Tutorial:Getting to the world border
Getting to the world border is a daunting task. In vanilla Minecraft, the world border is situated 30,000,000 blocks from the world spawn point in each direction. This article explains the numerous methods to help the player get there, such as using the Nether to divide the distance needed to be covered by 8.
Using the Nether
In Minecraft, 1 block in the Nether is equal to traveling 8 overworld blocks. This means that you travel 8x faster in the Nether than in the Overworld, and therefore means that you only need to travel X/Z: 3,749,998. Thus, using the Nether is highly recommended.
Fastest one-way method
These methods are practical due to not having absurdly high wait times or being extremely resource-expensive, but they are all one way tickets, if one wishes to return without repeating all the prep work required, an Ender pearl stasis chamber is a must have to instantly travel back the 3,750,000 block distance.
Nether Roof Elytra (Late game method)
Before starting, we need to collect all the materials. The essentials are:
- An efficient gunpowder farm. It can either be a creeper or a ghast farm to procure vast amounts of gunpowder needed. If you have an existing farm but the yield isn't big, expand it by adding more layers or make a new one from scratch.
- A good sugarcane farm. Create an automatic harvesting type as waiting for a regular plantation to fully grow to then harvest takes too long.
- A trading hall with zombie discounts. Zombie discounts are great, as they can reduce trades to 1 emerald only. The books needed are only Unbreaking III and Mending. The other essential item you must get are XP bottles (to mend your elytra) which you can get from cleric villagers.
- Several elytras. In case your elytra breaks and you want to skip the XP bottle acquisition, then backup elytra can be used.
- Some shulker boxes. Shulker boxes are very helpful to store your backup elytra, your XP bottles, etc.
- Totems of undying in case your elytra breaks mid-air, as you can't break your fall using a water bucket in the Nether.
- Some food that replenish as much hunger as possible (steaks, cooked porkchops or pumpkin pies) to take care of any hunger you might have.
The first step is we need to go to the Nether roof. This is because below the roof there are a lot of disruptions, such as landmasses.
The second phase is fly up high using firework rockets. By flying up super high, you'll soon passively glide and reach the border in 3 days.
When you finally reach X/Z: 3,750,000, make a Nether portal and you will find the world border.
Permanent Infrastructure
The previous method requires a lot of single use consumable materials, elytra maintenance and even glitches and exploits to reach the Nether roof. Reusing the process every time requires a lot of concentration that might falter given how long it takes to do, making repetition unreliable and taxing to the player. If one wishes a more survival friendly, less technical solution, there's only one viable alternative. If one wishes to employ glitches/exploits, one can do the following in the Nether Roof instead of mining a path in the Nether.
Blue Ice Boat Highway
The most simple and fastest transportation method in the nether are Ice Boat highways in the nether. Packed Ice and Blue Ice can be used in the Nether, but given the long distance, Blue Ice is preferred to cut down the time it takes to travel, even if it requires 9x as much Ice to make it.
 Packed Ice |
 Blue Ice
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|---|---|---|
| Speed | 40m/s | 72.73 m/s |
| Time to travel 3,749,998 blocks | 26 hours, 2 minutes, 30 seconds | 14 hours, 19 minutes, 21 seconds |
Time Saved with blue ice = 11 hours, 43 minutes, 9 seconds
Given the huge distance, the highway should be built in a way to use as little ice as possible, so the ice will be spaced one block apart from each other, cutting the Ice needed in half.
The Nether is also dangerous, especially Ghasts launching fireballs, so the tunnel will need to be small enough so they don't spawn inside, and enclosed to prevent ingress of other mobs. The use of slabs on the floor and roof, and buttons on top of the Blue Ice will prevent the rest of the mobs from spawning inside the tunnel. The bottom slabs also make it so the boat only enters contact with the Blue Ice.
