Ruined Portals+

Ruined Portals+ is a Vanilla+ expansion for Minecraft that transforms Ruined Portals into meaningful encounters, dangerous Nether-themed challenges, and rewarding discoveries — while keeping the experience feeling completely at home in vanilla Minecraft.

🔥 Ruined Portals, Reimagined

Ruined Portals now generate less frequently, with approximately 1,200 blocks of spacing, and are restricted to solid land where an encounter can actually take place.

When you discover one, you won't simply find a broken portal and a chest.

Each portal can be guarded by a group of 8–15 hostile Nether mobs, including Zombified Piglins and Hoglins. They aggressively defend the area and can chase players beyond the main combat zone, but will return to the portal once the player gets too far away.

The encounter is designed to make discovering a Ruined Portal feel like finding something worth investigating — without turning every portal into an enormous or repetitive dungeon.

⚔️ Defeat the Guardians

The guardians fight as a group around the Ruined Portal.

The main combat area extends roughly 25 blocks around the portal, while enemies can pursue players up to 35 blocks away before returning to the portal.

The enemies remain vanilla Minecraft mobs, with their normal behavior and drops wherever possible. Zombified Piglins encountered as guardians are hostile enemies and do not function as normal bartering Piglins.

Defeating the guardians can lead you to the treasure hidden nearby.

🗺️ Discover the Buried Treasure

The Ruined Portal's original chest is replaced by a buried treasure chest hidden approximately 200–300 blocks from the portal.

The guardians can provide a vanilla-style treasure map pointing toward the buried chest associated with that specific Ruined Portal.

The buried chest contains the loot that the original Ruined Portal chest would normally provide, while also having a 50% chance to contain one of two unique rewards:

• 👁️ Piglin Eye

• 🪣 Melted Netherrack Bucket

The special reward is never guaranteed — sometimes you'll find one, sometimes neither.

👁️ Piglin Eye

The Piglin Eye is a unique reusable item inspired by the Eye of Ender, but with a Piglin-themed appearance.

It can only be used in the Nether.

When used, the eye rises into the air and travels toward the nearest normal Piglin capable of bartering. It does not target Zombified Piglins, Hoglins, or the hostile guardians from Ruined Portals.

After a few seconds, it falls back down as a normal item and can be picked up and used again.

The Piglin Eye is never consumed, meaning every use performs a fresh search.

🪣 Melted Netherrack Bucket

The Melted Netherrack Bucket is a special Obsidian Bucket obtained from buried treasure.

It can only interact with lava.

Use it on lava to create a temporary block of Melted Netherrack, allowing you to create a small temporary foothold across dangerous lava.

Each bucket has 32 uses and displays a normal Minecraft-style durability bar.

The Melted Netherrack block remains for exactly 10 seconds. During the final 2 seconds, it begins to shake before disappearing and restoring the lava beneath it.

The block cannot be broken, moved, pushed, or otherwise altered during its lifetime.

Once all 32 uses are exhausted, the bucket becomes an empty Obsidian Bucket rather than being destroyed.

Crafting

The Melted Netherrack Bucket can be created by surrounding an Obsidian Bucket with Lava with Netherrack.

It cannot be crafted directly from normal materials without first obtaining the special lava-filled Obsidian Bucket.

🌀 Rebuild the Portal

You can rebuild the Ruined Portal whenever you choose.

Crying Obsidian can be replaced with normal Obsidian, and once the frame is completed, the portal works normally.

But rebuilding one of these portals has an additional reward.

✨ A Reward Bound to the Portal

The first time any player enters a specific Ruined Portal after rebuilding it, that player receives a unique enchantment reward.

The reward is permanently tied to that original Ruined Portal.

Only the first player receives it, and the reward cannot be triggered again by breaking, rebuilding, or reactivating the portal.

The system only works with portals that originated from naturally generated Ruined Portals — building another Nether portal elsewhere will not trigger the reward.

When the reward is granted, the mod checks the player's currently equipped items, randomly selects one eligible item, and randomly applies a compatible enchantment and level.

There are no menus or choices involved — the reward is completely random, making every discovered portal slightly different.

🌋 Vanilla+ by Design

Ruined Portals+ is built around a simple idea:

Make Ruined Portals more interesting without making Minecraft feel less like Minecraft.

The mod uses vanilla mobs, vanilla-style loot, familiar mechanics, and restrained new features instead of introducing complicated progression systems, currencies, skill trees, quests, or unnecessary menus.

Every new mechanic is designed to complement Minecraft's existing Nether and exploration gameplay.

Explore. Fight. Follow the map. Find the treasure. Rebuild the portal. And see what your portal gives you.