The Ender Dragon is a boss that appears in the game Minecraft.
Appearance[]
The Ender Dragon resembles a typical western dragon, albeit having taken on a blocky form due to the nature of Minecraft. Its body is jet black, with gray spikes and wing-bones. Its eyes and mouth are purple and pink, and glow in the dark.
Habitat[]
The Ender Dragon is located in The End, a black region of space dotted by floating islands made from a greenish stone. There is a central island far from all of the rest that the dragon and player spawn on.
Combat[]
MC DROGA
Ender Dragons typically take one of four actions. They will either circle around, dive-bomb the player or players, strafe while launching purple projectiles that create a damage patch of damaging dragon breath on the ground, or perch above the inactive end portal and spew jets of dragon breath at enemies. The dragon cannot be halted. It will break, or pass through, any block that it contacts. It is immune to status effects.
Additionally, the presence of numerous obsidian pillars around the map poses a problem for would-be dragon slayers, as the crystals atop these pillars connect a potent healing beam to the Ender Dragon as it passes by, making it virtually unkillable until every last crystal has been destroyed. Upon its death, the player will be given a dragon egg as a trophy, after which they will be able to return home or explore the rest of the End.
Tips[]
- The crystals that heal the beast are treated as entities instead of blocks, meaning you can destroy them with arrows or even snowballs. This is also recommended since they explode, although some will have iron cages protecting them that require a player to scale a pillar and manually break the cage.
- While you can get in quite a bit of damage with a sword during its perched phase, your primary weapon of choice will be a bow, so bring plenty of arrows, as the dragon is not easy to hit while in motion
- Enemies known as Enderman are all over the floating island that you fight the dragon on. They are neutral until attacked or looked in the eyes, so bring a water bucket to deter them, as well as a pumpkin to avoid aggroing them at all.
- You are most likely to die from fall damage or falling off the island into the void more than anything else, as the dragon's charge attack can send you flying sky high, and falling off a pillar is usually far enough of a fall to kill players at full health. For this reason, water buckets and feather falling armor is recommended
- Use an empty bottle on the patches of purple dragon breath to collect some for later use in crafting recipes.
- In order to collect the dragon egg, you will need a piston to crush it, as simply attempting to mine it will cause it to teleport.
- If you wish to fight the dragon again, either to farm experience, dragons breath, or simply for the challenge, you can place four ender crystals around the portal to reset the battlefield and re-spawn the dragon
Fan-Theories[]
Due to a lack of lore in Minecraft, there is essentially no backstory as to the origins of the ender dragon, or its unnatural arena.
One prevailing theory is that the Ender Dragon fought by the player was worshipped as a deity by some intelligent race and placed in the central island to keep it alive for eternity. It's quite possible there were more dragons at one point, feeding on the chorus fruit that grew on the various islands in abundance, as they are the only food source in the dimension. What happened to them is unclear, although based on the flying airships seen in abandoned End Cities, which have mounted ender dragon heads, it's possible they were hunted to near extinction. The race that built these cities and airships is not alluded too, though they were most likely humans, as portals to the end can be found in former human strongholds, and the Enderman(the only race in the End with arms) appear to lack the intelligence to build even simple structures, much less cities.