This repeating pattern will make a lit up protected tunnel that prevents mobs from spawning inside, and prevents outside mobs from blocking your paths and Ghasts. All slabs are bottom slabs and buttons are placed on the top of the block. The materials can be different as long as the shape is followed. The Wider tunnel can be made 1 block taller, more than that and the 5x5 area that's 4 blocks tall will allow Ghasts to spawn;
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However, this requires 1,874,999 blue ice blocks to construct, equivalent to 29,297 stacks. That much would need 543 Double Chests or 1086 shulker boxes to store them all, or 21 double chests full of shulker boxes full of Blue Ice.
This is a long term commitment to build, but the result is a safe path that can be used at any time with only a boat, and pressing W to go forward.
Impractical methods
These methods are not practical due to their extremely high wait times or cost.
Overworld
As explained previously, the amount one would need to walk in the Overworld would be 8x higher, and any method that works in the nether would instantly become 8x longer to complete and take many more materials.
Walking
Time-wise, the walking (not sprinting) speed is 4.3 blocks per second. Walking for 6 hours per day is equal to 21,600 seconds, giving a travelled distance of 92,880 blocks every day. Walking to the Far Lands with +12,500,000 blocks would take just under 136 days at this pace. The Boundary is almost 3x further out.
A terrestrial journey to the Border through legitimate means, without using a Nether shortcut, has been done by a single player, Figonometry between 2021-22, as of October 2023.[1]
Sprinting
Sprinting to the world border is still a very tedious task, however faster than walking. The average speed you can go is 5.6 blocks per second so it would take around 62 days to go to the world border assuming you go non-stop and you encounter flat terrain for the entirety of your journey.
Soul sand bridge
Soul speed comes in 3 different enchantment values, I, II, and III, with speeds of 7.9, 8.5, and 9.1 blocks per second respectively on soul sand. With these enchantments, it would take around 44, 41, and 38 days respectively. This is remarkably faster than just sprinting.
Automatic flying machine
The fastest flying machine travels at a speed of 4.4 blocks per second. With this speed, it would take around 79 days to reach the world border. No input would be required after the making of the flying machine. See this video for instructions on how to build the machine.
Minecart
The classic minecart railway technique is not too efficient in going to the world border, as you'd need a ton of wood, iron, gold and redstone to acquire the necessary materials, not counting the axes and pickaxes you must consume. This is a fairly expensive process and you'd need to constantly build the railway to go to the world border.
Outdated/Using Glitches/Exploits
TNT Duplication Canons to launch Ender Pearls
Metword made a video about his speedrun to the world border[2]. His technique consists of a redstone TNT duplication machine and 5 elytra, with the TNT serving as his rockets to boost him up. He shows the following materials list (this does not include the stacks of netherrack needed to build the canon);
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What Metword did was collect 5 elytra and trade with his villagers for 10 stacks of XP bottles. While he waited for his villagers to restock, he collected the required materials to construct this machine.
When he was ready to go to the world border, he went to the Nether roof and constructed the machine near a chunk border, set his difficulty to peaceful and put his render distance to the lowest, threw an ender pearl and started the machine. The reason for this is because the machine is constructed near a chunk border and the machine started producing multiple copies of TNT, the TNT gets pushed outside the chunk border and is considered by the game as "frozen". Due to this, the TNT isn't exploding, the same with the ender pearl, as it was outside the chunk border and hit a cobweb which was one of the materials of the machine.
The more TNT produced, the farther you'll get thrown at. Metword always waits for around 10,000 TNT (can be determined using the entity counter) to be produced before he get set off to air. You would need to build around 25 machines and this technique requires constant player checking, as you can die from fall damage and have to restart all over again.
Portal Ender Warp Glitch
When you go to the nether roof and make a portal and right before entering the overworld and throw a pearl and get out of the portal, the game will get confused and multiply your distance by ⅛ if in the Overworld, or by 8 if in the Nether. This is an incredibly powerful glitch that allows you to reach the border in under a minute.
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