The End

The End is another special dimension in Minecraft. You cannot get there at first, but Endermen help you reach it eventually.

Endermen and Eyes of Ender

Endermen are rare monsters, but you find them here and there throughout the Overworld. Large, dark areas that are at least three blocks high have a chance to spawn Endermen at any time.

Fight these enemies by attacking their feet. This prevents them from teleporting. Don’t use ranged attacks, and don’t look them in the eyes, because that makes them aggressive before you’re ready to fight.

Kill enough Endermen, and you start to accrue Ender Pearls. These items are useful for instant teleportation. Throw them at your target, and bam!—you’re there. This causes damage to your character, but it’s still fun.

That said, you’re best off saving most of your Ender Pearls; they’re crafted into Eyes of Ender. These items help you find Strongholds and then activate Portals located only within those Strongholds.

Craft more than 12 Eyes of Ender when you want to reach the End. Use the Eyes to locate the nearest Stronghold, attack that base, and look for the room with the End Portal. This is where Silverfish spawn. Track them back to that room, destroy their Monster Spawner, and then fill in the 12 slots around the End Portal with your Eyes of Ender. Doing so opens the way—you can now get to the End.

Note that you can’t get back, so don’t step through the Portal until you stash your best items at home.

Going to the End

End Portals stay activated once you’ve found them and used your Eyes of Ender. That’s good news, because your trip to the End won’t always go well. We recommend not taking all of your good equipment for your first trip there. You should get your bearings, make sure your spawn location is “safe,” and try to build a starting base with your first life there.

The game’s final boss is here; it’s called the Ender Dragon. This thing is so powerful that it breaks most blocks by flying through them. Obsidian and the End Stone that dominate this dimension are both exceptions. Bring enough Obsidian to quickly create a small room beside the Portal where you spawn (not on it). Form this room and drop an Ender Chest there, if you have one. This lets you harvest End Stone and transport it back to the Overworld even before you’re able to kill the Ender Dragon. We’ll discuss strategies for fighting this boss in a moment.

Dragon’s Breath

Dragon’s Breath is a shimmering material left behind after the Ender Dragon breathes at you. Look on the ground for it! If you see any, rush over and use Glass Bottles to harvest as much of the Dragon’s Breath as you can. It’s a primary ingredient for making Lingering Potions (these turn your Splash Potions into area-of-effect items that last over time).

The Outer Islands

There are outer islands in the End. You can’t get to these islands by flying or throwing Ender Pearls. The distance to reach them is way too far for that. Instead, you reach the islands by taking an End Gateway. These spawn near the central Portal every time you kill an Ender Dragon. This is one of the reasons it’s sometimes worth respawning the boss so that you can fight it again. Given enough time and effort, you can cause up to 20 of these Gateways to appear, each leading to different areas on the periphery of the End.

To go through a Gateway, throw an Ender Pearl into it. There isn’t enough room for you to get in between the blocks on your own, and this method is a quick way to go through.

End Cities

The outer islands can be explored after you’ve defeated the Ender Dragon, when it’s relatively safe. A prominent feature on the islands is the End City. Look for these structures and explore them carefully when you discover one of them. They’re filled with Chests of loot, which makes them quite valuable. However, they’re guarded. Expect to encounter Shulkers, disguised as Purpur blocks.

Chorus Plants

The outer islands have Chorus Plants and Chorus Flowers. These are like Cacti in the regular Overworld. Destroy the bottom of the plant to bring down the entire formation. The Chorus Flowers can be replanted onto End Stone to make them grow.

After you’ve gathered End Stone and Chorus Flowers, you can make your own farms of these plant formations without too much trouble. Manual harvest of them is easy via chopping down the bottom block of the tree, but more advanced farming methods work better. Water pools can be made to help drag the falling plants to the center of an area for easy harvesting. You can put a Hopper and Chest below or gather on your own.

Chorus Fruit restores four points of hunger when eaten and has a chance to teleport the user a short distance away.

Smelting Chorus Fruit turns it into Popped Chorus Fruit. Though now inedible, these items are used to create Purpur blocks and End Rods.

End Ships and Elytra

Some End Cities have a pier that spawns an End Ship beside it. These too have great loot, including a few things you aren’t going to see often on their own. End Ships have more Shulkers to contend with, but they’re also filled with Potions, a Brewing Stand, an Item Frame of Elytra, and a Dragon Head. This is must-have material, so hunt aggressively each time you encounter an End City.

Elytra are Chest items that grant gliding powers to your character. When you’re falling, tap the Jump button to start a glide. Your Elytra lose durability when in use, but these items can be repaired by merging two together or using Leather and an Anvil to reforge them (this being a much less-costly method in the long run).

