Nether vs Overworld Base

[Ulfengaard]

One thing I've never been very certain of is the purpose of the nether base. I've often cobbled one together (literally), but it always feels 'token': like I don't really know why I'm doing it (which, actually, is the case).

So, I've gotten to steel before, but only just. And I'm working on it again in a fresh world. With that in mind, would someone be willing to enlighten me on the importance of the nether base as well as perhaps provide some of the purposes to which they have put their own nether base. I realize it's a newbish question, but given that the area I live in seems particularly hostile (I don't even want to talk about how many creeper-deaths I've had in the very short time I've been here), I am now giving the nether a fresh look.

Thanks in advance for any comments, and, as always, thanks for a great mod, FC. I keep putting my trust and game experience in your hands, and it keeps paying off over and over. Cheers, man.

[ExpHP]

Truth be told, I'm kind of like you; ever since my first few worlds (back in beta 1.7 & 1.8), I've lost interest in building in the Nether, and just built a railway between portals (and maybe decked out a small area in a stronghold).

However, BTW has added a number of reasons to give building in the Nether a try.

There are some resources that are renewable exclusively in the end:
-Blood Wood & Soul Dust
-Netherwart
-Gold (Pigman Farm)

You get to try your hand at waterless systems. (this is more or less what separates Nether builds from overworld builds)

You can connect remote overworld bases.

etc.

[Ulfengaard]

So, is it more feasible to spend an extended amount of time in the nether in BTW as opposed to vMC?

I am considering making my nether base my 'main' stronghold where I spend most of my time. Apologies for not making that clear in the OP. My true intent just became clear to me.

[Benanov]

In Vanilla, one server I played on, my base was exclusively in the nether. I spent a lot of time using wood tools, cutting trees, harvesting very slow-growing wheat, and farming pigmen for gold while hiding behind fences, and helping other players build the nether network and discovering the fortress nearby. It was fun, but there wasn't too much to do...because no water, no peaceful mobs besides chickens, and at the time melons & pumpkins required farmland for the destination, so that really cut down what I could work with.

In BTW you get more amenities, such as planters and lightblocks, vertical windmills, and some stuff that only works in the nether, such as blood wood. As far as 'main base' - you still don't have water which limits your automation opportunities a bit, but there's a lot more there and you get a richer experience. Cobble still isn't renewable in the nether, but you can recycle your iron & SFS there.

[ExpHP]

So, is it more feasible to spend an extended amount of time in the nether in BTW as opposed to vMC?

I am considering making my nether base my 'main' stronghold where I spend most of my time. Apologies for not making that clear in the OP. My true intent just became clear to me.

That's an interesting thought. I've seen it done in SMP servers where the Nether basically connects different players' bases (so they spend a considerable amount of time decorating their part of the Nether as it is pretty much the "entrance" to their home).

In SSP, though, I really don't think you can make the Nether play such a central role as the overworld. While the new technical challenges could be fun, I think you'd miss the benefits of a mob grinder and an animal farm. Perhaps you should focus more on just making it "habitable"; an extension of your home.

(and personally speaking, I wouldn't be able to put up with the sound of Ghasts for so long.)

Though if you really want to do it, and you have an idea of what you want to do... then don't listen to me, and why are you asking us? :P

[Ulfengaard]

Though if you really want to do it, and you have an idea of what you want to do... then don't listen to me, and why are you asking us? :P

Hehe. Nah. No preconceived notions. Just a wonderment about possibly escaping the creeper horror that is my unlucky spot in the overworld. I think I'll just stick it out up there and fortify, fortify, fortify. Thanks for giving me some ideas, though. Using the nether base as a storage and travel hub might be really helpful considering I am using a large biome world.

[odranoel]

i think maintaining a nether base as your main base might complicate things a lil as you would have to continusly travle to the over world to gather none nether resources. but obviusly its up to you.

however if your main problem is creepers, that can easily be solved by lighting up the surrounding area with torches, thats always the first thing i do what i start a new base, make sure the area around me is safe and lighted up. then over time i slowly expand and keep claiming more and more land. after a while you you have all the area around your base totaly light up and creepers and mobs are no long an issue in your base! :)

and best of all dont forget the ender spectacles, they make find those dark spots a sinch so you can really make sure you have torches covering every inch (block?) of your base.

[abominare]

The major difficulty in maintaining both is actually that you can't keep both loaded at the same time.

Especially if FC follows through with destroying animal farming in the nether suddenly a wide range of necessary products become off limits to you. With your automated farming effectively being turned off while you're in the nether reasons to sit around and chill in the nether become next to nil.

At some level it just becomes "hard mode" as you try to work around all the restrictions. You have no access to real raw materials like coal/iron/diamonds. The only semi useful things are the the obvious access to ludicrous amounts of nether rack which is almost worthless after completing your steel armor weapon set and some potion making drops if you're a true masochist for limited rewards for massive investments.

