Ender Dragon

The ender dragon is a giant flying hostile boss mob found when first entering the End. It is the largest naturally spawning mob in the game. Its attacks involve charging at the player and shooting fireballs that create damaging effect clouds. The ender dragon can be re-summoned by placing four End crystals around the exit portal. Defeating the ender dragon the first time activates the exit portal which allows safe return to the Overworld. Each time it is defeated, an End gateway is created on the outskirts of the central island which can be used to teleport to the outer End islands.

Initial spawning

The ender dragon spawns 20 game ticks (1 second) after an entity first arrives in the End, along with the bedrock frame for the exit portal.

Re-summoning

Players can re-summon the dragon by placing four End crystals on the edges of the exit portal, one on each side. If the exit portal is ever destroyed, End crystals can be placed on obsidian blocks placed where the bedrock of the original exit portal once stood. , the crystals can be placed one block outward, in all or either of the four directions.

Ender dragon respawn - uneven version.png|The End crystals do not need to be aligned to the central pillar. Ender dragon respawn - obsidian version.png|The End crystals may be placed on obsidian instead of bedrock.

When it is re-summoned, the four End crystals point to the tops of each pillar, setting off a series of explosions that resets the obsidian pillars, iron bars, and End crystals. The top of each pillar explodes, destroying any player-placed blocks. Eventually, all of the End crystals point at the coordinates of (0.0, 128, 0.0) and the ender dragon spawns there. The four crystals placed around the exit portal then explode. The whole sequence lasts a bit over 30 seconds (exactly 604 ticks). If any of the End crystals placed around the exit portal are destroyed, the summoning sequence is canceled. During the summoning sequence, the End crystals on top of the End spikes cannot be destroyed. If the player does not pick up the dragon egg and starts to re-summon the dragon, the dragon egg disappears. If the dragon goes through an End gateway, another immediately spawns at (0, 128, 0) while the other dragon flies to (0, 128, 0).

Death and drops

After the ender dragon is slain for the first time, the following events take place: First, it moves to the highest dragon-immune block in the (0,0) column, which is typically the top of the exit portal. During this final move, the dragon can still damage other entities, despite being "dead". Once it reaches (0,0), it changes model and slowly ascends, its wings and body becoming more tattered until it disappears in beams of light erupting from its center. A loud sound, Ender dragon death.ogg is played. This takes 10 seconds. During this ascension, the following occurs: Starting after the dragon begins ascending, a total of experience points (ten drops of 960 and one drop of 2400) appear out of the dragon's body (one by one, per tick) — enough to bring a player from no experience all the way up to level 68. Some of the experience orbs can drop into the exit portal and can then be retrieved in the Overworld. Shortly thereafter, exactly into the animation, the following occurs: The bedrock structure fills in with End portal blocks to become the exit portal, enabling the player to transport back to the Overworld and respawn at their spawn point, or at world spawn if they didn't set a spawn point. If the exit portal doesn't exist at the expected location (for example, if it was destroyed in Creative Mode), a new one is created there. A dragon egg appears above the island's central bedrock structure. If a block exists right above the center of the central bedrock structure, then the dragon egg spawns 1 block above the highest block at (0,0). If the highest block is at the height limit, then the dragon egg does not spawn. An End gateway portal is generated 96 blocks away from the exit portal always floating at Y=75. When a re-summoned ender dragon is slain, the same events occur, except that only experience points are dropped, and if there are already 20 End gateway portals, no more are generated. , the dragon egg appears only the first time the ender dragon is slain; , it appears the first and second time.

Behavior

By using the shortcut, the dragon's bounding box appears. However, it cannot be damaged at just any spot in this large volume: eight green sub-hitboxes are also shown, which indicate the locations where the dragon can take damage: the tail (three hitboxes), body, head, neck, and wings (one hitbox for each wing). Name tags cannot be used on an ender dragon, because it is not possible to interact directly with it, only with its parts (green hitboxes), which are not living entities. Ender dragons killed by or from damage belonging to the type self_destruct, and was not spawned from the player, will skip their death animation and the exit portal will immediately open; , if the dragon was killed by it will stay in the same place and play its death animation there instead of flying to the exit portal. The purple eyes and mouth of the ender dragon are emissive with Vibrant Visuals enabled.

