Nether Portal Calculator

Minecraft is fun! (Duh!) When you delve into the nether you might consider using it for "fast travel" in the overworld. The scale of the nether makes each step ~8 steps in the overworld. One trick though: You might need to pair your gates. That's what this calculator is for.

Wrong Return Gate?

Once, I built a portal from my home at XYZ and stepped through to appear in someone else's gate room. Ok fine, but when I stepped back through, it was in a "room" that had been blown up by a creeper, it was dark, and I didn't recognize anything. So, while panicking, I scrambled around trying to avoid phantoms and angry mob babies, then fell into a chasm while trying to find my gate again! And died.

What I learned to do was find my XYZ coordinates while building my gate and carry cobblestone, 10 obsidian, and flint with me to build a return gate (if needed). When I step through to the nether, if the gate is new, I build a quick enclosure around it to avoid getting attacked or burned up by lava flows or a fall. Then I check my XYZ to see if I need to explore to different XYZ to build my own return portal.

I tend to do this even in worlds where I'm alone, so I can find my gates when I'm mapping overworld places to my nether-highway ( ...er, hmm).

Suggested steps:

1. Collect 20 obsidian blocks and create a flint and steel using the recipe.
2. At the spot you want your gate/return portal hit F3 and find your XYZ coordinates. (See the F3+I Parser tooltip for possible short-cut.)
3. Plug the XYZ into the calculator. (I keep a browser open to alt-tab between the game.)
   (Plug the coordinates in one at a time -or- as a comma separated list like: 100,66,300. If you only provide two coordinates (ex. 100,300) they'll be used as X and Z.)
4. Use the first 10 obsidian to build a nether portal (economical version), activate it, step through (cautiously) and hold your breath...
5. Fortify the gate: Quickly and carefully enclose the gate (cobblestone is great for this). Look up: Lava falls descending onto the gate? Look down: Is there a lava ocean below you? Left and right: Mobs? The nether is dangerous. Lava is fast and sometimes a surprise! Various mobs are hostile. A Ghast fireball can wreck your day.
6. Check XYZ, and if needed, explore to the coordinates from the calculator.
7. Build your return portal at the coordinates, step through and with any luck you'll be back at the portal you built initially.

Thanks for your visit, I hope this helps you. If you find any errors or have suggestions, please let me know.