Ender Dragon

The ender dragon is a dangerous, flying boss mob found when first entering the End. It is also the largest naturally spawning mob in the game.

Initial spawning
The ender dragon spawns naturally in the End when the first player enters the dimension, and it spawns on any difficulty. In Peaceful, it still fires damaging fireballs, but its body does no damage.

Re-summoning
Players can re-summon the ender dragon once the fight is over by placing four end crystals on the edges of the exit portal — one on each side. (Fewer crystals can be used by exploiting this trick.) When the dragon is re-summoned, a series of explosions resets the obsidian pillars, iron bars, and end crystals. The top of each pillar appears to explode, destroying any player-placed blocks. If the Player does not pick up the dragon egg and starts to re-summon the dragon, the dragon egg disappears.

Drops
Once slain, the ender dragon slowly ascends, its wings and body becoming more tattered until it disappears, while beams of light erupt from its center. There's an explosion of 12,000 experience points (ten drops of 960 and one drop of 2400) &mdash; enough to bring a player from level 0 to level 68. In subsequent completions of the ender dragon fight (after it is re-summoned via the End crystals), only 500 experience points are dropped.

After the dragon is slain for the first time, a dragon egg will appear above the island's central bedrock structure. The bedrock structure fills in with an End portal interface to become the exit portal, enabling the player to transport back to the Overworld and respawn at their spawn point.

Every completed dragon fight also creates an End gateway portal floating within 75–100 blocks of the exit portal, up to a maximum of 20 gateway portals.

Behavior
During the battle with the ender dragon, unique music called "Boss" plays. The battle also keep loaded several chunks around the X,Z=0,0, regardless if the player is present. Both of these happen for as long as the player fights the dragon.

The ender dragon has a light purple health bar that appears at the top of the player's screen. Its health is frequently restored by nearby End crystals, indicated by a magical white beam connecting the dragon and the crystal. Destroying an End crystal that is actively healing the dragon causes damage to it.

The dragon can take damage only from explosions and player based damage, and takes $$ normal damage when hit in any part that is not its head. Suffocation is completely non-applicable, as it either phases through or immediately destroys any block it touches.

The dragon is immune to all status effects, such as poison and even "instant" effects like instant damage.

By using the shortcut, the dragon's bounding box appears. It cannot be damaged at just any spot in this large volume: eight green sub-hitboxes are also shown, which indicate the locations where the dragon can take damage: The tail, body, head, and wings.

Movement
The ender dragon is a flying mob, which cannot actually stand on the ground. It flies around the end main island while fighting the player.

The dragon can pass through all blocks, destroying almost all types. Blocks not destroyed are those that naturally generate on the central End island and those that are intended to be indestructible:


 * Command Block
 * End portal (block)
 * End gateway (block)
 * ‌[upcoming: JE 1.16 & BE 1.16.0]
 * End portal (block)
 * End gateway (block)
 * ‌[upcoming: JE 1.16 & BE 1.16.0]
 * End gateway (block)
 * ‌[upcoming: JE 1.16 & BE 1.16.0]
 * ‌[upcoming: JE 1.16 & BE 1.16.0]

Attacking


The dragon never targets any entity but the player. Other mobs may turn hostile to the dragon when struck. Any entities hit by its wings are dealt damage (or  damage if hit by its head) and are thrown into the air, sometimes to fatal heights or even off the island. Neither of these effects is applied for $1/4$ second after the dragon takes damage.

The ender dragon has four main states of behavior:


 * Circling
 * The dragon begins in this state: it circles the ring of obsidian pillars on either the outside if there are still End crystals or the inside if the crystals are destroyed.
 * With each crystal's destruction, there is an increased chance of the dragon switching states.
 * Targeting
 * Whenever the dragon finds itself less than 10 blocks or greater than 150 blocks from its current target, it attempts to choose a new target. When damaged it targets a point just behind itself, causing it to turn away and choose a new target.


 * Strafing
 * Upon the destruction of an End crystal, the dragon immediately switches to this state to fire a fireball at them.
 * The dragon targets a player within 64 blocks of the central exit portal structure. As soon as it is flying within 64 blocks of the player, it shoots a fireball at the player.
 * The dragon resumes circling after this state.


