Nether Travel Planner
Eight to one horizontally. Portal overhead is fixed, so it decides short trips and vanishes on long ones.
BFCBrilliance · bfcbrilliance.com/tools/minecraft-travel-time-calculator
The arithmetic
- Nether distance
- Overworld distance ÷ 8
- ⚠ X and Z only
- Y maps 1:1 between dimensions
- Surface time
- distance ÷ speed
- Nether time
- distance ÷ 8 ÷ speed + overhead
- Break-even
- overhead ÷ (1/speed − 1/(8 x speed))
- Sprinting
- about 5.6 blocks/s — measure yours
- ⚠ Nether time is a FLOOR
- lava and ravines force detours
- ⚠ Repeated routes
- amortise the build - break-even drops
This journey
- From
- To
- Overworld distance
- NETHER DISTANCE
- Overworld speed
- Nether speed
- Portal overhead
- SURFACE TIME
- NETHER TIME
- TIME SAVED
- BREAK-EVEN DISTANCE
Measure your own speeds once
| How you travel | Seconds | Blocks covered | Blocks/s |
|---|---|---|---|
Before digging a tunnel
- Distance measured from coordinates, not estimated
- Speeds measured rather than looked up
- Portal overhead includes tunnelling to somewhere safe
- Break-even compared against the actual distance
- Route checked for lava seas and ravines - the line is rarely straight
- Repeated use considered - it moves the break-even a long way down
- Both portals built at matching coordinates to control linking
- Y coordinate remembered as 1:1, not divided
- Speeds re-measured if you switch to ice boat or elytra
Short trips still belong on the surface
Portal overhead is fixed and the eightfold saving is proportional, so below the break-even distance walking genuinely wins. Digging a tunnel for a 300-block trip usually costs more time than it ever returns - unless you will use it every day, in which case the build amortises and the sum changes completely.
Y does not scale
Only X and Z are divided by eight. Height maps one to one between dimensions, which is why a portal at Y=12 in the Nether wants Y=12 in the Overworld. Expecting height to scale is a common way to arrive somewhere unexpected.