Nether Structures
Structures found in the Nether dimension, including fortresses and bastion remnants.
Massive blackstone structure
Dark nether brick bridge network
Incomplete nether portal frame
Which Nether structure you need
The Nether has three structures, and each one is worth the trip for a different reason.
Nether Fortress
Blaze rods only come from blazes, and blazes only spawn in fortresses. You need the rods for a brewing stand and, with ender pearls, for the Eyes of Ender that lead you to the End. Fortresses also grow nether wart in the gardens at the top of their stairways, and their wither skeletons drop the rare skulls that summon the Wither.
Bastion Remnant
The only place to find the Netherite Upgrade smithing template, which turns diamond gear into netherite. Bastions come in four layouts: bridge, hoglin stables, housing units and the treasure room. Piglins turn on you when you open a chest or break gold near them, and piglin brutes attack even if you wear gold.
Ruined Portal
A broken portal frame with a chest beside it. The loot can include obsidian and a flint and steel, which is exactly what you want when your own portal has been blown up and you need a way home.
Finding them
With commands on, /locate structure minecraft:fortress points you to the nearest fortress. The same /locate command takes minecraft:bastion_remnant and minecraft:ruined_portal_nether.
Without commands it helps to know how the first two are placed. Since 1.16 the Nether is split into regions of 432 by 432 blocks, and each region gets either a fortress or a bastion remnant, with the fortress picked 40% of the time. Bastions never generate in basalt deltas; when one would have landed there, a fortress generates instead. So once you have found a bastion, the next fortress is in a neighboring region. The old advice to travel east or west because fortresses run in north-south strips dates from before 1.16.
Staying alive
Fire resistance takes care of blaze fireballs and most lava accidents. Wither skeletons inflict Wither, which keeps draining health after the hit, and the open fortress bridges turn every knockback into a risk. Wear at least one piece of gold armor around piglins and remember that brutes ignore it. And never sleep here: beds explode in the Nether.
What spawns in a fortress
Inside a fortress the Nether's usual monsters make way for a list of its own. Each time Java Edition spawns a monster there, it picks one of these five by weight and tries to place a group of that kind:
| Mob | Chance per pick | Group size |
|---|---|---|
| Blaze | 10 in 28 | 2 to 3 |
| Wither skeleton | 8 in 28 | 5 |
| Zombified piglin | 5 in 28 | 4 |
| Magma cube | 3 in 28 | 4 |
| Skeleton | 2 in 28 | 5 |
Blazes come up in 10 of every 28 picks and wither skeletons in 8. Plain skeletons are the rarest, at 2 in 28.
The list covers the fortress's own rooms, bridges and corridors. Java also uses it for any spot inside the outer bounds of the fortress where the block underneath is plain nether bricks, the open air between the bridges included. That is the rule wither skeleton farms are built on. Red, cracked and chiseled nether bricks don't count, and neither do slabs or stairs.