How to prevent Minecraft nether portals from spawning zombie piglins

A zombified piglin spawned from a Minecraft Nether portal (Image via Minecraft)

The Nether is one of Minecraft’s most iconic features. The Nether was the game’s first added dimension and is a literal representation of the underworld, with lava lakes and strange demon-like creatures included. However, the dimension changed in the 1.16 Nether update.

The Overworld and Nether are totally separate dimensions, requiring players to make a portal in a very specific way to move between them. While this border between dimensions remains steadfast most of the time, there are occasions when it fails, and zombified piglins are able to enter the Overworld through the player’s Nether portal.

Here's how to stop zombie piglins from infiltrating the Overworld via Nether portals.

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How to stop zombie piglins from popping out of Minecraft’s Nether portals

How to stop zombie piglins from spawning from portals

An unlit Nether Portal (Image via Minecraft)

While there is no way to keep these zombified piglins from spawning from an active Minecraft Nether portal, the trick to stop spawning can be found within these spawning conditions. The Nether portal needs to be lit to spawn zombified piglins. This means that players can break their portal to avoid having zombified piglins spawn from a portal while it is not in use.

The most basic way for players to do this is to always carry flint and steel and some blocks or a bucket of water with them. This will allow players to place a block in the portal frame or temporarily place water to cause the portal to break, and the flint and steel will allow players to relight the portal when they need to use it.

Minecraft players can also set up dispensers connected to different levers or buttons, one with a water source and one with flint and steel. These will let players automatically break and relight the portals using redstone systems rather than carrying the items needed in their inventory at all times.

Unfortunately for players looking to keep strange mobs out of their base, there is no easy way to keep zombified piglins from spawning from lit Nether portals, as they will spawn regardless of the light level.

This is doubly true for Java Edition players, as the zombified piglins spawn directly within the portal itself, meaning that players cannot place any blocks, transparent or otherwise, to stop them from spawning.

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Understanding how the portal works and why zombie piglins spawn from portals

It should come as no surprise to players that the Nether is filled with zombified piglins. Like players can move back and forth between the dimensions using the portal, so can these piglins. While the player is in the Nether, the portal is fully rendered and any entity that walks into it will be transported to the Overworld.

While the player is in the Overworld, the Nether is not loaded, meaning no entities can exist to move through the portal. In an attempt to replicate this feeling of random beings wandering into the portal, zombified piglins have a chance to spawn on the bottom frame of a portal on the Overworld side if any of the portal blocks above the frame receives a block tick.

In Java Edition, the zombified piglins will spawn within the portal frame. However, for Bedrock Edition, the piglins will instead spawn in blocks adjacent to the frame. Any zombified piglins spawned in this way have a 15-second portal cooldown to prevent them from instantly being teleported back to the Nether.

Zombified piglins will spawn in this way twice as often on normal difficulty and three times as often on hard difficulty. These are the only mobs that can be spawned from Nether portals in this way.