Going to the Nether dimension is one of the crucial steps in finishing the gameplay in your own vanilla Minecraft world. It is where you can get blaze powders that you will need to craft Eyes of Ender.
Blaze powder are crafted using blaze rods, which are dropped by Blazes when you kill them. Nether fortresses house at least 1 blaze spawner among other mobs such as wither skeletons.
However, the main problem is that a lot of players can easily get lost in the nether dimension due to the different nether biomes and other structures such as a bastion remnant.
What Do Nether Fortresses Look Like?
A Nether Fortress structure is a distinct city-like generated structure found in the Nether dimension. Nether fortresses boast their distinct nether bricks that have a dark red-maroon color. These nether bricks can also be used to craft a nether brick fence, which are also found in some areas of the nether fortress structure.
Nether fortresses are also the place where you can find nether warts. A nether wart is the red fungus found growing on soul sand near staircases inside a nether fortress. A nether wart is used to brew awkward potions which are the base potion used to brew powerful potions that give buffs, debuffs, healing or instant damage to yourself, mobs, or other players.
Where Do Nether Fortresses Spawn?
Nether Fortresses tend to spawn randomly in the Nether in the different biomes available. However, the strategy is to find the group of chunks that has a Nether Fortress.
Most of the time, each group of chunks is generated with either of the two structures, a bastion remnant or a Nether Fortress.
Every group of chunks or collectively known as a region in the Nether is an area of 432 x 432 blocks (Java Edition) and 480 x 480 blocks (Bedrock Edition). Each region has a designated area wherein either a fortress or bastion remnants can spawn.
This means that you have to explore at least 85% of a region or 386 x 386 blocks, especially in the Java Edition of Minecraft.
There have been reports, however, that other players have successfully found Nether fortresses just by exploring up and down the Z-axis or North and South directions in the Nether.
Nevertheless, there are quick and easy ways to find a Nether Fortress in Minecraft.
How To Locate A Nether Fortress
There are 3 main methods in locating a Nether Fortress in Minecraft. Two of them involves the use of cheats or third-party software or website. These are as follows:
- Using Commands or Cheats
- Using A Minecraft Seed Analyzer
- Vanilla Organic Exploration
Using Commands
This method revolves around the use of the "locate" command to find the nearest Nether Fortress available within your vicinity in your world.
To find a Nether fortress using commands, follow these steps:
- Make sure that you have cheats activated in your Minecraft world. You can do this in the world settings found in the main menu.
- In the overworld, create a Nether portal near your base.
- Go to the Nether. The "locate" command only works in the specific dimension you are currently in.
- Once the Nether dimension loads, go to a safe area where you will not be attacked by Ghasts or other hostile mobs.
- Open the command or chat console by pressing the "/" key or "T" key
- Type in the following:
Minecraft 1.19+: /locate structure minecraft:fortress
Minecraft 1.11-1.18: /locate fortress
- The command will show you the coordinates of the nearest Nether fortress.
- From there, you can use the coordinates to teleport to the Nether fortress. Click the coordinates or type it in the chat in the following format: /tp ~ ~ ~
- From there, you will be teleported instantly to that specific Nether Fortress.
There will be command prompts that will guide you while typing in any commands. It will tell you if there is a typographical error that you made while typing.
Using A Seed Analyzer
Another method in finding a nether fortress is to use a seed analyzer. It is a tool created by members of the Minecraft community to easily find structures based on a given seed.
Minecraft seeds are like the fingerprints of your world. One popular seed analyzer is Chunkbase's Seed Map where you can enter your world's seed and its map will be shown along with the different structures that can be found near the spawn point.
This method is not really that recommended, since the seed analyzer is a third-party app webpage app that is NOT affiliated with the official Minecraft team.
Nevertheless, here are steps to find a nether fortress using a seed analyzer:
- Get your seed by typing in-game "/seed". Make sure you copy it in a notepad, or somewhere you can easily access for later.
- Go to Chunkbase's webpage.
- Enter the seed in the space provided.
- Select the Nether dimension in the dropdown below it.
- The website should then show the exact map of the Nether dimension for that seed. Each of the Blaze icon shows a nether fortress.
- Click on any Blaze icon you want and copy the coordinates. Then, teleport or travel to it inside the game.
Naturally Exploring The Nether Dimension
Finally, the last method is the most recommended of all. This does NOT involve any cheats, since the point is to explore the nether dimension organically without using the teleport command and such.
The main problem with natural exploration is the danger from endless lava lakes, hostile mobs, and sudden drops in the terrain. That's why it is recommended to have the best armor available with enchantments and fire resistance potions.
Aside from that, you can also bring the render distance high enough so that you can immediately see a Nether fortress even if it is far away.
We hope that this guide helps you find a Nether Fortress in Minecraft without any hassle.