Movement

The ender dragon is a flying mob and cannot stand on the ground. It flies around the End's main island. The dragon can pass through all blocks and destroys most of them, but it can still be affected by flowing water, lava, and bubble columns. Blocks not destroyed are those that naturally generate on the central End island, such as End stone, and those that are intended to be indestructible, such as bedrock. The following blocks will not be destroyed if the ender dragon passes through them:

, these blocks are marked under the dragon_immune tag, with the exception of light blocks and fire, which are marked as dragon_transparent. Destroyed blocks are not dropped, but containers other than shulker boxes and ender chests drop their contents.

Attacking

The dragon never targets any entity but the player, although other mobs may turn hostile to the dragon when hit, and the dragon may sometimes retaliate against other mobs if it takes damage to a projectile. Any entities hit by its wings are dealt damage (or damage if hit by its head), and , are thrown into the air, sometimes to fatal heights or off the island. Neither of these effects is applied for second after the dragon takes damage. The ender dragon has four main states of behavior: Guarding The dragon begins in this state, circling the ring of obsidian pillars on either the outside if there are still End crystals or the inside if the crystals are destroyed. With each crystal's destruction, it takes damage and there is an increased chance of the dragon switching states. Targeting Whenever the dragon finds itself less than 10 blocks or more than 150 blocks from its current target, it attempts to choose a new target. When damaged it targets a point just behind itself, causing it to turn away and choose a new target. Strafing Upon the destruction of an End crystal, the dragon switches to strafing. As soon as it is within 64 blocks, it shoots a fireball at the player. The dragon resumes circling after this state. Diving The dragon dives onto the target player's position, taken at the start of the dive. The dragon never seems to perform this attack mid-flight in game, it only seems to do it when exiting the portal. The dragon resumes circling after this state, whether or not it actually hit the player. Does not happen on Java Edition due to a bug. Perching While guarding and the dragon has reached the end of the path, it has 1 in (3 + crystals alive) chance (~7.7% up to 33%) to go to the exit portal structure (approaching from the side opposite the player if possible) and lands on the highest block of the coordinates (X=0, Z=0), up to (Y=101). The dragon circles above the exit structure while slowly descending , or dive from the obsidian pillars . If there is no block in (X=0, Z=0) the dragon flies down to (Y=0) and "perches" there , or freezes right when it switches to perching . The dragon is immune to arrows and thrown tridents in this state; they catch fire and bounce off. Dragon's breath After 1.25 seconds, if a player is within 20 blocks of the exit portal structure, the dragon roars and use its 3-second breath attack, damaging players similarly to a lingering potion of Harming. This does not happen on Peaceful difficulty . An area of visible particles in the shape of a horizontal disc one block tall and 5 to 6 blocks in diameter appears where the breath attack strikes, either on the ground or floating in the air, at whatever point the breath attack struck a block. The harming effect zone where the player takes damage is confined to a smaller area in the center this visible cloud, covering about 3 to 4 blocks. The harming effect portion of the purple clouds emitted from the dragon's breath attack can be collected in a glass bottle to obtain dragon's breath. Each bottle of dragon's breath collected removes one block from the lingering damage zone of the breath attack. The visible clouds remain for 3 seconds whether the dragons breath is bottled or not. By rapidly collecting all of the harmful blocks, usually around three, even a direct hit from the breath attack can be mostly and even entirely negated before the player suffers any damage. Charge If the player is not near the portal within 5 seconds of the dragon's landing, it charges at the closest player within 150 blocks with a line of sight from the dragon's head. line of sight is not required. 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 in Peaceful difficulty, making it difficult to land melee hits. The dragon resumes circling after this state. Escape If cumulative damage taken while perched exceeds , the dragon takes off and resets the damage accumulator. The accumulator is not reset if it does not take enough damage. The dragon resumes circling after this state. When the dragon takes a fatal blow, it flies toward the exit portal structure before dying, unless it cannot find it within 150 blocks, or it is inside blocks.