Minecraft is a game with so many moving parts that you will want to explore many of the different structures you can make in your world. For those looking to reach different stories of their buildings quickly, there are multiple ways you can make an elevator to travel quickly up and down.
This guide focuses on a set of elevators that use water to push you upwards and downwards. No worries, you will not drown inside as the method we are using will create air bubbles for you as you ride up and down. No one wants to continually run up and down staircases all day long, so here is how to make some easy water elevators in your Minecraft seed.
First, you will need at least one Iron Bucket you can fill with water, your choice of blocks to build with, one block of Soul Sand, one Magma Block, and two Wooden Signs of any kind. Iron Buckets can be made with three Iron Bars each. When you craft them, gather some water source blocks from an ocean or river. The Soul Sand and Magma Cube can be found in the Nether in plenty of areas, but be sure to come equipped with armor or potions as the Nether is quite dangerous. As for the building blocks, we prefer using Glass Blocks to make it look a little cooler, but as long as you have a lot of any block to make a wall, it does not matter what you use.
To start things off, start building up a column with your building blocks. You want to surround a single block with only an open space going up. In the middle of your column, dig out the floor level one block down and place your Soul Sand.
Create a two-block tall walkway onto the Soul Sand, and place two Wooden Signs on the side. These will block the water from flowing out of the elevator while allowing you to walk through them. Go to the top of your elevator and place water into the open space to have it flow all the way down to the Soul Sand. Ensure that every single space within the elevator has a water source block, or this will not work. You will know you have done it right if you see the water moving upwards with bubbles in it.
Now step inside and the water will rush you to the top, and as stated at the beginning of the guide, you will not drown because of the bubbles flowing alongside you.
Now that you can go up, it is time to make another column to go down. Do the same steps that you did before, but instead of Soul Sand at the bottom, put in the Magma Block. If you did it right, you will see bubbles flowing down towards the Magma.
Be careful though, while you stand on the Magma Block in Survival, you will take a little damage. When you go down the elevator, be sure to walk out and regain your health. Also, be sure not to get yourself trapped on the block as you cannot swim up against the current flowing down. If you would rather not have a Magma Block at the bottom, you are fine to put any other block, but doing so will remove the fast flow downwards, and you will not have the bubbles to give you air.
