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 skyscraper-like structures found on the outer islands of the End. They are inhabited by shulkers and hold among the most valuable loot in the game.

Generation
End cities naturally generate all over the End's outer islands. They can easily be accessed by entering the end gateway portal, but it is possible to cross the gap between the islands in other ways. 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, using Elytra and Firework Rocket 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 or rare, 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 skyscraper-like towers constructed out of end stone bricks and purpur blocks. 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 at the tops of some towers.

Several types of rooms can be found in an end city, and several different floors, including:


 * Base floors, which are empty floors found at the base of every city; they are three stories tall, with each room wider than the one below it.
 * Banner rooms that have banners hanging on the outside, and a shulker hanging from the ceiling.
 * Small rooms that have nothing in them at all.
 * Large rooms that have 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.

There are two types of towers:


 * Small towers that are hollow, consisting only of a single purpur slab staircase.
 * Skyscrapers that consist of a treacherous double spiral staircase made of purpur slabs and end rods; many shulkers will spawn here.



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

Generation
Each direction of every tower of the end city has a 50% chance of generating a bridge, and the bridge itself has a 12,5% chance to generate an end ship. But when an end ship successfully generates, another one will not be generated anymore. Thus there can be only 0 or 1 end ship(s) per city.

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 bridge with a 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 built similarly to classical pirate ships or Dutch colonial 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 sits 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.

Aftercastle
The aftercastle contains only a brewing stand sitting on a small table, with two Instant Health II potions. Another 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, which can be used to glide. 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.
 * End cities can be over 70 blocks tall.