The End



The End is a stark, empty plane containing a series of large floating islands of White Stone dotted with Obsidian Towers, home of the Endermen found wandering in the Overworld and the Enderdragon, exclusive to this dimension. The starless sky and Void are both made of dark static, but there are still void particles within the Void area. The White Stone blocks cannot be mined unless a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch is used; otherwise, the White Stone will drop Cobblestone when mined or blown up. A global yellowish dim light replaces the light from sun and moon, day/night cycles don't exist.

Most items and blocks (including Fluids) function in the End exactly like they do in the Overworld, with a few notable exceptions. Compasses will be unable to find the original spawn point, and Clocks cannot determine the position of the sun (the arrows and dials will instead spin and flail randomly). Maps seem to only map static, Beds will explode when used (lighting nearby white stone blocks on fire), and portals to the Nether will not work in the End. No plants can be grown without the use of bonemeal, as seedlings will disappear and saplings will revert to item form in the End.

Traveling to the End


The only way to enter The End in non-Creative Singleplayer mode and SMP (as a non-op), the player must create at least 12 Ender Pearls by killing Endermen, crafting a Portal to the Nether to collect at least 6 Blaze Rods (from Blazes), and crafting 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 then use one of these Eyes 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 has to search the Stronghold for a room with an Ender Portal frame and insert one Eye of Ender on each of the frame blocks. The Ender Portal will activate, allowing the player to enter The End immediately. Note that if another feature (ravine, abandoned mineshaft) intersects with the Ender Portal room, some of the necessary blocks may be missing.

The player will find themselves on top of a five by five Obsidian platform in the End. There is currently no possible way to leave the End without dying or using inventory hacking to obtain portal blocks.

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

As of 1.9 pre 4 in Creative Singleplayer mode the player cannot create Ender Portal frame blocks, but the Strongholds still exist so one must find one with the help of Ender Eyes and create the portal there.

History
In an earlier stage of development, The End was known as the Sky Dimension and had Overworld blocks and mobs.

Notch first mentioned The End with his comment regarding the name-change petition of the Endermen, when people wanted to change the name of the mob to "Farlanders" (a reference to the area nicknamed the Far Lands). He joked that instead of renaming them Farlanders, 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 added as the native land of the Endermen.

The End (previously known as The Ender) was added in Beta version 1.9 Pre-release 4 on October 13th, 2011. Notch tweeted "raqreqentba", which could be decoded using ROT13, 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 Enderdragons. Notch soon gave more information and said that cptqwashi was "100% correct."

The only ways to get out of The End is to hack and retrieve a Nether portal block or die.

Trivia

 * The End Portals found within Strongholds may be the reason why the Endermen ended up outside of their native dimension, assuming that the Endermen are able to use it to travel from the End to the Overworld.
 * Much like how the Sky Dimension was intended to be an inversion of The Nether, The End maintains the same parallel. While the Nether is an endless cave filled with masses of air, The End is an endless sky filled with masses of stone.
 * Even with mods or inventory hacking, it is impossible to create an End Portal or Nether Portal inside The End.
 * Wheat, Pumpkins, Melons, and Trees can all be grown in The End, making Potions and Enchanting in The End have no noticeable difference to doing so in the Overworld, and spawned mobs have no difference in behavior.
 * The dimension name "The End" may be a reference to the fact it is possibly a post-apocalyptic world/future, the last level of Minecraft, or the End of the known universe.
 * In Beta 1.9 Pre-release 4, an Enderdragon spawned near a portal would destroy it. However, the End Portal blocks would continue to function even if the frame is destroyed.
 * End Portal frames must be 3x3 in order to work.