Game Theory - Is Minecraft Netherite From SPACE?

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Welcome back to our series about the secret lore of Minecraft. Today we are unlocking the history of Netherite and the Piglins. What is their connection? Where did Netherite come from? That and more in today's episode!

Netherite, the uber strong material that makes diamond look like cobblestone. A material so powerful that it's hiding in the depths of the scariest part of Minecraft's world, the nether. It's so rare that it feels like you can only find it in your dreams. Well, it's not like any of us are going to be doing much sleep tonight, but why is it so hard to find? What is Netherite? And where does it come from? Trust me, this is no simple origin tale, friends. It takes us from the depths of the nether to the reaches of outer space, and ultimately to the secret origin. of Minecraft's long-lost lore.

Winternet, welcome to game theory, the show that's doing the hard work of piecing together Minecraft's lore because clearly Mojang ain't going to do it for us. We really want people to try to figure these things out by themselves, keeping the sense of mystery. Well, if the Minecraft lore is supposed to be a mystery, then consider me your persistent detective. Across all this discussion of Nether and the wider Minecraft lore,

we haven't talked about one of the most important materials that you find down there, Netherite. Although Netherite is one of Minecraft's newest materials, only coming out in June of 2020, despite it being so new, from a lore standpoint, Netherite is one of the Minecraft world's oldest mysteries. Since that update buried deep within the Nether, you can chance upon ancient debris, emphasis on the word ancient, which you can then smelt to form Netherite scraps. For those, combined with four golden ingots, gets you a Netherite ingot, which you can then use to upgrade your diamond armor into even more powerful gear. All of this then raises the obvious question, what is Netherite?

Clearly it's supposed to be a fictional substance, but when does that stop us before? So what in real life is harder than a diamond? Well, nothing. There isn't really anything on earth that compares. The scale that real world scientists use to measure hardness, the Mo's hardness scale, was calibrated to be a 1 to 10 measurement, with 10 being the hardest.

And who set that level to 10 and is also the only one of that category? You guessed it, diamonds. So if nothing in the world is harder than diamond, what then is Netherite that makes it harder than diamond? Well, what about something that isn't from this world? In the middle of the Arizona Desert, there's a massive meteor crater that's over 1.1 kilometers or 0.7 miles in diameter. And it goes down to a depth of 170 meters or 560 feet. I actually got a chance to visit it myself when Stephanie and I moved across the country last year.

And trust me, the numbers do not demonstrate how big this thing is. It is massive. As far as scientists can tell, this crater is formed about 50,000 years ago when an asteroid fell from orbit and struck the earth. And boy, did it leave a mark. Not only that, but upon striking the earth, the meteorite actually shattered into tons of little pieces, but a little might be a bit of a stretch. Here's me and Ollie standing next to the largest fragment ever found. As you can see, it's not so little. Regardless, these fragments went flying, and so scientists have spent decades hunting them down and excavating these meteorite fragments. In 1967, though, they discovered something that was truly out of this world,

Blond's Dalyte, a substance that is, in fact, harder than diamond. Despite its outer space origins, Lanzdaliate is actually extremely similar to diamond from a chemical perspective. A diamond is just a lump of carbon that's been subjected to a lot of heat and pressure, such that the atoms bond together to form a crystalline cubic lattice structure. Lons Daliate also starts off as a lump of carbon, but is subjected to even more intense heat and pressure, causing its atoms to bond together differently. Instead of forming a cubic lattice, it forms a hexagonal lattice, which apparently is even stronger than the cubic lattice of diamond.

Theoretically, a piece of Lonsdaliate with a perfect hexagonal lattice would be up to 58% harder than diamond. The big asterisk here, though, is that the Lonsdaliate fragments that we've recovered so far have just a lot of impurities, and as a result, only measure around 7 to 8 on the Mo's hardness scale. But in its pure form, Lonsdaliate is basically diamond plus. They're both essentially the same material, carbon, just subjected to different levels of heat and pressure. And the fact that it's so similar to an actual diamond makes it a fascinating parallel to Netherite. Because remember, Netherite gear isn't just something. that you can create from scratch.

Instead of putting together a couple of ingots on top of a stick, you need to start from the base of a diamond sword, and then add a Netherite ingot. Netherite gear is just an upgraded form of diamond gear. Not only that, but the Lanz Dalaiiite recovered from that 50,000-year-old meteor, is all in the form of scattered fragments, which, I suppose one could describe as ancient debris, just like it is in Minecraft.

So, what? Am I saying that Netherite is the remains of ancient meteorites that fell from space? Well, as much as I'm tempted to make it, this episode about Minecraft's ancient aliens, the nether is a closed ecosystem with a ceiling, which means it's completely cut off from outer space, so that seems pretty unlikely. Plus, the truth about Lon's Dalaiite is even though we've found it in meteorites, it's not strictly an alien substance. Remember, it started off as regular carbon. Scientists in fact believe that while it was floating in space, the carbon was just simple graphite, no different from the graphite that you can find in your pencil.

