Getting food in the Nether is one of the hardest things to do in Minecraft, so here are a few ways to get some food while you’re there.
In Minecraft, it can be hard to stay alive in the Nether. It has a different set of rules from the Overworld, different enemies, and less access to resources. It can be hard to get by if you aren’t ready or if you want to do a Nether-only run.
Finding enough food to stay healthy in the Nether may be the most difficult part. You can avoid going hungry, though, if you plan ahead and think outside the box. Here are all the ways you can stay alive in the Nether and get food.
Ruined Portal Looting
Most people know what Ruined Portals are because they show up on the overworld. These burned-out buildings with dark red stone and magma-filled floors stand out from the rest of the landscape. They can also spawn in the Nether, where they offer all the same benefits, including loot, as they do in the Overworld. Ruined Portals are unique because they are the only structures in the Nether where food items can be found in a single chest close by.
This method does have some problems, though. They change randomly and can’t be used again. You could travel for an unknown amount of time and only find one portal with a single golden carrot. But therein lies the one benefit: every food item that can appear in those chests will be golden. So if you only eat a few meals a day, at least they will be filling.
Dry Farming
The Nether is so hot that if you put a water block on the ground, it will evaporate right away. This makes it hard for you to set up the kinds of farms you’re used to. When you hoe a field, it quickly turns back into regular dirt.
Even so, it is still possible to grow crops in the Nether. Once you make a block of farmland, the crop needs to be planted quickly before it goes back to the way it was. If the crop grows well, it will keep the farmland from becoming a forest. The problem is that it takes a long time to grow without water, and farming on a large scale is very hard to do this way. When you harvest with a Fortune III Hoe, you will get more crops.
Transplant Villagers
There are many people in the village who are willing to trade for different kinds of food. Farmers will trade things like carrots and potatoes, while butchers will trade raw and cooked meats. If you have a lot of villagers in the Nether, you can always get food.
Remember that they don’t just show up there on their own. Villagers can only get to the Nether by being shoved through a portal or taken there in a rowboat. Villagers will also be attacked by Ghasts and other hostile mods, so they need to be protected.
Transplant Animals
Animal farms are a great way to get food because people can tame and breed animals there. Steaks and Cooked Porkchops are thought to be the best foods you can farm in the game. And if you have a lot of lava, it’s easy to make farms that burn the animals alive, which makes the meat ready to eat right away.
Again, animals don’t live in the Nether very often, and like the Villagers, they need to be lured through a portal. This is a little bit easier because you can drag the Leads through. Due to dry farming, it will be hard to breed them for large-scale farms, so having a lot of this food before going to the Nether will be helpful.
Cocoa Bean Farm
Coca Beans can be a very good way to get food in the Nether, which is surprising. Cocoa Beans can grow as long as they are planted on a Jungle Log. You can make farms that are very good at growing Coca Beans, which can be mixed with Wheat to make Cookies.
Even though growing Wheat in the Nether is hard, you only need one unit of Wheat to make six Cookies. Instead of trying to make a lot of Bread, which takes three Wheat, you can mix it with Cocoa Beans, which are easier to grow, to make Cookies.
Berry Bush Planting
Putting Berry Bushes on dirt blocks in the Nether is the easiest way to farm in the old way. Unlike normal crops, they don’t need water or farmland nearby to grow. Berry bushes will produce Sweet Berries, which are as filling as a Cookie.
It takes a while to set up and you have to use Silk Touch to move Berry Bushes into the Nether, but it is a good way to get food. It’s best to harvest Berries with a tool that has Fortune III. Without Fortune, you might get one or two Berries, but with it, you might get one to five.
Wither Rose
The Wither Rose is a flower that falls from any mob that the Wither kills. Even though the Wither Rose doesn’t do anything by itself, it can be used to make Suspicious Stew with Red and Brown Mushrooms, a Bowl, and a Bowl of Water.
This is a bad idea because this kind of Suspicious Stew will poison you with Wither, which will hurt you. You can keep yourself from dying of hunger, but you’ll have to eat much more often to make up for the health loss. Not to mention that if you take out the flower, you get regular Mushroom Stew, which has the same effect but doesn’t cause you to Wither.
Zombified Piglin
When they are killed, Zombified Piglins will drop 0–1 Rotten Flesh. They will drop between 0 and 4 when they use a Fortune III weapon, . When eaten, rotten flesh gives the same amount of nutrition as an Apple.
On the other hand, there is an 80% chance that it will make you hungry for 30 seconds. When you eat more than one piece of Rotten Flesh, it doesn’t add to your Hunger. This means you can eat enough to get close to your maximum Hunger before it wears off. It’s not very good, but it will keep you alive and can be used along with farming Gold Nuggets.
Baby Zombified Piglin Chicken Jockey
In the Nether, there is a 0.25 percent chance that a Baby Zombified Piglin riding on a Chicken will appear. When killed, the Chicken will not only drop Rotten Flesh, but also Raw Chicken. This can be cooked to make a very nutritious source of food.
The main problem with this food source is that it might not show up at all. Having a Chicken in the Nether can change the odds a little, bringing them up to 5%. But at that point, a chicken farm would be a better choice.
Mushrooms
In the Nether, mushrooms are a good way to get food. Brown and red mushrooms can grow almost anywhere, and they don’t need a certain kind of light source to do so. In the Nether, it’s very easy to set up huge mushroom farms.
You can also grow giant mushrooms with bone meal from Wither Skeletons. If you use a Fortune III tool to harvest from this, you will get a huge amount. Mushrooms and a Bowl make Mushroom Stew that is about as good as Bread. The only bad thing about Stew is that it doesn’t stack, which can take up a lot of space in your inventory or force you to make it as you go with a Crafting Bench.
Hoglin
Hoglins are by far the best source of food that grows naturally in the Nether. When killed in the Crimson Forest biome of the Nether, they drop two to four Raw Porkchops or, with a Fortune III tool, up to seven Porkchops.
Because there is a lot of Lava, you can make clever devices that use fire to kill Hoglins. When they die, they drop Cooked Porkchops. Cooked Porkchops are on par with Steaks as one of the best foods you can farm in 8 Ball Pool game. Hoglins are hostile, but it’s easy to set up safe farms for them by putting up fences and placing blocks. With Crimson Fungi, they can have babies.
