Tutorials/Defeating an End city

Capturing an end city can be fun, and one can obtain valuable loot. However, it can also be difficult and dangerous.

Finding an end city


Before finding an end city, the player must defeat the ender dragon and go to the outer islands. Between the main island and the outer island is about 1,000 blocks of emptiness. To get there faster, throw an ender pearl into the end gateway portal and you will be teleported to the outer islands.

Once at the outer islands, start a map so you can see which islands you have already explored. You may want to maximize the number of islands on your map by traveling away from the empty space before activating the map.

To cross a gap between islands, build a bridge, sneaking as you go to avoid falling into the void. Use a material other than end stone to make your bridges clearly visible when returning to your gateway portal. Don't forget to mark your gateway portal using torches or glowstone or you won't be able to return to the Overworld without losing your inventory. If you want to return to an end city, make a copy of the map the end city is on and place it in a frame in the city. A green marker will appear on the map giving you the location of the end city.

It may be beneficial to bring an ender chest in case the city has valuable items, although it is worth noting that some cities generate with ender chests in them.

Hazards
One is not likely to get lost in an end city, as down always leads out and up always leads in. But you might want to mark which towers have already been explored. A simple way to do that is to break all the end rods you see so you know that you only need to go to the towers with end rods.

You will see that there are little endermen in the cities. Instead, the main hazards are shulkers and falling to your death. To stay safe, bring armor, preferably a full set of diamond armor with enchantments like protection and feather falling and ender pearls to teleport if you fall. Shields can also block the shulker's bullets.

Avoiding falls
End city towers are relatively empty. They are 3*3 tubes with blocks only on the edges, not the corners. Because of the emptiness, it is easy to fall when jumping up a step. Place blocks in the corners to complete the staircase.

Fighting shulkers
Whenever you see a shulker, wait until it opens (which should happen after a few seconds). Then, hit it repeatedly with a sword or use the bow and arrows to damage it from some distance away. Tipped arrows such as Arrow of Poison and Arrow of Harming are recommended because they can do more damage. Deflect or destroy its bullets if necessary.

If you get hit with a bullet, make sure you do not levitate to fatal heights. To avoid this, go under one of the purpur slabs and continue to hit the shulker. When the levitation wears off, you will only fall a few blocks.

If the shulker teleports out of sight, the battle is essentially complete because the shulker cannot attack anymore. Showing the shulker's hitbox by pressing + may help you to find it. If you happen to encounter the same shulker later, you can finish it off and collect the shell.

Shulkers may appear in inconvenient places, such as rooftops, outside walls, and even the undersides of platforms. To get to these shulkers, pillar jump to the shulker, or descend using sand. Try to shoot the shulker only if it opens otherwise the arrow will not deal any damage. If you get hit, place blocks and as you go up, and make sure you are directly over your pillar. You can also break the shulker's support block, thus forcing it to teleport, hopefully to a better location.

Special rooms
When exploring end cities, you may find special rooms.

Treasure room
If a room has chests, simply collect the loot. Some rooms will have an ender chest beside the regular chest. Bring a pickaxe with the silk touch enchantment to pick these up.

Large shulker room
Large shulker rooms have a spiral staircase around the edge, but it is much easier to go down than up. An easier way is to pillar jump, killing shulkers as you go. Another way of going up is letting a shulker hit you, use the levitation effect. If you want to try this, make sure that you have a good armor. After killing the shulkers, go down the spiral staircase and collect the shulker loot.

If the room branches out at the top, place ladders along the pillar and continue exploring.

End ship
Before going to the ship, make sure you have the necessary equipment for end cities. In addition, have an ender pearl and some chorus fruit (both of which are fairly easy to obtain in the end).

To enter, throw the ender pearl onto the roof of the ship. Then, go inside, and then to the treasure chamber. First, kill the shulker. Then collect the elytra and chest loot.

Finally, go to the bow, where the dragon head is. Place blocks around and under the head. Once it is secure, you can mine the head and return to the ground by building a bridge back to the pier, eating chorus fruit, or teleporting using an ender pearl. Alternatively, you can use your elytra to get back to the pier, although this will cost some firework rockets durability.

Because end ships contain extremely rare items, it is recommended to put the items in an ender chest. If the end city doesn't have one, but you brought an eye of ender, you can make an ender chest.

Shulker shells and shulker boxes
Shulker shells are useful. Keep as many as you can, and using the chests from in the cities, you can create shulker boxes. Shulker boxes help you store extra goodies, and for an added bonus, once you have a stack of an item (ie: 64x emeralds, 64x diamonds 64x dragon heads if you went on a spree) or a non-stackable item (ie: horse armor, player armor) you can place it in the shulker box. This allows you to store far more items, and keep track of items that haven't reached full stacks, as well as shulker boxes that are not yet full. If you really would like to go on a spree, you can clear out your enderchest, as these can hold boxes to. This allows you to hold up to 63 boxes, or 1701 items or stacks of items, and in the most unlikely scenario, 108864 goodies. This neglects your tool(s) in your hotbar, items (ie: charms) from plugins and mods, as well as armor slots, which can be used to store items. Unfortunately, inception-style tactics don't work here, as shulker boxes cannot hold shulker boxes, which provides the insane but finite item storage limit. This is a simple tactic for people like me who are item horaders... and have three whole boxes of End City Armor, 18 boxes of goodies, and countless other boxes holding valuable tools.

Staircases
If you have the priveleged ability to fly on a server, while still playing survival, you can see stairs on the roof of the tops of end city "stacks". "Stacks" of three or more should have a shaft shape on the corner of its top level, and have two chests filled with loot. This is a surefire grab and go technique, but be warned - If you only take the ones from the tops and the end "stack" at the base is 4 or more (not confirmed) there is most likely loot of some sort and/or an ender chest. Regardless of the base height, because it is not confirmed, you should most likely take a peek through the windows and check if there is any loot waiting to be taken.