Well, okay, not exactly the same. The tip of your pencil is only 65% graphite. 30% clay and 5% wax and other resins, but still, basically the same idea. Anyway, thanks to the meteorite size, it was big enough to survive the heat and pressure of entering our atmosphere, and in turn created the conditions necessary to create Lansdailyites. Now, if only there were somewhere in Minecraft that was super hot and pressurized. Hmm. Oh, wait, there is a reason. It's called Netherite, after all.

Places like the Overworld and the End simply don't have the environmental conditions necessary to create this stuff. Not only that, but Netherite, in item form, literally floates. on lava. Seems like a pretty useful property for any civilization making its home down in the Nether. So was Netherite made by this ancient race of builders that I keep harping on about? I doubt it. We believe the ancient builders to have come to the Nether centuries ago. They built the Nether fortresses that we find, storing their loot in their chests. They farmed Netherwort to feed their pigs and they did weird experiments to revive the souls of their fallen comrades. But through it all, Netherite and ancient debris are nowhere to be found. You never just see it lying around a fortress or used

to fortify any defenses. It's not found in any chest. It could be that Mojang just never updated the Nether Fortresses, but they never have been afraid to change old elements to include new ones. For example, drowned, now don't drop gold, but copper, which feels like a pretty major change. So it must be a purposeful decision to not include those elements in the Nether Fortress, meaning that the ancient builders aren't the ones that we're looking for. However, in a surprising twist, Mojang did actually hint at some of the lore implications when the Nether update happened back in 2020. Take a look at this. Quote, "'Piglins mined it all out.

Now the only way to obtain it is by salvaging Netherite scrap from ancient debris. The piglin can mine blocks. This is not a mechanic that we ever see in the game. Piglins can hunt, they can barter, they can even dance, but we never see them mine, which means this isn't a game mechanic, but lore. Hmm, sweet, juicy lore. If they're capable of mining, as well as the other things that we just mentioned, And what else could they do?

How about starting a civilization? Think about it, there isn't just one type of piglin. Much like villagers and illagers, there are a couple of variations of piglins, namely the piglin brute. They hunt in teams, they celebrate together in victory, plus they're able to barter with us for resources. If this isn't a society, well then, I don't know what you're defining a society as. But it doesn't stop there. Piglins are found all over the nether, but there's one very particular place where they're found congregating. Bastion remnants, which if the name doesn't give it away, aren't entirely

one piece, their remnants of their former selves. Clearly in the lore of the game, piglins have been able to form societies, build civilizations, and defend against intruders. Who then were the intruders? Given the fact that piglins are immediately hostile to you the player, I would suspect that they're at war against the ancient builders, our ancestors. This would first of all explain the ruined state of the bastions, but would also explain what all the natural netherite was mined for in the first place. If they're under attack, netherite would provide them the perfect defense. The ancient builders

were using diamond gear, so why not counter with a fortress made of Netherite parts? It's fire resistant, it's perfect for being built into the landscape of the nether, and it's super strong. However, like most natural resources, it will eventually begin to run out. Their defense is weakened, and although netherite is stronger than diamond, it's not indestructible. So with no netherite left to replace the broken parts, the bastions fall and are left in ruin. The piglins seem to have won the war. I mean, look who's still kicking around the nether in the present day, But they lost the most valuable resource that they had in the process.

As centuries past, those bastions that fell became buried underground, much like the ancient cities that exist in our world. But with Netherite's fire resistance, any broken scraps that were left in the bastions would survive the lava flows and ground shifts, so it would never really decompose, leaving us with the ancient debris buried deep underground that we know today. Something else I always thought was weird about the bastions

is that you can find Netherite and ancient debris in the chests, but not Netherite tools or armor. With this in mind, it does kind of make sense. There are no diamonds in the nether. So they had no means to make netherite gear, but they had plenty of gold, so they could make ingots and blocks in order to fortify their bastions.

It would also explain the piglins' affinity for gold. What do we use to create a netherite ingot? Four scraps and four gold ingots. Knowing that they have a limited amount of pure netherite, the piglins have resorted to making a netherite alloy of sorts, using one of the other natural resources that they have down in the nether, gold, which is why they're willing to give you all matter of items

for even a single nugget. They're trying to collect whatever scraps they can to rebuild their civilization after the ancient builders destroyed it. And their hatred still stands today. Why else would they be immediately hostile to you? You're an invasive species, one whose kind has already been down here before

and brought ruin to their thriving society. Piglins get especially mad when you try and take a look in the bastion chests. Now you're trying to steal the limited resources that they have left to rebuild what they once were. They've even trained piglin brutes to not be blinded by gold. just remove that intruder at all costs. In the end, much like we find ourselves trying to piece together clues that we find throughout Minecraft to construct a history of this world, the biglins themselves might be in the same position, piecing together remnants of their past in order to reconstruct their history.

But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching!