The End



The End is a barren, empty dimensional plane containing a large floating island of a unique material called End Stone, dotted with Obsidian pillars. This dimension is populated by a vast number of Endermen, who spawn considerably more often than in the Overworld, and one Ender Dragon, an End-exclusive mob. The starless sky and the Void are both composed of a dark static pattern, but there are still particle effects within the Void area. The Player must go through the process of finding, repairing and activating the End Portal found within a Stronghold in order to enter the End.

The Day-Night Cycle is absent in the End, similar to the Nether, being replaced by a constant dim light. Most items and blocks (including fluids) function in the End exactly as they do in the Overworld, with a few notable exceptions. Compasses will be unable to find the original spawn point, as it cannot be set to a place within the End, and clocks cannot determine the position of the sun and moon, because it is in another dimension (as in the Nether, compasses and clocks will instead flail randomly in the End). Maps don't seem to map correctly, only mapping static; as in the Nether, beds will explode and cause fire when used, and Nether Portals will not activate in the End.

Once one enters the End, there is no way out without dying, except to defeat the Ender Dragon, whose health is displayed in a special meter at the top of the screen. The Ender Dragon will spawn naturally and float around above a number of obsidian pillars, each of which has an Ender Crystal on top of them. These crystals regenerate the Ender Dragon's health, and as such it is much more difficult to kill the Ender Dragon with any of them active. To destroy these crystals you need to climb all the way to the top of each individual pillar and hit them somehow; however, they explode on destruction, so caution is advised. Therefore, it is advisable to shoot them with a bow and arrow. Once all of the Crystals are destroyed, the Ender Dragon will be vulnerable. However, defeating it is still very difficult, even with a number of players working together. Once defeated, the Ender Dragon will dissolve, and create an exit portal. On top of it there is a Dragon Egg, which is a unique prize, but useless and moderately tricky to collect. When the player goes through the exit portal, the "End Poem" and the credits will roll shortly afterwards, thus completing Minecraft and earning the player the "The End" achievement.

The player then re-spawns in the Overworld and may return to the End through the same portal. The End remains in the state as the player left after the Ender Dragon is slain, devoid of the Ender Dragon and featuring the portal back to the Overworld. Some player use The End after defeating the Ender Dragon to make many efficient Enderman experience farms with the exclusive amount of Endermen and infinite empty space to build in.

Travelling to the End


In Singleplayer mode, the player must collect at least 12 Ender Pearls by killing Endermen, craft a portal to the Nether to collect at least 6 Blaze Rods (from Blazes), and craft the rods into Blaze Powder. The Ender Pearls and Blaze Powder are crafted together to yield the Eyes of Ender.

Then the player needs to return to the Overworld and locate a Stronghold. They can use an Eye of Ender to locate one by tossing it into the air, and following the direction the Eye flies towards until it lands on the ground to be recollected. The player is advised to craft a few extra Eyes, as they will occasionally disappear into The End. Once inside, the player must search the Stronghold for a room with End Portal Frame blocks. If a ravine or an abandoned mine shaft intersects with the room, some portal frame blocks may be missing and the End Portal will not be usable. For the End Portal to activate, the player must insert an Eye of Ender on each of the frame blocks.

An activated End Portal allows the player to enter The End immediately, appearing on top of a five by five Obsidian platform in The End. The center of this portal is always at the co-ordinates 0,72,0. Note that different End Portals in the Overworld will all travel to the same version of The End.

If the player is an OP on a multiplayer server, the player can use the /give command to give themselves item number 119, the item id of the End Portal. Jumping into one placed in the Overworld will send the player to the End. The player may also use /give to give themselves item number 90, the item id of the Nether Portal, which will allow them to leave the End and then teleport back to the Overworld at the player's spawn location.

A player in Creative mode can successfully create an End Portal, since version 12w23a / 1.3 the End Portal Frame is included in the creative block selection. Prior to that version the player can use the pick block function to select an End Portal Frame block, the player must first locate a Stronghold to select this block.

Floating obsidian platform
Often, you will spawn on a platform off the island. You need to make a path to the Floating Island without the Ender Dragon breaking the path or knocking you off, making you fall into The Void. To be sure you don't fall off, hold down your sneak key near edges. Even if you hold the sneak key, the Ender Dragon can still launch you off the bridge. While building the bridge, look around to make sure the dragon is not coming. If it is, shoot at it to make it fly away for a short while.

The platform will generate at different Y coordinates depending if you are playing SSP (Y=51) or SMP (Y=48). Since snapshot 12w18a all Single Player worlds will have a platform 3 blocks lower from when it was originally.

Inside the island
You may spawn inside the island and you need to make a staircase up the End Stone to get to the surface. This can be a long process without an Iron/Diamond Pickaxe.

End-affected materials
Just like the Nether, compasses and clocks will spin randomly. Beds will explode when the player tries to sleep. Maps made on the above ground dimension will not show the player's position in the other dimension. For Maps to display the End, they must be crafted there. Unlike maps in the Nether, the indicator will not spin wildly and point in random directions.

