Eye of Ender

An eye of ender is a craftable item that can be in the Overworld to show the direction of the nearest stronghold, which may break the eye. Up to 12 eyes of ender are required to activate a stronghold's End portal, which leads to the End dimension.

Locating strongholds

To locate strongholds (and the End portals they house): Pressing while holding an eye of ender causes it to fly approximately 12 blocks in the direction of the nearest stronghold, traveling through any blocks necessary, and leave a trail of purple particles, the same particle effect used for endermen and ender chests. The eye leads to the chunk where a spiral staircase, the first room generated in the stronghold, is located. The center of this entrance staircase is always exactly at the chunk coordinates 4, ~, 4, although the eye of ender leads to chunk coordinates 0, ~, 0 (the northwest corner of the chunk). While over 12 blocks away from the northwest corner of the staircase chunk, the eye travels upward to offer an easily-visible indication of the horizontal direction the player must travel. When closer than 12 blocks to the northwest corner of the staircase chunk, the eye travels downward, to indicate the player is above a stronghold and must mine downward. After two or three seconds of travel, the eye floats in the air briefly, then either falls (becoming collectable again) or shatters in mid-air. The eye has a 20% chance of shattering and an 80% chance of surviving per throw. Therefore, throwing it three times has approximately a 50% overall chance to shatter the eye (0.83=51.2%). The eye of ender's flying function works only in the Overworld and only if a stronghold exists or can generate in the world. It does nothing in the Nether, the End, or custom dimensions, unless a structure able to generate in that dimension has been added to the #minecraft:eye_of_ender_located structure tag. Note that the eyes may point to an incorrect location if the target chunks were generated with a different biomes map in an older version or through different generation settings.

Activating End portals

Once an End portal is found, eyes of ender are required to activate it. End portals require a total of 12 eyes of ender in order to activate, though each individual frame-block has a 10% chance of containing an eye of ender when generated. Eyes can be placed in empty End portal frames by pressing on them until the entire ring of 12 is filled, thereby activating the portal. Because there is a 10% chance of for each individual End portal frame to contain an eye, there is a 1 in 1 trillion chance that every frame will have an eye in it, thereby activating the portal automatically. The probability that a specific number of eyes are generated was calculated using the probability mass function: p'X(k) = P(X = k) = \binom{12}{k} \cdot 0.1^k \cdot(1-0.1)^{12-k} where k is the number of eyes and p'X(k) is the probability that a particular End portal contains k eyes when it is generated.

Entity data

The purple particles left by eyes of ender have entity data that define various properties of the entity. :

: See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

''New Nintendo 3DS Edition''

Held Eye of Ender.png|The eye of ender used to appear large in third-person view.

Trivia

When thrown in third-person view, the eyes of ender fly out from the player's chest instead of their hand. the eye of ender flies out of the top right of the screen above the player head. if the player travels beyond a certain radius (roughly 740,000 blocks), eyes of ender always point to a stronghold near spawn, even though strongholds continue to generate past this limit. If one travels to this limit, they can see eyes of ender suddenly switching direction. A similar phenomenon occurs with the command.

Screenshots

File:Stronghold Portal Room.png|An End portal frame containing a few eyes of ender. File:EnderChestexample.png|An ender chest depicting an eye of ender on the front. File:Enchanted Eye of Ender obtained with commands.png|An enchanted eye of ender obtained with commands being thrown. Eyes of ender retain their components, including name and enchantments, when used.