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 generated structures found on the outer islands of the End. They are inhabited by shulkers and hold among the most valuable loot in the game, including elytra and the dragon head.

Generation
End cities naturally generate on the outer islands of the End, accesible 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 your end gateway portal teleports you to a small island, you 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 more Those who travel farther out will have the best chances of finding one; those who travel along the inner rim of the outer islands may travel for thousands of blocks before finding a city.

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, including:


 * Base rooms, which are empty rooms found at the base of each end 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 pirate-ship like structure that may generate alongside end cities. These floating structures are built similarly to classical pirate ships, and are made of purpur blocks and end stone bricks, just like the city’s main towers. The ship will generate in front of a pier, which is simply a bridge with a small open arch at the end, from which the player can throw an ender pearl to reach the ship.

On the outside, the main deck is relatively empty, with the only significant objects being a ladder that leads up the mast to the viewing point, a single staircase that leads to the upper deck, and an entrance to the cabin below.

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

The floor of the treasure room is lined with obsidian. It two chests that contain highly valuable loot and an item frame holding a pair of elytra wings. A shulker guards the elytra wings and the two loot chests.

A dragon head can also be seen at the bow of the ship, making this currently the only natural way to obtain the dragon head.

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.