Block of the Week: Crying Obsidian

Dying in Minecraft is pretty bad, but dying in the Nether is worse. Not only do you have to trek all the way back from your home base in the Overworld, but you also run the risk of your kit getting burnt up in fire or lava. 

We can’t do much about the latter, but in the Nether update we’re trying to make the former a little less frustrating by adding a way to set your spawn point in the Nether. And it requires our block of the week – crying obsidian.

Crying obsidian can be acquired from a ruined portal – an ancient structure, found in both the Nether and the Overworld, that once allowed transport between the two, but has succumbed to the ravages of time. We added these structures to give new players, who might not know about the Nether, a hint that there was somewhere else to visit. Java Developer Brandon Pearce explains:

If you’re a Minecraft super-fan, then you might recognise what Brandon’s talking about. Crying obsidian was added to Minecraft’s texture library by Jeb in Beta version 1.3. The idea was that it would be a way of setting a respawn point, but then we added beds instead, and crying obsidian was removed again in Beta version 1.5.

As well as acquiring crying obsidian from portals, you can also barter with piglins and find it in chests in bastion remnants. But the developers played with other ideas too:

So next time you’re gallivanting through the Overworld, keep an eye out for ancient portals – and if you find one then be sure to harvest its crying obsidian. Otherwise it won’t be the obsidian that’s crying the next time you die in the Nether. It’ll be you.