The Netherway was Liberty Minecraft's privately built and operated transit network, a system of minecart rail lines running through the Nether dimension that connected the server's major towns, industrial districts, and points of interest. Designed and constructed by Haksndot, with its central hub at Origo Station, the Netherway was the backbone of New World transportation infrastructure and one of the server's most ambitious construction projects.

Why the Netherway Was Needed

The Netherway was a product of the New World's deliberate removal of teleportation. In the Old World (December 2015 through early 2019), players had access to CreativeGates -- a system of player-built portals that provided instant teleportation between any two linked locations. A player could step into a portal at Spawn and emerge at a distant settlement in an instant. Dozens of these portals dotted the Old World, funded by millions of dollars of player investment.

When the New World launched on August 31, 2018, NullCase removed CreativeGates entirely. There would be no teleportation of any kind -- no warps, no player portals, no admin shortcuts. Players could only travel using vanilla Minecraft methods: walking, boats, horses, minecarts, elytra gliders, and nether portals. This was a philosophical choice. NullCase wanted physical distance to be meaningful, believing that instant teleportation undermined the economic significance of geography.

This decision created an enormous demand for efficient transportation infrastructure. Without portals, a player who wanted to travel from Spawn to a distant settlement faced a long and sometimes dangerous overland journey. The Netherway was Haksndot's answer to that problem.

How Nether Transit Works

In Minecraft, the Nether dimension operates at a 1:8 distance ratio -- every block traveled in the Nether corresponds to eight blocks in the Overworld. This makes the Nether invaluable for long-distance travel. By building rail lines underground in the Nether and connecting them to portals that exit into the Overworld, a player can travel distances in minutes that would otherwise take far longer on foot.

The Netherway exploited this mechanic to create something resembling a subway system for the entire server. Players would enter a portal near their location, arrive at Origo Station, board a minecart, and ride rail lines to stations near their destination, where another portal would return them to the Overworld.

Origo Station

Origo Station was the Netherway's central hub, positioned at the geographic center of Liberty Minecraft's Nether. It served as the junction where all major rail lines converged and where travelers transferred between routes.

The planning for Origo Station began months before the New World launched. Starting in June 2018, Haksndot mapped out a precise set of coordinates where portals needed to be placed, produced detailed item lists, developed sourcing plans for building materials, and tested the design in a live environment with competing players. When the New World went live on August 31, 2018, Haksndot and Spfoia began work immediately, mining hundreds of diamonds and stacks of obsidian. Origo Station was under construction within hours of launch.

Portal placement in Minecraft is a precise science. Each portal's coordinates determine where it connects in the Overworld, and unintended connections can occur when portals are placed too close together. This was particularly challenging near Spawn, where dozens of incoming connections already existed. When Haksndot later expanded the network to add more access points to New Stockholm, multiple portal outages disrupted travel to West Spawn, affecting access to Nullagers and Puncher's Logging Camp. Detours through New Stockholm's portals were necessary while new coordinates were calculated to prevent interference.

The Rack Exchange

Building the Netherway required enormous quantities of Nether Brick, and Haksndot devised an ingenious supply chain to produce it. The Rack Exchange was a purchasing operation where Haksndot bought Netherrack -- the abundant red stone that makes up most of the Nether -- from other players. Netherrack is generated as a byproduct whenever players dig tunnels or carve out portal rooms, and most simply discarded it. Haksndot offered to buy what others threw away.

The purchased Netherrack was smelted into Nether Bricks, and Haksndot paid additional workers to craft these into Nether Brick Blocks, his building material of choice for the Netherway's infrastructure. Six months after opening, the Rack Exchange had been redesigned to process roughly five times its original capacity and was operated by hired players. This supply chain sustained a steady flow of more than 3,500 Nether Bricks, turning the waste product of other players' mining into the raw material for public infrastructure.

Rail Lines and Destinations

The Netherway's rail lines radiated outward from Origo Station in multiple directions, serving a growing list of destinations:

• Scar City and Spawn -- accessible directly from Origo Station's exit portal
• Raiders Guild -- providing End Portal access via a direct line from Origo
• Ventura -- K9us' private city, reached via a track near the South Line, also home to the Submart supermarket
• Diamond Exchange -- the server's currency conversion facility
• Logging Camp and New Stockholm -- connecting the server's most successful private town
• Wither Farm -- accessible via a track near the South Line
• Emerald Clan's Industrial District -- reached via the North Line to Emerald Station
• Witch Farm -- following the Birch Line north and east of Origo
• TARP-approved Desert -- for sand extraction, via the East Line
• Unownable Area -- also on the East Line

Each destination had its own station, and some stations grew into commercial hubs in their own right.

Branch Stations

As the network expanded, secondary stations extended its reach beyond the main lines. Niflheim Station, located on the North Line near Emerald Station, served Minarchu's city of Valmur. It offered connections to Transhumanistan and had capacity for two additional connections. After the Minecraft 1.16 Nether Update introduced new biomes, Minarchu transformed part of Valmur Station into a walking gallery showcasing samples of the new Warped and Crimson Forests, and sold Piglin Barter goods to visitors arriving by rail.

The station names reflected Liberty Minecraft's cultural character. "Origo" (Latin for "origin") anchored the system at the world's center. "Niflheim" drew on Norse mythology, fitting for a northern station serving a Scandinavian-themed settlement.

Community Investment

The Netherway was privately owned and operated, but it functioned as a public good. There was no fare to ride the rails. The system was funded through Haksndot's own resources and supplemented by voluntary contributions from the community.

One notable donation came from Aewheros, owner of the Grand Bazaar, who contributed a lodestone to Origo Station. The lodestone -- a device for rerouting compasses -- was exceptionally valuable. Crafting one required a Netherite ingot, which traded at over $90,000 after weeks of market competition. But this particular lodestone was rarer still: it had been found naturally rather than crafted, possibly the only one in Liberty Minecraft. Most of the Nether had been generated under an earlier version of Minecraft, before lodestones existed in the game. Once terrain is generated, new block types do not appear retroactively.

Infrastructure as Private Enterprise

The Netherway illustrated one of Liberty Minecraft's recurring themes: that private individuals, motivated by their own goals, would construct infrastructure that benefited everyone. Haksndot did not build the Netherway because he was asked to or because a central authority decreed it. He built it because a well-connected transit network made his own activities more efficient and because the construction itself was a challenge worth pursuing.

The system's growth was organic. New lines were added as new settlements emerged. Stations were upgraded as traffic warranted. The Rack Exchange turned the negative externality of mining waste into a productive input. And the whole operation ran without taxes, subsidies, or central planning -- just one player with obsidian, nether brick, and a vision for connecting a finite world.

The Netherway also stood as a testament to the New World's design philosophy. By removing instant teleportation, NullCase created the conditions for infrastructure to emerge organically. In the Old World, CreativeGates made physical transit unnecessary -- why ride a minecart when you could step through a portal? In the New World, the absence of that convenience gave rise to something arguably more impressive: a privately funded, privately operated transit system that connected an entire civilization.