The smithing table, end to end

Getting to netherite, in practice

The upgrade itself is the easy part. Everything before it is the work. You need ancient debris, which only generates in the Nether and doesn't show up on cave walls the way other ores do, so you have to go looking for it deliberately rather than stumbling across it while mining.

Most people dig at around Y level 15, tunnelling in straight lines and branching off, because debris is most common in that band. The other approach is bed mining, where you place a bed in the Nether and let the explosion clear terrain for you. It works, it is much faster, and it will kill you the moment you get careless about where you are standing. Wear blast protection if you try it.

Four ancient debris smelt into four netherite scrap, which combine with four gold ingots to make one netherite ingot, and one ingot upgrades one item. A full set of armour plus tools sits behind a lot of mining, so most players upgrade in order of what they actually use rather than doing everything at once. A pickaxe and a chestplate first is the usual advice.

The upgrade keeps everything. Enchantments, existing durability damage, even a custom name all carry across, so there is no reason to hold off enchanting a diamond item while you wait for netherite. Enchant it now and upgrade it later.

One thing worth knowing before you commit: netherite is not a huge statistical jump over diamond. Slightly more durability, a bit more toughness, and knockback resistance. What actually matters day to day is that netherite gear floats in lava instead of burning up, which quietly saves your inventory the first time you fall in.

Armour trims are purely cosmetic

Trims change nothing about how armour performs. No extra protection, no durability, no hidden effect. They exist so your gear looks like yours, and the game is completely honest about that.

Templates come from specific structures and each pattern only drops in its own place, so collecting the full set means visiting bastions, ocean monuments, ancient cities, trail ruins and more. A template can be duplicated using diamonds plus the block type it was found in, and it is worth doing that the moment you get one, because applying a trim consumes the template.

The material in the third slot decides the colour. The same pattern looks completely different in copper versus redstone versus amethyst, so try a few before you settle. Duplicate first, experiment second.