The End

The End is also a special biome in Minecraft.

'The End', which can only be reached by the arduous process of finding, repairing and activating the Ender Portal found within the Stronghold, and then stepping through, is a stark, empty 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 End is a special biome as well.

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. As of 1.0, 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 a shrine of bedrock below it, on top of it there is a Dragon Egg, though there is not yet any meaningful way the player can interact with it. Below the egg are four torches and another Ender Portal. When the player goes through this Ender 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.

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 Ender 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 Ender 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 Singleplayer Mode can successfully create an End Portal. However the portal blocks can only be attained using Mods due to the removal of the Ender Portal blocks from the Creative inventory by Notch.

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 Ender 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 appdata/.Minecraft/Saves/*Worldname*/DIM1, whereas normal world files in %appdata%/.Minecraft/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

 * When an End portal is made in the End (or via defeating the Ender Dragon) a strange glitch occurs making the glint of the End portal appear at a distance in the exact shape of the portal.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Ambient sounds can play in open spaces in the End.
 * Flying too high in Creative Mode in the End causes your character's skin to be changed back to the default skin.
 * When spawning into the end from the Overworld, there is a chance that you will spawn on a obsidian tower floating next to the island which the dragon is on.
 * In 12w07a, End Stone no longer generates, only the spawn platform and the Ender Dragon generates. This has been fixed in 12w08a.
 * In SMP, when not all of the players are viewing the credits, the ones who are not may experience extreme lag, usually to the point of causing minecraft to crash.

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 Ender Portal is present). 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.
 * 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 isn't "infinite". It's actually a pretty small dimension.
 * 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".