of travel, meaning that if player travels there and back without touching their mouse, they will be rotated 180°, but the coordinates will still be the same, making it appear like the player exited through the wrong side of the portal.

This way, if source and destination portals are of the same shape, have the same orientation, and no other portals are interfering with the linking, one can safely assume that entities will travel through them as if the portal frames were physically placed behind each other.

Portal creation[]

For players, if no portals exist in the search region, the game creates one, by looking for the closest suitable location to place a portal, within 16 blocks horizontally (but any distance vertically) of the player's destination coordinates. A valid location is 3×4 buildable blocks with air 4 high above all 12 blocks, with the long axis matching the long axis of the source portal. The closest valid position in the 3D distance is always picked.

If the first check for valid locations fails entirely, the check is redone looking for a 1×4 expanse of buildable blocks with air 4 high above each.

If that fails, too, a portal is forced at the target coordinates, but with Y constrained to be between 70 and 10 less than the world height (i.e. 118 for the Nether or 246 for the Overworld). When a portal is forced in this way, a 2×3 platform of obsidian with air 3 high above is created at the target location, overwriting whatever might be there. This provides air space underground or a small platform if high in the air. In Bedrock Edition, these obsidian blocks are flanked by 4 more blocks of netherrack on each side, resulting in 12 blocks of platform.

Once coordinates are chosen, a portal (always 4×5 and including the corners) including portal blocks is constructed at the target coordinates, replacing anything in the way.

If a portal is forced into water or lava, the liquid immediately flows into the generated air blocks, leaving the player with no airspace. However, a glitch can prevent this water from flowing into the portal: if the liquid would flow both vertically and horizontally into the air pocket, it instead flows only vertically, so the blocks on the platform's outer corners never become water source blocks.

Sounds[]

Java Edition:

Sound	Subtitles	Source	Description	Resource location	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance
	Portal whooshes [sound 1]	Blocks	Randomly	block.portal.ambient[sound 2]	subtitles.block.portal.ambient[sound 2]	0.5	0.8-1.2	10
	Portal noise fades	Ambient/Environment	After the player is teleported through a nether portal	block.portal.travel[sound 2]	block.portal.travel	0.25	0.8-1.2	16
	Portal noise intensifies [sound 1]	Ambient/Environment	When the player enters a nether portal	block.portal.trigger[sound 2]	subtitles.block.portal.trigger[sound 2]	0.25	0.8-1.2	16

Bedrock Edition:

Sound	Source	Description	Resource location	Volume	Pitch
	Blocks	Randomly	portal.portal	0.25	0.8-1.2
	Ambient/Environment	After the player is teleported through a nether portal	portal.travel	1.0	1.0
	Ambient/Environment	When the player enters a nether portal	portal.trigger	1.0	1.0

Achievements[]

Icon		Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Gamerscore earned	Trophy type (PS4)
PS4	Other
		Into The Nether	Construct a Nether Portal.	Light a nether portal.	30G	Bronze

Advancements[]

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
	We Need to Go Deeper	Build, light and enter a Nether Portal	Ice Bucket Challenge	Enter the Nether dimension.	story/enter_the_nether
	Nether	Bring summer clothes	—	Enter the Nether dimension.	nether/root
	Subspace Bubble	Use the Nether to travel 7 km in the Overworld	Nether	Use the Nether to travel between 2 points in the Overworld with a minimum horizontal euclidean distance of 7000 blocks between each other, which is 875 blocks in the Nether.	nether/fast_travel
	Uneasy Alliance	Rescue a Ghast from the Nether, bring it safely home to the Overworld... and then kill it	Return to Sender	Kill a ghast while the player is in the Overworld.	nether/uneasy_alliance

Video[]

Note: These videos do not mention that nether portals on the Nether ceiling now link up with Overworld portals.

History[]

History of the structure itself[]

Java Edition Alpha
v1.2.0		preview			Added nether portals.
v1.2.2a					The player can now create a nether portal by pressing F4 (presumably a developer testing function).
v1.2.2b					The F4 cheat has been removed from nether portals.
Java Edition
1.7.2		September 11, 2013			Dinnerbone releases images of larger and different shaped nether portals, also mentions the ability to light a portal from any block, not just the bottom row.[3] Both the sign and circular nature of the portal in the second image are references to Stargate, Col. Jack O'Neill was often heard mentioning his hatred for cliches.
		13w37a			Portals can now be activated from any block within the portal, not just the bottom (when any fire block appears inside the frame).
					There are now new nether portal building rules: portals can now be built at a minimum of 4×5, and a maximum of 23×23.
					Nether portals now use block data values (later changed to block state) to determine their orientation. Old portals created in 1.6.4 and earlier have a tendency to close when upgrading.
1.16		20w16a			Added ruined portals.
Pocket Edition Alpha
v0.12.1		build 1			Added nether portals.
					Nether portals can be built at a minimum of 4×5, and a maximum of 23×23.
Legacy Console Edition
TU1	CU1	1.0	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added nether portals.
TU31	CU19	1.22	Patch 3		There are now new nether portal building rules: Any rectangular shape from 4×5 to 23×23.
					If the nether portal in the Nether is big enough, ghasts can now travel through.
					Nether portals can now be activated by any fire block within the frame.

