Nether survival guide

Barrages of ghast fireballs. The groans of zombified pigmen. Seas upon seas of lethal lava. Lots and lots of mushrooms.
The Nether is obviously a dangerous region with the aforementioned threats, but there are a couple of resources that can be obtained from there, including (but not limited to) glowstone, cooked porkchops, and mushrooms.
Whatever your purpose for travelling to the dimension is, you'll need to be prepared (in most cases).

Prerequisites

Firstly (and this is very, VERY important), store your valuables away.
You may end up dying in the Nether sometimes and we don't want you to lose your hard earned items.
With that in mind:

• An iron sword
• A bow and several stacks of arrows
  • If you believe in "more dakka = better outcomes", then bring 9+ stacks of arrows
• Food (unless you can defeat pigmen without taking much damage)
• Armor isn't needed, but if you really want it, use leather &/or iron variants
• Torches or flint and steel for lighting (Though for the latter, take care to not light yourself!)
• A few stacks of blocks ( cobblestone preferred)
• Skills in combat and navigation
• Optionally, playing some fitting and awesome music in the background

And you'll need a Nether portal to enter the dimension itself.

General tips

• Stay vigilant, and when you're crossing steep cliffs, hold the crouch button (Shift by default) till you reach the other side.
• Use bows to take down Ghasts from afar instead of reflecting their fireballs; client-server lag makes any attempt at reflecting fireballs difficult.
• Feel free to excavate into the landscape to reach other parts of the landscape.
• Cobblestone bunkers are recommended if you're planning to hunt down zombified pigmen.
• If you're extracting glowstone above lava, then place cobblestone across the width and length of the glowstone node you're extracting, and make walls by extending the borders vertically to not let any dust fall into lava.
  • Remember to crouch while doing this.

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If you're a staff member, you can either:

• Play fair, switch off god-mode and not fly (boring).
• Obliterate the legions of Hell with your staff powers (more fun fer fer).

The choice is yours.