Introduction:

I'm sure many of you have thought about it: What if we started in the Nether? What if we had to escape to the real world to get resources and survive? Swap the nether with the overworld! Would it be possible? The answer is: yes. Many of us thought about this idea and some of us pulled this through. Some with considerably better results than other but yeah, most of them didn’t really succeed without the usage of either light or heavy mods. Data packs are delicate things. They all depend on the game itself, on the current version of Minecraft. In contrast to mods, either fabric or forge data packs cannot actually add new blocks, items or content to the game because they’re limited to use vanilla assets only… BUT that doesn’t mean a creative mind cannot create something new! Minecraft is HUGE, yes. That is not a question. If you use your mind well enough and the devs AND the game wishes you to succeed you can create new things with data packs for sure. So far this is the only working data pack for 1.18 that I found to be working and does what it is supposed to do. Swap the nether with the overworld safely, thus the player will start in the nether.

Features:

• Nothing much. Really. The nether and overworld dimensions are swapped.
• You need to survive. Starting in the nether without any resources to help you survive is a hard job. VERY hard. I’ve done it countless times so I do know that… Good luck!

Addendum:

There are quite a few data packs for 1.18 that should do the same as this pack. Only that they're outdated and falsely marked to work with 1.18. Most of these wasn't even updated for half a year, deprecated and neglected or was released while 1.18 wasn't released. I've tested the following data packs those do not work at all or are very buggy:

StuleBackery's Start In The Nether Pack
Cosmoguy's Nether Escape - Minigame/challenge (It's different kind of data pack but it does work in fact. Just installation is different.)
paczek654321's nether start
Yoyousss' Minecraft, But The Dimensions Are Switched...