Gliding is really, really fun. There’s something magical about leaping off of mountains and towers and soaring over the land. Keep your view slightly above the horizon to glide for as long as possible, or dive down to gain speed (but at the cost of your total glide time and distance covered).

If you try to raise your angle of flight too high, you can effectively stall out. This is dangerous, because you can take falling damage while using the Elytra if you hit the ground while going too fast. Be careful!

Start off with gentle flights to test the mechanics of the wings, and then get bolder as you become comfortable with the way everything works.

Fighting Ender Dragons

Once you’re comfortable going to the End and getting your bearings, start arming yourself for the final engagement. You want a Bow with the best Power enchantment you can get. A few stacks of Arrows won’t hurt, though you likely won’t need all of them unless things go very badly.

A good Sword helps, too. The Ender Dragon is too mobile to kill with a Sword, but Endermen also inhabit the End, and they’re an additional threat. Swords should have either Fire Aspect or the highest possible damage output.

Diamond armor with Protection IV is your smartest bet for safety. Your helm can be either a Pumpkin or a Diamond Helm. The latter is better for survival. Pumpkins are better for avoiding extra fights with Endermen, because they don’t attack when you look at them. This is a matter of personal preference.

Potions of Healing and Regeneration are both useful during the battle. Golden Apples or Enchanted Golden Apples are great, too.

Ender Pearls are helpful as well. They let you teleport from smaller islands over to the main island, possibly saving you if you’re knocked over the edge during the boss fight.

Keep a Bucket of Water handy so that you can cushion your fall if you’re knocked high into the air. Deploy the water directly under your character right before you land. This saves you from massive damage when things go badly!

Slaying the Dragon

A series of Ender Crystals keeps the Ender Dragon alive and healthy. Each crystal is placed on top of an Obsidian pillar, like the ones on which you arrive. Destroying these is a critical part of the boss fight. If you don’t break the crystals, the Ender Dragon can stay at or near full health indefinitely, despite your best efforts.

Watch for the healing beams that emanate from the Ender Crystals. Their energy flows toward the Dragon. Trace it back to figure out where the crystals are, and use your Bow to shoot at them until they explode.

A couple of the crystals are usually protected by Iron Bars. They can’t be shot as easily as the others. You have to either pull the Dragon away from them so that it doesn’t get much healing, or you have to quickly build your way up to the protected crystals so that they can be destroyed directly. It’s challenging, but may need to be done if the crystals are well-placed and providing substantial healing.

When you’re done destroying as many crystals as you can, turn the Bow on him! Head shots are the way to go if you want to win this fight anytime soon; they inflict quadruple damage. The best way to achieve these hits is to wait for the Ender Dragon to come after your character. Nail it in the head with a fully charged attack. Get another shot in immediately afterward, and then watch the Dragon fly away. Chase it and wait for the boss to turn and come after you again. Repeat your attacks and wait for the kill!

A risky trick is to dig a small hole, place a Bed into it when the Dragon is ready to charge you, and set the Bed off just before the Dragon attacks. You need to have a safe spot to jump when this happens, so the technique requires practice, setup time, and precision. It isn’t a technique for first-time Dragon killers, but it shaves tons of time off of the battle once you know how to do it reliably.

Another tactic is to craft Ender Crystals (with Glass, Eyes of Ender, and Ghast Tears). Place these is spots where the Dragon is likely to charge, and then detonate the crystals as the Dragon passes. They do very high damage.

The Aftermath

The Ender Dragon drops so much experience that even a character with no experience will gain dozens of levels almost immediately. It’s better to bring a few friends to spread around the experience, or bring in materials for enchanting work so you can enchant multiple items and still max out your experience.

The Ender Dragon also drops a Dragon Egg. This doesn’t have a use (yet). However, you can collect it. Clicking on the Dragon Egg causes it to teleport. Do this one time to get the Egg away from the End Portal, which appears to take you home. You don’t want the Egg to fall into the End Portal and break.

After the Dragon Egg teleports, track it down. It sometimes appears below the ground. Tunnel until you find it, and then get two blocks beneath it. Destroy the End Stone there, place a Torch, and then destroy the block above to drop the Dragon Egg onto the Torch. This turns the Egg into a resource and allows you to collect it.

You’ve now completed the End. Come back here to farm Endermen or End Stone, and use your new End Portal to return home at any time.

If you craft Ender Crystals and place one on each side of the Exit Portal, you can respawn the Ender Dragon. This is done to practice killing it, to harvest Dragon’s Breath (in Glass Bottles), or for pure fun.