Minecraft PE: went through portal, is my world gone forever?

The Game Room
1

My daughter, age 7(8 soon, actually) was playing Minecraft PE tonight.

She told my wife her world is gone and she was quite distressed about it. Apparently, she put a “portal” down and went though.

I loaded it up after she went to bed and did some googling. Here is the, I think, relevant info. I learned.

  1. She only plays creative mode. She is invincible.

  2. It appears she made the portal herself by making a door frame of obsidian and lighting it. Purple haze fills in the window/door frame.

  3. When you go back through the portal, the “regular” world looks empty and flat. Totally flat, just green grass as far as you can see.

I used the compass to go back to the start point, hoping it would lead me back to her main active area. It just took me to an empty field.

Is her world really gone? Is there no way to get back? Is there no warp back button or option?

If I could get her back to her world, I could use the compass to walk/fly back to her original start point.

What can I do?

2

My daughters (8 and 10) both play Minecraft PE exactly the way yours does (creative/god mode etc). They have no trouble creating portals and traveling back and forward between the Nether and their regular world. I can only think that your daughter’s game has had some kind of glitch, or she’s confused and actually built the portal in an empty world and her normal world is still there in her saved worlds.

If it’s a bug then there’s probably nothing you can do. If it’s just that she’s built the portal in a blank world then you could go through each of her saved worlds and see if any of them are the one she thinks she’s lost. Most recently used worlds are at the top of the list.

3

She only has one world called “Treehouse world” where she built her treehouse. I may have to screenshot some screenshots to upload for folks.

I really don’t think she built all her cool stuff so far away from the original spawn point that you can’t see it from there. The world, from the spawn point, looks totally blank.

4

It doesn’t take long to travel beyond line of sight on Minecraft PE, particularly if she has an older device. Unfortunately I don’t know of any method for finding where she’s been unless she’d been using the map item, which is unlikely.

Did she just make one portal? I think if you make more than one you don’t necessarily come back via the one you went away through.

5

I do not have, nor am I familiar with the PE edition. But:

The Nether and the regular world distances do not correspond one to one. If you plunk down portal “A” in the regular world, which leads to the Nether (we’ll call this portal “B”). If you travel a couple hundred blocks and plunk down a new portal “C”, you won’t go back to a portal in the regular world that same couple hundred blocks from portal “A”.

6

That sure looks like a bug. Do you have some sort of device backup (maybe stored in iTunes) that you can recover from a few days ago?

The other thing to try: Go back to the nether, walk at least a few hundred squares in some direction, then build another portal (4 wide, 5 high “ring” of obsidian blocks, light it with a flint-and-steel), and go through that from the nether side side. That should rebuild the link back to the “main” world (“Overworld,” I think, in game parlance), and far enough away that you should be in a new “segment” for loading purposes. That’ll give the game a “second chance” at reloading the overworld property. Note that you’ll be eight times as far away from the original portal in the overworld as you travelled in the nether one.

ETA: Generally speaking, the PE editions of Minecraft are much buggier and less capable (although they’re catching up) than the desktop versions, so if she has to rebuild, consider doing it on a computer instead of a tablet. There are version of Minecraft for both Mac and PC (and the worlds are interchangeable).

7

We were able to find her stuff today. I walked straight in directions from the spawn point. I walked back and put a sign that said, “Walk North” from her spawn point so she can find her stuff if she gets lost again.

Thanks!

8

Glad it worked out. I’ve lost everything in the game before. I wasn’t a happy camper.

9

Thanks, my daughter was quite happy to see her creations. I did make her realize I knew exactly how she built the portal and that she should not do that again. She agreed.

10

There’s nothing wrong with building a portal though. Just make sure you only build one and that you go back through the one you built.

11

Also, in most variants of the game, building a bed (three horizontal wool over three horizontal wood planks), placing it, and sleeping in it will reset the spawn point to the bed (assuming you actually mean spawn point rather than portal exit). If you’ve got “cheats” (commands) enabled, I think there’s also one that will reset the 0,0 coord of the world to your current location.

12

Yes, this is a point of unclarity in my discussion with my daughter. Anyway, we’re holdling off on portals for now.

Two thoughts:

  1. Does sleeping in a bed reset the spawn point even in creative mode on the pocket edition? It autoupdates, so it should be updated to the most recent version.

  2. Why doesn’t Minecraft have a variety of poles you can put in and a variety of compasses that would point to those points? I thought a red, blue, purple, yellow pole could exist and each could have a corresponding compass. That way, you can set various “compass points” so you can always find certain landmarks you want to find.