Building Blocks: Bastion remnant

The Nether is an unpleasant place at the best of times. Soul sand slowing you down. Lava lakes burning you up. Stray ghast fireballs knocking you off things. But the regular ol’ Nether is, quite honestly, a picnic compared to the structure we’re visiting today. Get your best armor and weaponry together, because you’re about to step inside a baston remnant.

Despite being buried in netherrack, these tall, imposing structures are easy to recognise in the smoky half-light of the Nether. They’re huge – many storeys tall – and made of blackstone and basalt. They’ll also be crawling with piglins. They can be found in almost all Nether biomes, with the sole exception of basalt deltas.  

Bastion remnants began appearing after the release of the Nether Update in June 2020 – the same patch that added piglins, netherite equipment, chains, and target blocks. They come in four different varieties – each with its own structure and loot opportunities: there’s a bridge variant, a variant made up of hoglin stables, one with housing units for piglins, and a treasure room piled high with gold.

Speaking of which, let’s talk loot. Bastion remnants are the only place where you’ll find a few fancy items – gilded blackstone, Netherite upgrade smithing templates, the snout banner pattern and armor trim, and the Pigstep music disc. But that’s not all you’ll be able to take home. You’ll also find plenty of iron, Netherite and gold, crying obsidian, ancient debris, netherite scrap, and a surprising and concerning amount of cooked porkchops.

But don’t expect that you’ll just waltz on in and start opening chests. Those goodies are guarded by piglins, piglin brutes, and sometimes hoglins too – not to mention the other denizens of the Nether that might wander by. Come prepared, don’t take too many risks, and you might juuuust make it back home alive.

Image credit: P L Chadwick // CC BY 2.0

A bastion, in the real world, is a type of fortification – specifically one that sticks out from a defensive wall so that the defenders can fire at people trying to climb up or breach the wall. They’re found all over fortifications dating from the mid 16th to the mid 19th centuries – once gunpowder was in use, but before modern artillery.

Which raises an interesting question – the name “bastion remnant” suggests that the structures found in the Nether might be all that remains of large defensive walls, built in the Nether by an unknown people. Were they trying to keep out the piglins, and did they fail? Or did the piglins build it to keep something else out?

Only time and patient archaeology will likely reveal the truth. Until then, feel free to loot these ancient structures of their goodies. Just let us know if you find any interesting hints as to their history, yeah?