Nether Portal

Nether Portal is the block that fills a lit obsidian frame and carries a player between the Overworld and the Nether.

Obtaining

The block has no item form and cannot be mined or crafted. It appears when a frame is lit, and when the game builds a portal for an arriving player.

Building a portal

The frame is obsidian around an upright space 2 blocks wide and 3 tall. Ten blocks of obsidian are enough, because the corners are not needed. The frame must run along one horizontal axis. Fire with obsidian beside it along both axes lights nothing.

Setting fire on the obsidian floor inside the frame fills it with portal blocks. Flint and Steel places the fire.

No other size works. A portal block survives only in a column exactly 3 tall closed by obsidian above and below, paired side by side with one other such column. Breaking any part of the frame removes the whole portal.

Usage

Travelling

Standing in a portal for 80 ticks — 4 seconds — moves the player. Stepping out drains that progress four times faster than it builds, emptying in 20 ticks. After a trip the player must stay clear of a portal for 10 ticks before another will take them. The view warps and a purple overlay fades in as the progress builds.

The player's x and z are divided by 8 on the way into the Nether and multiplied by 8 on the way out. The y is unchanged.

Only players travel. A mob or a dropped item standing in a portal is not moved, and neither is a player riding a boat or minecart.

On a server, setting allow-nether to false stops portals working.

Arriving

At the far end the game looks for a portal block within 128 blocks in x and z at any height, and puts the player at the closest one.

Finding none, it builds one. It looks within 16 blocks for solid ground under a clear space 3 wide, 4 long and 4 tall, then for a space 1 wide, and builds at the closest spot found. Failing both, it carves out a platform at a height clamped to between y=70 and y=118. A portal the game builds has the full frame, corners included.

Behaviour

Players and mobs walk through the block.

No tool breaks the block, and it drops nothing. An explosion destroys it, and the rest of the portal with it.

The block gives off purple particles and plays an ambient sound at random.

Data values

• Block ID: 90
• Translation key: tile.portal

The game names the block Portal.