Okay, so let me preface this by saying I'm still pretty much a noob. I've mastered brewing and enchanting, but I'm an absolute amateur at redstone and building in general. When it comes to the Nether, is see it as an absolute gauntlet. In my eyes, the Ender Dragon is a walk in the park in comparison. I always play on hard mode, so that might have something to do with it, but I think most in this subreddit do as well, so I digress.

Just had a great trip to the Nether. Went in at level 8 or so with the intention of collecting as much Nether Quartz as possible for the "Mayor's Office" I'm trying to build in my streaming community world. Ended up stumbling upon a Nether Fortess and conquered it, taking home two sets of diamond horse armor, a set of gold horse armor, ten diamonds, a half stack or so of iron, a Wither Skeleton Skull, three stacks of Nether Brick (gonna need it for another structure I'll be building for the community soon), a couple Ghast Tears, and enough Nether Quartz for three stacks of quartz blocks. The cherry on top is that I managed to make it back to my portal at a flat level 40, giving me some wiggle room to try for some rare enchantments (Silk Touch comes to mind, I want to harvest the Blaze Spawner I found in the Fortress).

No real point to this post, I guess. Just wanted to share a tale of my conquest. Anybody else had extremely satisfying Nether trips that went way better than expected?