End City

"End Cities, replete with End Ships, Chorus Plants, Chorus Flowers and Purpur blocks. Not all is as it seems, however - some blocks may conceal Shulkers, limpet-like enemies who fire homing rockets. Take a hit and you’ll take damage and experience something new, too: levitation! Elytra are essential to avoid an uncomfortable landing."

- Marsh Davies

End cities are semi-common generated structures found in the end dimension. They are inhabited by shulkers and hold among the most valuable loot in the game.

Generation
End cities naturally generate all over the end dimension, accessible via the end gateway portal that generates after killing the ender dragon. They will always generate on the large islands, where chorus trees will grow. If the end gateway portal teleports the player to a small island, they will have to get to the nearest large island, either by building or throwing ender pearls.

End cities usually generate in flat, plateau-like areas, in “midlands” or “highlands”, which are found on larger islands. They are considered semi-common, and will generate on random islands. One may find several cities clustered together, or travel for thousands of blocks before finding one.

Structure


End cities consist of tall castle or tree-like structures constructed primarily of end stone bricks, as well as purpur blocks and their variants. An end city may generate as a single tower by itself, or as a sprawling complex of inter-connected towers and pathways branching from a main tower. End rods are the only source of light. Many shulkers spawn around the city, and guard the city's various treasures. Decorative banners wave outside of the tops of some towers.

One will find several types of rooms in an end city, and several different floors, including:


 * The bottom floors, which are empty floors found at the base of each city; they are three stories tall, with each room wider than the one below it.
 * Small rooms with banners hanging on the outside, and a shulker hanging from the ceiling.
 * Large rooms with complex staircases often leading up to another tower or a loot room.
 * Loot rooms that consist of two chests with valuable loot; some rooms may have an ender chest as well as a normal chest.
 * Empty rooms that have nothing in them at all.

There are two types of towers:


 * Small towers that are hollow, consisting only of a single purpur slab staircase.
 * Large towers (three times the diameter of the smaller towers) that consist of a treacherous double spiral staircase made of purpur slabs, shulkers and end rods.



End Ship
An end ship is a floating structure found alongside end cities. It is relatively small, but holds even more valuable treasure than the city itself.

Generation
All end cities have a chance to generate with a ship, but it is not guaranteed to generate; there is a 1 in 5 chance that an end city will generate without a ship.

When generated, the stern of the ship will always face towards the city and the bow will always face away. It always generates in front of a pier, which is a bridge with an gated arch at the end, from which one can throw an ender pearl to reach the ship.

Structure
The end ship is made of end stone bricks and purpur blocks, just like the city’s main towers. It is thought to be built similarly to classical pirate ships or Dutch sailing ships. Three shulkers will spawn on the ship; one on the main deck, one behind the stern of the ship, and one in the treasure room.

Main Deck
The ship’s main deck amounts to less than half of the walkable space on the ship. A ladder leads up the mast to an empty crow’s nest, about 20 blocks high. There are no sails connected to the mast.

A dragon head can be seen at the bow of the ship, making this the only way to obtain the dragon head in survival mode. There are two small staircases on the outside, one that leads up to the empty upper deck, and one that leads to the cabin below.

Sternquarters
The sternquarters contains only a brewing stand, with two healing potions. A staircase leads below deck to the ship’s “hotspot”: the treasure room.

Treasure Room
The floor of the treasure room is lined with obsidian. There are four small windows on the sides. It contains two loot chests and an item frame holding an elytra. A shulker guards the elytra and the two loot chests.

Technical details
One may access the individual structures of an End city by utilizing structure blocks to manually load city structures from the  folder in minecraft.jar. To do so, set a structure block to Load mode, enter  and press LOAD. The names of these structures and a small description is provided below:

Trivia

 * Some end city rooms are structured similarly to traditional Asian pagodas.
 * This may refer to the Summer Palace since Jeb has visited there before the release of 15w31a.
 * The banners atop the towers have a magenta and black pattern that resembles the Missing Texture Block.png missing texture block.