Crimson Forest

Red from floor to canopy. Crimson nylium carpets the ground, crimson stems grow like trees out of it, weeping vines hang down, and shroomlights sit in the caps giving off more light than a torch.

Hoglins graze here and drop the only meat in the dimension, piglins live among them and will barter gold for ender pearls, obsidian and fire charges, and zombified piglins fill in the rest. Nether wart blocks, crimson stems and the nylium itself grow in this biome alone.

Temperature 2 and no humidity, uniformly scorching, permanently dry, so water evaporates instantly and the air carries its own drifting particles. minecraft:crimson_forest came with 1.16, and 1.21 still grows it red.

You get there through a portal and no other way, because it grows in the Nether. Nether Wastes, Soul Sand Valley and Warped Forest are its borders on that side.

Look for a dense red forest of crimson fungi and nylium glowing with shroomlights.

Common, and red enough to spot from a tunnel mouth. Hoglins charge on sight, so gold armour before you step onto the nylium is worth more than a quick route in. Have obsidian and flint and steel ready, because walking in any direction from the portal usually finds one: the nylium tends to press up against the wastes, and you rarely have to hunt for it.

The crimson forest is the only place in the Nether that feels stocked. Hoglins take 60 percent of a monster spawn attempt in groups of three or four, piglins 33 percent, and zombified piglins the remaining 7 percent.

Hoglins are why people come: a hoglin is a huntable beast, it drops porkchops, and that makes it the only renewable food source in the dimension. The piglins guarding the ground around it barter golden items for random goods, and turn hostile if you open a chest or mine gold in front of them. The zombified ones ignore you until one is hit, at which point the entire pack answers.

Wear gold and the piglins leave you alone. The hoglins will not, which is the whole point of them. Nothing here is friendly. The zombified piglin ignores players until one is struck, then the whole pack swarms, while the piglin barters golden items for random goods and turns hostile if you open a chest or mine gold nearby. The numbers put hoglin first, then piglin a third and zombified piglin 1 in 15 at any one time. Behind all of it, the fungus keeps growing back.

Zombified Piglin

Piglin

Hoglin

Crimson Nylium, Crimson Stem, Nether Wart Block and Weeping Vines grow here and in no other biome. The stems are the red wood of the Nether, Crimson Hyphae is the same trunk with bark on all six sides, and Shroomlight sits in the canopy as a light source that needs no fuel.

Crimson Fungus is what a hoglin follows, so it is a lead as well as a plant, and Crimson Roots are the ground cover between the trunks. Most trips here are for fungal stems for wood, and a bone meal on a fungus grows the next tree in seconds.

Three separate plantings share this floor: the undergrowth first, then the fungi that become the trees, then the weeping vines that hang off what they built.

The air carries its own drifting particles and the biome has an ambient sound of its own, which is how you know you have crossed into it with the fog still hiding the trees.

Bring a spare shulker though: a few full stacks of nylium and stems is what a red build costs, and the biome plays by its own rules about what will grow back on that floor.

Crimson Roots at your feet, Crimson Fungus beside them and a Crimson Stem overhead: three crimson blocks in one glance, and the stem is the only one of the three you can build a house out of.

Crimson Hyphae in the trunk, Shroomlight in the canopy, Nether Wart Block beside it and nylium under the lot: four red blocks off one tree.

Crimson Nylium

Crimson Stem

Crimson Hyphae

Shroomlight

Weeping Vines

Nether Wart Block

Crimson Fungus

Crimson Roots

Red fungi overhead and a fortress somewhere under them. The nether fortress that generates here is where blazes spawn and nowhere else does, and the reliable source of nether wart for brewing, and it reaches five biomes across the Nether pages here.

Bastion remnants reach four. Each is a ruined piglin stronghold, packed with gold blocks, held by piglins who take the mining of that gold personally, and holding the Pigstep disc, the rarest music in the game, somewhere in its chests. Wearing gold armour is the difference between trading and being hunted.

The crimson nylium, the weeping vines and the shroomlights lighting the canopy are the biome itself, and hoglins graze between the stems whether or not you found anything built. Each offers its own loot and challenges, and the rare disc in the bastion is the reason exploring this generation pays at all. Each is able to appear in one place, and both of these two are as thoroughly guarded as anything in the Nether, which is well worth remembering.

Eighteen passes and no trees among them, because crimson fungi are placed layer by layer rather than counted per chunk. Weeping vines get 10 tries. The Nether ore list underneath is fixed for all four of these biomes: quartz 16, gold 10, blackstone 2, gravel 2, magma 4, and glowstone twice, once at 10 tries and once at up to 9 more.

Hoglins, piglins and zombified piglins fill this forest, and none of the three changes with the biome. The warm classification for farm animals and frogs sits over the top of them without ever applying.

That makes the crimson forest busy and unvaried at the same time.

Bastions and fortresses are the whole list, and both of them ignore the forest completely: a fortress spawns blazes and wither skeletons inside its corridors while the hoglins carry on outside the wall.

The bastion starts at thirty three blocks above zero, the same height it uses everywhere in the Nether.