Minecraft wiki entry for Speedrun, associated text: One of your first decisions may be whether to mine or not. The fastest speedruns use lava on or near the surface, a bucket and water to build a nether portal, but this means you will be traveling through the nether and killing several blaze with minimal equipment. You may want to gather some basic items, then dig down to the lava level or below to find more iron, diamonds, gold, etc. Mining will definitely increase your time, but it can also increase your survivability, up to and at the ender dragon. Anecdotal evidence shows that finding a nether fortress isn't affected by the Y level of the overworld portal.