Bedrock in the End acts like Netherrack; fire set on top of it will burn indefinitely.

History


In an earlier stage of development, the third playable dimension was known as the Sky Dimension, and had Overworld blocks and mobs, as well as a sky similar to that of the Overworld.

Notch first mentioned the End with his comment regarding the theoretical name-change of the Endermen - some players complained that the name was too similar to that of "the Slender Man", a fictional cryptid created online, and petitioned Mojang to have the mob renamed "Far Landers", a reference to the area of every generated map nicknamed the Far Lands. He joked that instead of renaming the mobs Far Landers, he was more likely to change the name of the Far Lands to "the End". In later Beta versions, the Far Lands were removed and the End was revealed as the native land of the Endermen.

The End was added in Beta 1.9 pre 4 on October 13th, 2011. Notch tweeted "raqreqentba", which could be decoded using the ROT13 cypher, translating to "enderdragon." A Reddit user under the name of "cptqwashi" posted the idea that the new dimension accessed by the new "Crystal Block Portal", would be called "the Ender", and would be home to the Endermen and Ender Dragons. Notch soon gave more information and said that cptqwashi was "100% correct," mentioning that it would be called "the Ender" and that there would be Ender Dragons. However, it was later revealed that it was just called "the End" and that there would be only one Ender Dragon there. In 1.9 pre 4, an Ender Dragon spawned near a portal would destroy it, but End Portal blocks would continue to function even if the frame was destroyed. The ability to create End Portal frame blocks in Creative Singleplayer mode was also removed.

File save location
The End is saved in the same way normal worlds are, but instead of mixing the world files inside the save folder, the files for the End are stored in *Minecraft Folder*/Saves/*Worldname*/DIM1, whereas normal world files in *Minecraft Folder*/Saves/*Worldname*. Note that DIM1 does not contain its own level.dat, as the same level.dat in the upper folder is used for the Overworld, the Nether, and the End. Also, note that the Nether's folder is "DIM-1".'

Bugs

 * Going through an End portal while in a Minecart causes you to go through the portal, possibly into the lava below.
 * Quitting the game while in the End without killing the Ender Dragon will sometimes make multiple dragons spawn and sometimes there are no crystals.
 * The End portal block can only be placed in the normal world dimension, and in the Nether and End, will disappear, however a Nether portal block can be placed in the End.
 * When spawning into the end from the Overworld, there is a chance that you will spawn on an obsidian tower floating next to the island which the dragon is on.
 * If the player teleports to another player viewing the credits at the time, the person teleporting will also begin viewing the credits. Logging out while viewing the credits, then logging back in will bring the credits back to the beginning. Before the credits finish, the player who rejoined will have a Login Timeout screen and force them to the title screen. This becomes an endless loop.

Trivia

 * The End, an endless, noised sky with a central mass of End Stone, appears to be an inversion of the Nether, an endless cave filled with masses of air.
 * The End Portals found within Strongholds can explain how the Endermen exist in the Overworld outside of their native dimension. They might use their natural teleportation to move between dimensions, or possibly a combination of the two (interplanar teleportation, but only when an End Portal is present). The Ender Pearls that can be found in strongholds also imply a correlation between Endermen and Strongholds. Supposedly, the Endermen also created the End Portals in the first place.
 * Mob behavior, plant growth, potion brewing, and enchanting are not visibly affected by being in the End, with the exception of luring animals with wheat, which no longer works well in the End.
 * At Y coordinates close to and below 0, particles to the Void is still present, like the Overworld and Nether.
 * If an Enderman stands on one of the crystals, it will burn and die due to the fire on the bedrock block below.
 * When killing the Ender Dragon after destroying the pillars, you can choose either killing it with a sword or a bow, note that if you only have a sword the dragon will approach to you from time to time, but not when you only use a bow.
 * Unlike the other dimensions, The End's landmass isn't "infinite". Only the central endstone landmass is generated and finite. The rest is just infinite empty space.
 * When a mob or player gets damaged in The End, they won't appear red like in the other dimensions. They will just appear darker.
 * In Minecraft 1.2, pressing F3 to view the current biome will show "Sky." This is because the biome ID was used for the Sky Dimension was recycled for the End.
 * If a Bottle o' Enchanting is thrown at an End Portal the bottle will break but the experience orbs will fall into the lava below.
 * If you use a Water Bucket in the End, the water will spread at an extremely fast rate.
 * You can destroy an Ender Crystal by throwing a Snowball at it, or even an Egg.
 * With the introduction of The End, this is the first time since the 2010 Halloween update that a player can kill himself by falling in the Void outside Creative mode without cheating, exploiting glitches or taking advantage of chunk generation errors.
 * As of Snapshot 12w25a the "sky" in The End has changed, and is now purple instead of greenish.