Overview


The Ender Dragon is the final boss of Minecraft (not counting the Wither). The fight is pretty interesting but simple, and if you have good enough gear and items you can defeat it easily.

Getting to The End

To get to the main End island, you’ll need to first find a stronghold, which looks like this:



To find a stronghold, you need to hunt endermen until you get two or three ender pearls, which you then combine with blaze powder to form eyes of ender. Right-click an eye when in the open and you’ll see it fly away in a particular direction for a few blocks before falling as an item. Follow the path the eye moved in for a couple hundred blocks before throwing another one. In this manner, keep throwing the eyes and following their path. Once you reach a stronghold, the eye may disappear under the surface blocks to indicate that it’s underground. If this happens, get a pickaxe and dig down until you stumble upon the stronghold. But don’t keep indiscriminately using them: there’s a 20% chance that they can shatter when thrown. Ender pearls are pretty rare in the Overworld, so use the eyes sparingly.

Strongholds are made entirely out of variants of stone bricks. The end portal room may contain a silverfish spawner, as you can see in the picture above. There are twelve indestructible end portal blocks that need to be filled with eyes of ender. Hunting endermen to obtain ender pearls and combine them with blaze powder to form the eyes is a time-consuming task, but it’s ultimately necessary. When you fill all the portal blocks with eyes, the space between the blocks turns into a mysterious inky, starry void:



Jump into this void to enter The End. Don’t worry, you won’t fall into the lava below! But before we fight the dragon, we still have a couple things to discuss.

Armor

A set of enchanted diamond armor will make the fight a lot easier. Suitable enchantments are Protection and Unbreaking, and Feather Falling is a must for boots as the dragon is bound to throw you around at least a few times. It’s possible to fight the dragon with just enchanted iron, but it’s quite hard. If you keep accidentally aggravating the endermen scattered on the island, a pumpkin may help you out. A shield may also come in handy; keep one in your off-hand slot.

Weapons

You absolutely need a bow for this battle with Power, Unbreaking, and Infinity (if possible). Bring three or four stacks of arrows if you don't have Infinity. The Flame and Punch enchantments have no effect on the dragon.

With the new nesting behavior in 1.9, a sword becomes a great option. When the dragon is hovering above the bedrock platform, you can attack its side and deal quite a bit of damage. Sharpness and Unbreaking are the most useful here; Looting, Fire Aspect, and Knockback make no difference.

Utility

Apart from weapons and armor, you’ll need some other things as well:

• Pickaxe x1 – if you spawn underground, you’ll want to dig your way out
  
• Shovel x1 – if you’re using dirt blocks
  
• Dirt/netherrack (4-5 stacks) – to pillar up the obsidian towers
  
• Steak/pork chops/bread x16 – for obvious reasons
  
• Ender pearls x8 – for when you get knocked sky-high by the dragon
  
• Piston x1 – for getting the dragon egg
  
• Lever x1 – for powering the piston
  
• Bottles x64 (optional) – for collecting the dragon’s breath
  
• Snowballs x64 (optional) – for breaking the end crystals and saving your bow’s durability
  
• Golden apples x4 (optional) – for the absorption and extra hearts, just in case
  
• Splash potions of healing x4 (optional) – for moments of mortal peril
  
• Splash potions of harming x4 (optional) – for dragon headbutts
  
• Splash potions of swiftness x2 (optional) – for speeding things up
  

Precautions

There’s a chance that you can get killed by the dragon even with all these preparations. So in case you die in the middle of the fight and want to continue fighting, place a bed and chest near the portal in the Overworld. Stock the chest with a decent set of armor and a weapon so that you can go and retrieve your loot quickly. But if you get knocked into the void, well, you’re out of luck. That’s what the ender pearls are for – throw one onto land if you think you’re going to fall into the void.

Battle



Turn your particle settings to ‘all’ or ‘decreased’ so that you can see the particles of dragon’s breath. Also, preferably increase your render distance so that you can see exactly where the dragon is.

As soon as you enter the portal, the Ender Dragon spawns and starts trying to kill you. Its movement and behavior is predictable. It starts out by circling around the towers for a while. It will occasionally fire damaging ender charges at you – make sure to dodge these. It may also come swooping down and try to knock you into the air – if this happens, decorate its face with an arrow or throw a splash potion of harming towards it and it will start circling again. The dragon settles down on the portal every now and then and starts spewing its harmful breath. When it does so, it becomes immune to arrows. You can walk up to its side and stab it with a sword instead. But the dragon may turn around once or twice and knock you sky-high, so keep an eye out.

Grab your bow and shoot the bobbing End Crystals that are on top of the obsidian pillars. Some crystals are guarded by iron bars, so you have to pillar up, break the bars, then destroy them. But be careful – the explosion may throw you off the platform! Every time you destroy a crystal, the dragon fires a charge at you. If the dragon knocks you off a pillar, throw an ender pearl down quickly. Feather Falling is extremely useful here.

Ensure that your hunger bar is full at all times, and if you bring along potions, keep them in your hotbar. If you run out of ender pearls, kill a few endermen. After you destroy all the crystals, focus on shooting the dragon and attacking it when it perches on the portal. A few minutes of sniping and stabbing should make short work of the dragon. When it dies, a bunch of disco lights will start flying out of its body and it will explode. Congratulations, you slew the Ender Dragon!

Stand under the dragon while it is dying so that you can collect the XP orbs that fall. It drops enough XP to take you from level 0 to 78! Make your way to the bedrock platform. Without falling in, cover the hole with some blocks, then place a piston on the side of the newly-spawned dragon egg and use a lever to power the piston. The egg will drop and you can pick it up. Note that if you try to punch the egg, it will teleport somewhere randomly and you may not be able to find it later! So take care not to touch it.

You now have the crowning jewel of your trophy room! (And now for the Wither…)

Respawning the Dragon



In 1.9, there’s a new respawning mechanic for the Ender Dragon. So dragon’s breath is a renewable resource now. But the dragon egg doesn’t spawn the second time, and the dragon drops only 500 XP per run. You need to place four now-craftable End Crystals in the above manner. When they are placed, crystals re-form on the top of the towers and the dragon is respawned. Stand away from the crystals during the respawning: they explode with enough force to decimate a player in full Protection IV diamond armor! You don't want that to happen to you. Crystals are crafted like this:



The ghast tears are notoriously hard to get unless you have a ghast farm in the Nether, but the glass and eyes of ender are pretty easy to gather, seeing as you have access to the Nether and End already.

Conclusion

That’s it! Comments, faves, and diamonds are appreciated, as usual.