A closer look
Mining obsidian takes a painstakingly long fourteen seconds per block, which is roughly thirteen seconds too long for someone trying to beat a sandbox game in under ten minutes. Instead of wasting time digging for diamonds to craft a high-tier pickaxe, Minecraft speedrunners utilize a deeply ingrained crafting ritual known as 'portal casting.' By placing a single bucket of water next to a naturally occurring lava lake, they exploit the game's liquid collision physics to mold the lava into an upright, functioning Nether portal block by block, entirely bypassing the game's intended technological progression tree.
