The Ender Dragon is a giant, flying, hostile Minecraft mob found when you first enter the End through an End portal. It’s the largest creature to appear naturally in the game.
It guards access to the End gateways that allow entry to the outer islands of the End, as well as the exit portal that allows return to the normal world and access to Minecraft’s end credits.
Table of Contents
Appearance
Initial appearance
The Ender Dragon appears 1 second after an entity enters the End portal.
Reappearance / Summoning
You can reinvoke the dragon by placing four End crystals on the edges of the exit portal, one from each corner. When summoned again, the four End Crystals point to the top of each pillar, triggering a series of explosions that reset the obsidian pillars, iron bars and crystals.
The top of each pillar explodes, destroying all the blocks placed by the player. Finally, all the crystals point to the coordinates (0.0, 128, 0.0) and the Ender Dragon appears there. If the player doesn’t pick up the dragon egg and starts summoning the dragon again, the dragon egg disappears.
Looting
When the Ender Dragon is killed for the first time, the following happens :
- It slowly rises, its wings and body becoming more and more damaged, until it disappears in beams of light shooting out from its center.
- There’s an explosion of 12,000 experience points, enough to take a player from level 0 to level 68. If the player is killed at the top of the Bedrock structure, some experience orbs may fall into the exit portal. Experience orbs can then be recovered in the normal world.
- The Bedrock structure fills with an interface similar to that of the End portal to become the exit portal, allowing the player to teleport into the Normal World and respawn at the point of appearance.
- A dragon’s egg appears above the island’s central Bedrock structure. If there is a block just above the center of the central Bedrock structure, the dragon egg appears 1 block above the highest block. If the highest block is at the height limit, the dragon egg does not appear.
- An End portal is generated, floating within a radius of 75 to 100 blocks of the exit portal.
Behavior
While fighting the Ender Dragon, a unique music called “Boss” is played, the edges of the screen darken and a black fog appears, and chunks around the exit portal are constantly displayed, regardless of rendering distance. These phenomena occur as long as there is at least one player within 192 blocks.
The Ender Dragon has a light purple health bar of 200 hit points, or 100♥, which appear at the top of the player’s screen. Its health is restored by nearby end crystals, indicated by a magical white ray linking the dragon and the crystal. Destroying an End crystal that actively heals the dragon inflicts 10 points of damage or 5♥.
The dragon can only take damage from explosions and player-inflicted damage, and takes damage when hit on any part other than its head, making it the most resilient creature in the game. It’s impossible to suffocate him. On top of this, the dragon is immune to all status effects.
By using the shortcut F3 + B, the dragon’s collision box appears. It can’t be damaged anywhere in this large volume : eight green collision sub-boxes are also displayed, indicating where the dragon can take damage : tail, body, head and wings.
Movements
The Ender Dragon is a flying creature that can’t stay on the ground. It flies around the main island while fighting the player.
The dragon can fly through any block, destroying almost any type, but can still be affected by flowing water, lava and the bubble column. Undestroyed blocks are those generated naturally on the central island of the End and those designed to be indestructible, such as the End Stone and Reappearance Anchors.
Attack
The dragon never targets any entity other than the player, although other creatures may become hostile to the dragon when hit. Even so, the dragon can sometimes retaliate against other creatures if it suffers projectile damage. Any entity hit by its wings suffers 5 damage (or 10 if hit by its head). In the Java edition, you can be thrown into the air, which can lead to death if you fall too far, or even off the island.
The Ender Dragon has several main behavior states :
Guard
The dragon begins in this state, circling the ring of obsidian pillars, either outside if there are still End crystals, or inside if the crystals are destroyed. Each time a crystal is destroyed, it suffers damage and the dragon is more likely to change state.
Targeting
When the dragon is less than 10 blocks or more than 150 blocks from its current target, it tries to choose a new target. If it takes damage, it aims at a point directly behind it, forcing it to turn away and choose a new target.
Strafing
After destroying an End crystal, the dragon switches to strafing mode. As soon as it’s within a radius of 64 blocks, it fires a fireball at the player. After this state, the dragon starts circling again.
Diving
The dragon dives onto the target player’s position, taken at the start of the dive. After this state, the dragon starts circling again, whether or not it has touched the player.
Take-off
After four consecutive breath attacks, or if the dragon fails to locate a player within 150 blocks, it takes off from its perch. It always takes off on Peaceful difficulty, which makes melee blows difficult to land. The dragon starts circling again after this state.
Charge
If the player is not near the portal within 5 seconds of the dragon landing, it charges players within a 150-block radius.
Perch
When the dragon is on guard and has reached the end of the path, it has 1 chance in (3 + living crystals) of reaching the exit portal structure (approaching from the opposite side to the player if possible) and lands on the highest block of the coordinates. If there is no block in (x=0, z=0), the dragon freezes as it passes the perch.
The dragon is immune to arrows in this state; they all catch fire and bounce off. In the Java edition, it is also immune to tridents thrown in this state.
Escape
If the cumulative damage sustained while perched exceeds 50 (25♥), the dragon flies away and resets the damage accumulator0 The accumulator is not reset if it doesn’t sustain enough damage. The dragon starts circling again after this state.
In the Java edition, when the dragon finally lands a fatal blow, it flies to the exit portal structure before dying, unless it cannot be found within 150 blocks, or if it is inside blocks.
Dragon’s breath
Unless the player is on Peaceful difficulty, after 1.25 seconds, if a player is within 20 blocks of the exit portal structure, the dragon roars and uses its 3-second breath attack, inflicting damage to players similar to that of a persistent potion of instant damage.
An area of visible particles in the shape of a horizontal disk one block high and 5-6 blocks in diameter appears where the attack hit, either on the ground or floating in the air, wherever the attack hit a block. The area of harmful effect where the player suffers damage is confined to a smaller area in the center of this visible cloud, covering around 3 to 4 blocks.
The damaging part of the purple clouds emitted by the dragon’s breath can be collected in a glass vial to obtain dragon’s breath. By quickly collecting all the damaging blocks, usually around three, even a direct hit from the breath attack can be largely, if not entirely, negated before the player suffers any damage.
minecraft dragon fireball
Dragon fireballs are special fireballs that the Ender Dragon shoots as it moves. Unlike ghast fireballs, they cannot be deflected and inflict no damage on impact. Instead, they deposit clouds of purple effects on the ground that damage players in the same way as a persistent level II damage potion.
This means that the Ender Dragon’s fireballs inflict magical damage that ignores the damage reduction due to the player’s armor. However, its damage is reduced by armor benefiting from the Protection enchantment. The diameter of the purple cloud’s area of effect increases slowly until it disappears.
As with the point-blank breath attack, purple clouds can be collected to obtain dragon’s breath.
