Find the End portal and beat the Ender Dragon

You find the End portal with an eye of ender: throw one into the air, walk the way it flies and dig down once it dives into the ground. Down there is a stronghold with the End portal, which you activate by putting twelve eyes of ender into its frame.

On the other side waits the Ender Dragon. Below you’ll find what to bring, how the fight works and what to do once the dragon is gone. Checked against Java 26.3 and Bedrock 26.52.

How do you find the End portal?

1. Craft eyes of ender. One eye takes an ender pearl and blaze powder. Ender pearls drop from endermen; blaze rods come from blazes in a Nether fortress, and one rod makes two blaze powder. Count on twelve eyes plus a few spares.
2. Throw an eye. It flies about twelve blocks towards the nearest stronghold. Pick it up afterwards: four times out of five it drops back down, the fifth time it shatters.
3. Follow its direction and throw again now and then. When the eye suddenly heads downwards, you’re standing above the stronghold.
4. Dig down and look for the portal room. The portal hangs over a pool of lava, and a silverfish spawner sits on the stairs leading up to it.
5. Fill the frame. The End portal is made of twelve End portal frames. Each frame has a 10% chance to already hold an eye; you fill in the rest.

In Java, strongholds sit in rings around the centre of the world, and the first three are between 1,280 and 2,816 blocks from the centre. In Bedrock they’re scattered, at least 160 blocks out. With cheats on, /locate structure stronghold finds the nearest one; more handy commands are in our Minecraft commands guide. Blazes live in the Nether, which you reach with a nether portal.

What should you bring to the End?

There’s no way back until the dragon is dead. If you die, you respawn in the Overworld and your gear stays behind in the End. So pack well:

Sleep in a bed in the Overworld before you go, so that’s your spawn point and you’re back quickly after a failed attempt. Brewing is covered in our potions guide, and the best enchantments in the best Minecraft enchantments. Worried about losing everything? On your own server you can turn on keep inventory.

How to beat the Ender Dragon

The dragon has 200 health points, or 100 hearts. Hits to its body do far less damage than hits to its head. Here’s how to take it on:

1. Shoot the End crystals. Ten obsidian pillars each hold a crystal that heals the dragon. Two of them sit inside a cage of iron bars, so you build your way up to those. A crystal explodes when you hit it, so keep your distance.
2. Hit it when it lands. Now and then the dragon perches on the portal in the middle. Arrows bounce off it then, so grab your sword and aim for the head.
3. Dodge its breath. The purple clouds of dragon’s breath hurt you straight through your armour. Just walk out of them.
4. Or blow up a bed. In the End a bed explodes when you try to sleep in it, harder than TNT. Place it next to the head of the perched dragon and click it. Fast, but risky: the blast hits you as well.

Win, and the first kill gives you 12,000 experience points, enough to go from level 0 to 68. The portal home opens in the middle of the island, with a dragon egg on top. Not a cake, but the finest trophy in the game. Click it and the egg teleports away; push it off with a piston instead and it drops as an item.

What comes after the dragon? End cities and elytra

Every win spawns an End gateway at the edge of the island. You can’t walk into one: throw an ender pearl into the opening and you’re launched to the outer islands.

Out there stand End cities, purpur towers full of shulkers. Some of them have an End ship, and its treasure room holds elytra in an item frame. With elytra you can glide, and with firework rockets you can fly. Shulkers drop shulker shells; two shells and a chest make a shulker box, a chest you can carry around full.

A tip for servers: every ship holds just one pair of elytra. Agree who gets the first one, or go hunting for more ships together.

Want to go further? The wither is the other big boss in the game. Its nether star is what you need for a beacon, which gives everyone nearby extra powers.

Respawning the dragon on your server

Missed the fight the first time round? Just summon the dragon again:

1. Craft four End crystals. Each needs seven glass, one eye of ender and a ghast tear.
2. Place one on each side of the portal, on the bedrock edge, in the middle of that side.
3. Wait. The pillars and crystals come back, and after about half a minute the dragon appears.

Each new dragon is worth 500 experience points and another gateway, up to twenty in total. In Java the dragon egg only appears after the first win; in Bedrock it appears after the second as well.