Tutorial:Defeating an End city

End cities are special structures found in the End. They are highly anticipated to explore, because they are inhabited by shulkers, the only obtainable source of shulker shells and therefore shulker boxes, and the end ships that sometimes generate with them are the only place where you can find elytra, an extremely useful set of wings that you can use to fly. Since elytra can only be found here, end cities are a great place to go before going on long journeys. Players sometimes go to the End with the goal to loot as many End cities as possible within the confines of a time limit; this act is nicknamed 'End Busting'.

Exploring a city requires a lot of preparation, but not everyone has the same skills. So depending on how skilled you are, different preparations may be needed. The following is a suggested collection of equipment you might need:

Your sword (preferably diamond or netherite) will be used to take out shulkers, as well as provoked endermen. You should enchant your sword with Sharpness V, to deal as much damage as possible. Knockback is ineffective against shulkers, and is a situational use as it both knocks the endermans away, giving you time to heal but also disable "combos". If you have Fire Aspect on your sword, any endermen you hit will be harder to deal with, since they teleport upon taking damage. However, if endermen get set on fire, they will still get weaker for every firetick. Looting is also extremely useful, because it will allow you to get more shulker shells from shulkers, and more ender pearls from endermen.