 * Diving
 * The dragon dives onto the target player's position, taken at the start of the dive.
 * The dragon resumes circling after this state, whether or not it actually hit the player.


 * Perching
 * The dragon goes to the exit portal structure (approaching from the side opposite the player if possible) and lands on the highest block of the coordinates (x=0, z=0). The dragon is immune to arrows in this state (they all catch fire and bounce off).
 * Dragon's Breath
 * After 1.25 seconds, if a player is within 20 blocks of the exit portal structure, the dragon roars and use its 3-second breath attack, damaging players similarly to a lingering potion of Harming.
 * The purple clouds emitted from the dragon's breath attack can be collected in an empty bottle to obtain dragon's breath.
 * Charge
 * If the player is not near the portal within 5 seconds of the dragon's landing, it charges at players within 150 blocks.
 * Take-off
 * After four consecutive breath attacks, or if the dragon fails to locate a player within 150 blocks, it takes off from its perch.
 * The dragon resumes circling after this state.
 * Escape
 * If cumulative damage taken while perched exceeds, the dragon takes off and resets the damage accumulator. The accumulator is not reset if it does not take enough damage.
 * The dragon resumes circling after this state.

When the dragon finally takes a fatal blow, it flies toward the exit portal structure before dying, unless it cannot find it within 150 blocks, or it is inside blocks.

Dragon Fireball
Dragon fireballs are special fireballs that the Ender dragon fires while strafing. They cannot be deflected unlike ghast fireballs, and they do no impact damage. Instead, they deposit purple clouds across the ground, similar to a lingering Potion of Harming II. As with its close-ranged breath attack, the purple fog can be bottled to obtain the dragon's breath.

Fireballs fired by Ender dragons also have entity data associated with them that define various properties of the entity.

Data values
The ender dragon has entity data containing various entity properties.



Summon command
The command, by default, summons a harmless ender dragon that hovers in place. Setting the  tag (by issuing either the  or the  commands) starts the ender dragon's ordinary behavior, although there can still be no health bar, since it's managed by the End's dragon fight status rather than by the dragon entity itself. If spawned away from the center of the map (x=0, z=0), it flies to the center then resumes normal behavior (see ).

Trivia

 * Health depletion effect of The Void does not affect Ender Dragons.
 * If low enough on health, the ender dragon emits beams of light without dying, as if it cracked.
 * Name tags cannot be used on an ender dragon.
 * The ender dragon's hitbox is larger than the ender dragon itself, causing players to be pushed away from it.
 * If the player kills a summoned dragon in the Overworld or Nether, it does not create a portal, nor an egg.
 * In Spectator mode, the player cannot view the perspective of the ender dragon, unlike any other mob.
 * Using F3+B to show hitboxes reveals that the ender dragon's head rotation faces in the opposite direction to that which its real head faces. This is also why the ender dragon faces the wrong way when set in a monster spawner.
 * When an ender dragon is spawned in the Overworld, it flies to coordinates x=0 and z=0 and dives at the ground or does the same behavior as if in the End. If Ender Crystals are placed in the overworld, they heal the dragon as normal, but it does not perch anywhere, and continues to fly around forever.
 * When perching, the ender dragon always faces roughly west, although the exact direction can vary by several degrees.

Notch-related

 * On Reddit, Notch referred to the ender dragon as a she, and suggested her name to be "Jean?" in the same manner he called the Player "Steve?".
 * Dinnerbone later stated that he thinks the name is officially "Jean?"
 * The Xbox avatar item 'Ender Dragon Pet' has the description 'A cuter, friendlier version of his bigger, less playful Minecraft sister.'- confirming that the ender dragon is female.
 * As the ender dragon drops an ender egg, this also hints to a female identity.
 * Before it was textured, Notch reported that he was afraid to texture the ender dragon as it was a complicated model. In the end, the dragon model was so complex Notch stated that he gave up making the texture manually and wrote a texture packer tool to aid him in adding the texture to the model. Notch also uploaded the code for the tool so others could use the pack.
 * Notch joked about how Minecraft was "going next-gen" when deadmau5 mentioned this.
 * Notch has uploaded a video showing why ender dragons do not spawn in the main world, as they would destroy any block they touch.
 * On Reddit, Notch explained why ender dragons destroy overworld matter and phase through ender matter.