Episode 1 opens on a mountaintop with "GopherCraft SMP" across the sky and a title card reading "Episode 1, Nether Hub." Basket has already streamed from this world once, so this is the first edited episode on the whitelisted server that started with the 1.7 release.
Mount BasketMC
In a third person view, Basket stands on the stone brick walls of Mount BasketMC. A big tower is going up here, "and maybe some other towers coming off the sides." The spot is an extreme hills plus biome with a big valley below, where Basket "might actually build a town or city." There is also an end portal under the ground nearby, and Basket plans a tower over it once there are enough eyes of ender.
Furnaces run on lava buckets now that the nether portal is up, so no more coal goes into smelting. There is a zombie spawner and an enchanting room, and the working pick in Basket's inventory is a Diamond Pickaxe with Fortune III, Efficiency IV and Unbreaking III. Basket grabs a stack of smooth stone, the building block for the hub, and goes through the portal.
Digging out the hub
The nether hub is a big square room with a 3 by 3 doorway for each player. There is room for 25, and Basket guesses the server has about 12 people. One corner is already taken: according to Basket, Steel_Douglas has connected a tunnel there, built out over a lava lake.
Basket clears the netherrack with a diamond pick, faster than the iron ones from before, and lays a floor of half slabs so monsters cannot spawn on it. Then a pocket of lava opens in the ceiling. "That wasn't planned, by the way." Basket has to aim down past the slabs, climb to the source and block it off before the room is safe again.
Arches out of stairs
The walls get curved corners made of stone brick stairs, with pillars to hold up the ceiling. Basket is not sure about the first try ("it looks almost like some sort of like Cobra or something") and thinks about switching to netherrack or quartz. The fix is more points. Basket sets out to turn two into four, "it turns out it's actually three," and one stair simply will not sit in its corner. "I would like it to be in the corner please."
Chat gets busy while the ceiling goes up: Max_Writer and pikerize leave and rejoin, and SaintToad types "thx." Then pikerize stops by with a second opinion (an on-screen note reads "Pikerize not Pinkerize"). Basket calls pikerize "a pretty good builder on the server," and pikerize agrees the design looks good. Later, Steel_Douglas joins the game.
The finished room
After a trip home for more smooth stone, the hub is done. The portals all lead to the same spot in spawn. Jack o'lanterns under the slabs were supposed to light the room but gave no light. Ladders run up and down. At the top a ghast floats in the open Nether, and Basket fires off some of the few arrows left. "I still have to set up a good source of arrows."
At the bottom sits a supply room with spare blocks, so anyone can patch damage if a ghast fireball gets through a door. The ladder also gives everyone a way down to the Nether floor.
Lava pillars
One last update before the end: the pillars are now lava behind iron bars. Basket says Max_Writer "will be excited" and that the setup is ghast proof. The ladder doorway moved too: people arriving from spawn used to appear partly inside it and take a couple of hearts of damage.
The episode ends with Basket walking between the portals and lava pillars in the finished hub. The end card plays to the last frame.