The Fastest Ways to Get Around in Survival Minecraft

It’s no secret that Minecraft worlds are huge – virtually infinite, in fact – and it can be tedious and frustrating travelling long distances to get to places.

That’s why we’ve come up with a guide to tell you about some of the best methods of transportation in Minecraft which you might not even be aware of. Without further ado, let’s jump straight into it.

Dolphin’s Grace

When it comes to oceans in Minecraft, you may think that the fastest way to travel across them is by using a boat, but it actually isn’t. Though using a boat is faster than normal swimming, if you can find a dolphin to swim alongside you and give you the Dolphin’s Grace status buff, you’ll be able to glide through the water faster than if you were in a boat. You won’t always find dolphins swimming around, so this method is situational, but if you do find one then you’re in luck.

Additionally, if you manage to snag a dolphin to give you Dolphin’s Grace while wearing boots with the Depth Strider enchantment on them, you’ll be able to travel even faster! Depending on the enchantment level of the boots you’re wearing, you may be able to travel twice, thrice, or even four times as fast as normal, which is crazy! The Dolphin’s Grace + Depth Strider III combo is insane to the point where you’ll be going so fast you may even struggle to control your character. It’s awesome.

Nether Travel

If you need to travel across a super long distance in the overworld, it makes sense to consider nether travel, which is a method of using portals to enter and leave the nether to cut down on travel time in the overworld. This works because for every block you travel in the nether, you travel 8 blocks in the overworld, essentially cutting down your travel time to one-eighth of what it would be normally.

Ice Roads

In Minecraft, boats travel really fast on water, but even faster on ice, which is a mechanic that the ice road takes advantage of. By building a long road made entirely of ice with barriers on either side to keep you on it, you can get in a boat and travel at speeds of up to around 70 blocks per second, which is incredibly fast. The only downside to this method is that you need to actually build the road first. If there’s a trip you need to make regularly though in your survival world, then it may very well pay off to build an ice road.

It’s also worth noting that the slipperier the ice is, the faster you’ll travel, so for the best results, you'll want to use blue ice. Blue ice is rare though and can be expensive to buy from wandering traders, so there’s no harm in using regular or packed ice if you’re on a budget.

Horses

Ultimately, nothing beats the horse when it comes to travelling over terrain that hasn’t had a special road or track built on it. These animals are fast, reliable, and offer plenty of manoeuvrability, so it’s useful to have one if you’re planning on travelling relatively short distances across rough land. They can even jump quite high, which is great for crossing gaps or climbing steeper terrain.

One thing to note about horses though is that every horse is different, meaning some are slow and don’t jump very high, whilst others are incredibly quick and agile. Be sure to have a look around for a good horse in your minecraft survival server world and don’t just stick with the first one you come across in the wild as there will likely be better ones nearby.

Ender Pearls

Whenever you throw an ender pearl somewhere, you teleport to the place where it lands, making it an incredibly useful tool for travelling across long distances. One of the biggest downsides though is that you take 5 points of damage every time you teleport, so you can’t use them too many times in a row otherwise you’ll lose all your hearts and die. Fortunately, though, there’s a way around this.

If you equip armour that’s been enchanted with Protection or Feather Falling, you can negate the damage you take every time you use an ender pearl. This means that you can teleport over and over again as much as you like. Pretty awesome, right?

One last thing about ender pearls is that they can be quite rare to find early on in the game, so getting enough of them to travel efficiently isn't really possible until you reach the End and set up an enderman farm.

Elytra

Perhaps the most exciting form of transportation on Minecraft 1.17 survival servers is using elytra wings, which let you fly around the world to your heart’s desire so long as you don’t run out of fireworks. That’s right, fireworks can be used to propel yourself forwards while wearing the elytra, and more powerful fireworks have a stronger effect, so be sure to craft the bigger ones if you want to reach top speeds.

Unfortunately, elytra wings aren’t available until the very end of the game after you beat the ender dragon and find an end city with a end ship in it. It’s a shame really because it would be cool to be able to fly around earlier in the game, but nonetheless, it's a great reward bestowed upon only the bravest and most daring Minecraft adventurers – or those that have access to creative mode.

Wrapping up

Well, there you have it, that’s the end of our guide on the best methods for travelling around your survival Minecraft world quickly and efficiently. No single method is perfect for every situation, so we covered a bunch of different ones to give you a range of options to choose from. We hope they help cut some time off those tedious trips we all find ourselves having to make in our survival worlds.

Thanks for reading!