Other historical info[]

Java Edition Alpha
v1.2.0		October 4, 2010			A poster on Notch's blog announced a new "hell world," and hinted that it would utilize portals for fast travels.
		October 22, 2010			Originally, ghasts were intended to spawn from nether portals (referred to as "gates") in the Overworld. However, this ability has not yet been implemented.[4]
		October 29, 2010			Notch sent a preview of the Halloween Update to two gaming companies; their articles[5][6] detailed the usage of nether portals, used for entering what was then known as "the Slip".
Java Edition Beta
1.6		Test Build 3			Nether portals now work in multiplayer. Before this update, nether portals could be created on multiplayer servers, but could not teleport players to the Nether, thus multiplayer servers required modding to access the Nether.
					The travel.ogg sound and the screen animation used after traveling through a nether portal do not work in multiplayer.
					Standing in a nether portal now forces all GUIs to close, including the pause menu and chat.
					The nausea screen animation shown while entering a nether portal is now slower.
Java Edition
1.2.1		12w07a			The Overworld's height limit has been raised to 256, but portals from the Nether cannot find portals above Y=128.
1.3.1		12w18a			As a result of singleplayer being changed to an internal server, travel.ogg no longer plays when using a nether portal, and the screen animation after traveling through a portal no longer plays.
		12w22a			Zombie pigmen now rarely spawn from nether portals in the Overworld.
		?			Portals from the Nether now search the entire height of the Overworld.
1.4.2		12w34a			Entities can now travel through portals.
					The screen animation used when entering a portal is now replayed after traveling through, rather than having no animation (as before this snapshot) or a unique animation (as before 12w18a).
		12w38a			The Nether now loads faster when traveling through a nether portal in Survival mode and loads immediately when in Creative mode.
1.7.2		13w41a			Nether portals, water and ice are now visible through each other.
1.8		14w31a			The pause menu can once again be opened while standing in a nether portal.
1.9		16w02a			Nether portals now play travel.ogg again.
1.15		19w36a			Nether portals in the Overworld now correctly link with portals placed in the top half (128–255) of the Nether dimension.
					Search for an existing portal to connect to is now chunk based: the searched area is now 17×17 chunks instead of 257×257 blocks.
1.16		20w06a			Traveling through nether portals is now almost seamless.
		20w14a			Hoglins are now scared of active portals.
1.16.2		20w28a			The portal search has changed.
1.20		Pre-release 1			Nether portals no longer produce a screen animation and sound after changing dimensions.[7]
Pocket Edition Alpha
?					The sounds of nether portals have been updated to match Java.
Legacy Console Edition
TU31	CU19	1.22	Patch 3		If the nether portal in the Nether is big enough, ghasts can now travel through.

• 

  Image released for 1.7.2 by Dinnerbone on September 11, 2013.^[8]

• 

  7x7 portal.^[9]

• 

  Large Portal.^[10]

Issues[]

Issues relating to "Nether portal" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia[]

• Portals can be placed together in a tunnel-like fashion, though it appears as if the third portal is lit as the first two in a row mimic glass. If more than six portals are connected, the inner portals are completely invisible while in the portal tunnel, however, the particle effects can still be seen throughout. These connected portals also share the 4-second countdown until teleportation, so as long as the player is within a connected portal, they are sent to another dimension.
• The player cannot open their inventory or the chat window while standing in an active portal, and any other GUI (such as that of a chest or villager) is immediately closed when opened.
• If 2 portals intersect, and the player lights a fire in the intersection (i.e., in both portals at once) only the portal that lies within the x-axis is activated. Lighting any other block activates whichever portal it is in.
• There is a splash text referencing the nether portal. It says "Slow acting portals!".
• There is a one in a trillion chance a ruined portal would generate as an active portal (verify, as SaraSushi7 saw that chance thing on home page)

Publicity[]

• A LEGO Minecraft nether portal was included in the LEGO Minecraft Set: "The Nether".
• On 29 October 2010 PC Gamer released this video, showing a portal being constructed and used.
• On 1 April 2011, Think Geek released this video to advertise one of their annual fake April Fools products: the Minecraft USB Desktop Nether Portal.

Gallery[]

• 

  A zombified piglin wandered through a nether portal and into the Overworld.

• 

  A view of inside a portal.

• 

  The biggest nether portal size (23×23 exterior, 21×21 opening).

• 

  Nether portal generated on a cliff in crimson forest.

• 

  A cluster of nether portal frames generated by repeatedly going through the Nether-side portal, deactivating the Overworld-side portal and teleporting back to the Nether.

• 

  A large nether portal.

• 

  Two nether portals next to each other.

• 

  Darngeek standing in front of a nether portal.

• 

  Screenshot from Searge showing a 3x4 nether portal.

• 

  A Nether portal in a mangrove swamp, as shown in the Wild Update trailer.

• 

  A Nether Portal as it appears in the Minecraft Legends Live Event.

• 

  An officially licensed "Nether Portal Glitter Motion Light."

• 

  Official artwork featuring a nether portal.

• 

  Official artwork featuring a nether portal.

• 

  Official artwork featuring a nether portal.

• 

  Official artwork featuring a nether portal.

References[]