Nether Portal Hub
Four portals, one roof. This is the crossing you build once the Nether stops being a shortcut and starts being infrastructure: a blackstone octagon hung on a basalt spike above the void, with four obsidian frames set in a pinwheel so no two face the same way. Gilded blackstone catches light in three thin bands only — the floor inlay, the frieze and the crown — and shroomlight does the rest. Behind it a fall of magma and glowstone pours the full height of the cliff; in front, a covered bridge walks out of an off-centre gate into nothing. The silhouette is the whole point: a low dark drum, a stepped crown, a burning wall.
What you need
| Block | Count |
|---|---|
| Netherrack | 2298 |
| Basalt | 681 |
| Polished blackstone | 431 |
| Nether bricks | 276 |
| Blackstone | 221 |
| Gilded blackstone | 204 |
| Polished blackstone bricks | 175 |
| Smooth basalt | 128 |
| Magma block | 71 |
| Glowstone | 69 |
| Blackstone slab | 58 |
| Obsidian | 54 |
| Shroomlight | 31 |
| Purpur block | 24 |
| Crying obsidian | 20 |
| Nether wart block | 6 |
Counts are exact for the model above. Mine a little spare — nobody places every block first time.
Building it
Each stage names the layers it covers. Drag the slider on the model to that layer and you are looking at exactly what the stage describes.
1.The cliff and the fall
Everything starts behind the hub. Fill z20-z23 with netherrack for the full 26 blocks of height — that wall is the backdrop the whole silhouette is read against. Break it up with two basalt column clusters, a wide one at x16-x19 and a thin one at x7-x9, so the face has ribs rather than one flat sheet. The fall itself is magma block from y2 to the top at x1-x5, with a glowstone core at x2-x4: it sits clear of the drum on the left so it is never hidden. Add a thin magma trickle at x22, a crying obsidian vein clawing up the middle, a patch of nether wart block and a shroomlight scar at y20-y22 that will glow above the finished roofline. Finish with an overhanging netherrack lip at z19, y24-y25.
2.Spike, plinth and gilded floor
The hub is not on the ground — it hangs. Build downward-tapering basalt: a 4x4 tip at y0-y2, an 8x8 of smooth basalt at y2-y4, then an 11x11 of basalt at y4-y6, centred on x12/z12. Cap it with a 9x9 blackstone course at y7 that is deliberately narrower than the floor above, so the floor throws a shadow gap all the way round. The floor at y8 is the first octagon: fifteen blocks across the middle, chamfered three steps at every corner. Ring it in plain blackstone, fill it in polished blackstone, and run a gilded blackstone cross through the centre with a 3x3 gilded pad where the altar will stand.
3.The octagon drum
Nine courses of wall, y9 to y17. Only four of the runs are straight — front z5 and back z19 spanning x9-x15, left x5 and right x19 spanning z9-z15 — all in polished blackstone bricks. The corners are the shape: three single blackstone columns per corner, stepping (8,6), (7,7), (6,8) at the front left and mirrored at the other three. Raise them as full-height columns and the drum reads as a true octagon rather than a square with the edges knocked off. At y16 wrap the whole boundary, chamfers included, in a single band of gilded blackstone — one thin frieze under the eaves does more than gold anywhere else on the wall.
4.Four portals in a pinwheel
Set the frames just inside the wall, but rotate each one a quarter turn round the room: one along x at z7 to the right of centre, one along z at x17 toward the front, one along x at z17 to the left, one along z at x7 toward the back. Each is a 4x5 obsidian frame with a 2x3 purpur core, y9-y13, and behind each one a gilded blackstone panel set into the wall as its alcove. Two frames get a single crying obsidian corner block so the set never looks stamped out. In the middle, a gilded altar at y9-y10 with a crying obsidian obelisk rising to y14 and a shroomlight cap. Cut the gate off-centre at x9-x12 with a gilded lintel, punch a door in the right wall and hang a slab-railed balcony over the void.
5.Cornice and stepped crown
At y18 lay a solid octagonal disc one ring wider than the drum — polished blackstone inside, blackstone slabs around the rim — so the roof visibly overhangs the wall. Then step in: y19 an octagon thirteen across in nether brick with shroomlight at the four cardinal eaves, y20 eleven across, y21 nine across in polished blackstone, y22 seven across in gilded blackstone with four shroomlight points. Each layer drops two blocks of width and one corner step, which is what makes the crown taper instead of stack. Finish with a 5x5 plinth at y23, a 3x3 gilded block at y24 and a single shroomlight at y25 — the point that shows above the cliff from anywhere in the biome.
6.The covered bridge and gatehouse
The bridge leaves the off-centre gate, not the middle of the wall. Deck it in polished blackstone bricks at y8 across x9-x12, z0-z4, with nether brick parapets to y11 on both sides and a nether brick gable roof at y12-y13 — spanning four blocks it rises exactly one, which is all the pitch a covered walkway needs. Drop a single blackstone pier from the deck at z1 into the void; one support, not four, keeps the bridge looking hung rather than propped. Tuck a shroomlight into each parapet at different z values, then close the far end with a polished blackstone brick pylon, an arched passage cut through it, a gilded crest across the top and two shroomlights burning above the door.
Make it yours
- Build the corner steps before the flat faces. The three chamfer blocks at (8,6), (7,7) and (6,8) define the octagon; the four straight runs are only joining them up, and if you lay the straights first you will misjudge where they stop.
- Keep the gold thin. Gilded blackstone earns its place on the floor inlay, the frieze at y16 and the crown at y22 — spread it across the walls as well and the drum goes brassy and reads flat from distance.
- The portals are a pinwheel, not a cross. Offset each frame a quarter-turn round the room so that walking in you always see one frame face-on and one side-on; perfectly aligned portals make the chamber look like a menu.
- Lava will not hold a vertical sheet, so the fall is magma block with a glowstone core. It reads hotter than real lava at range, never burns the bridge, and you can run it the full 26 blocks without a single flow update.
- Cut the gate at x9-x12 only, leaving three blocks of wall to its right and a gilded alcove panel behind them. An off-centre door does more for the front elevation than any amount of extra trim.