While a pigman farm can result in some free gold, considering how much you're giving up by letting your overworld farms go inactive you're always better off spending the couple of minutes to find largely useless gold ore if you really want it.

Sadly, even if you could keep both loaded the nether would still be relegated to that place you have to avoid grinding nether rack scream noises making your fun time annoying. Theres simple nothing there of much value.

Luckily its much more sensible to blame mojang for never iterating on such a large world space.

[muhammad_ollie]

Nether bases are great for going AFK, to let your automation work for you.

Planters allow you to build auto farms in the nether for: Trees, Long Grass, Flowers, Cacti, Wheat, Hemp, Reeds, Melons, Pumpkins, Carrots, and Pohtaytoes. A row of jungle logs with a piston on a timer allows auto cocoa farming, making it so anything foodwise but egg, milk, and nonrotted meats can be made in the nether.

Mob Farms can be built to farm Zombie Pigmen, Whither and standard Skeletons, Magma Cubes, Ghasts (with soul urns), and Blazes.

So while you can't farm passive mobs, with a productive pigmen farm, and whatever else you set to automate in your nether base, you can make it a worthwhile afk, with a bit of planning and time invested to build it up. With what you can farm, you can make tons of kibble, lots of food, fill your urns with souls, gather gold, synthesize redstone, gather string and sticks, and then take it all to your overworld base to put into the systems there.


Someone mentioned the gold drops as useless, which to me just means that player doesn't use powered rails or redstone enough/as much as I try to. The synthesis of gold and concentrated hellfire into redstone is super useful when I don't feel like the tedious mining to gather redstone, and I save my fortune 3 Dpicks for Lapis and Diamonds only, so it takes much longer to gather a stack of redstone than popping a couple blocks in a crucible.

[abominare]

gold isn't that hard to find in the over world, especially if you run into some sort of pre generated ravine. I'll generally run into more than enough gold to entertain me for weeks while im searching for the necessary three diamonds to enter the nether.

While rotted flesh is more abundant from pigmen its not something that is of any level of difficulty to acquire beyond a normal mob farm. The simple matter of fact here is that the nether simply doesn't offer much of anything that isn't acquirable in the overworld which is a huge oversight.

Its simply an extra layer of difficulty that is completely optional.

[devak]

The problem with the nether is that it's supposed to be hell, and unfortunately it is in every wrong way. It's empty, commonly dark, filled with (semi) enemies, and it's just largely featureless terrain.


I would love to see Nether biomes. I would love to see more than just endless featureless red. In fact, i once contemplated just moving a load of dirt, grass, and blue whool to the Nether to make my own little overworld bubble...

[tom_savage]

I use it mainly as a place to kill time and to passively grow my wood stockpile, as well as 'souldust?' whatever you get from sawing your bloodwart does to replace ground netherrack in your soul bottlers. Renewable source of souls without mining netherrack? Yes please.

It's a really easy place to setup a lot of your factory places, so while you work on those, you passively gain things like wood that you can't automate well on the overworld.

[EtherealWrath]

I would love to see Nether biomes. I would love to see more than just endless featureless red. In fact, i once contemplated just moving a load of dirt, grass, and blue whool to the Nether to make my own little overworld bubble...

I think nether forts act as a pseudo-biome, blazes/skeletons can only spawn in those areas.

(I sometimes do the same with building my own areas- normally invert the nether and overworld. Can confuse the heck out of people who join my LAN)

[dawnraider]

I xp grind in fortresses until I get a mob farm up and running. It's pretty effective since pigmen run rampant, and you don't get it in short, ten minute bursts like in the overworld. It also produces a nice supply of gold, bones, and blaze rods.

[Kombucha]

I'd read this thread a couple of days ago when you posted it and it's really sparked some thought in me. Now I really want to design a nether base for the fun of create a hybridized Overworld/Nether architecture. I may even go so far as to bring some grass blocks down there also.

[DreamsofFury]

I live in an apartment complex with a bunch of either non-gamers or people in general (gamers included) that don't play minecraft. I usually have one or two over every day to chill and play games or watch movies, some even the non gamers and non minecrafters like seeing the crazy stuff I build. In the past I never cared for the nether and to this day I still don't, but as I have people comeing over wanting to see cool layouts and designs I try to avoid massive noise and clutter from all the mechanical stuff I do so I basically build fancy low output stuff in the over world and I atempted to hide my "mass processing plants" underground a decent distance from the main base itself, it got tedious and annoying, and I discovered the nether, now my hide-away mass production sites are much smaller as anything I can mass produce without NEEDING water as I'm not as good at some things as most of the people here are is now tucked away in the nether.


So I build pretty in the overworld and just clutter the hell out of the nether, problem solved there.

Ironicly someone that actually liked the nether went and bought minecraft today due to seeing what I can do there, this weekend im going over to his place to setup a server on his extra comp for us and some friends to play on :D