Eye of Ender

The Eye of Ender (or Ender Eye) is a craftable item used to locate and activate End Portals. Eyes can be used to activate End Portals by being placed into empty End Portal Frames until the entire ring of 12 frames is filled (built as if a Nether portal), thereby activating the End Portal. They are used as an aid in finding the End Portal by leading the player to an End Portal Frame inside of a Stronghold by right-clicking while it is in your hand, which will throw the Eye of Ender in the direction of the closest End Portal Frame. Eyes of Ender are also used in the crafting of an Ender Chest. The Eye of Ender resembles a cat's eye with a dilated pupil.

Acquisition
The Eye of Ender is one of the harder items to craft. Although only two items are needed to create an Eye of Ender, these two items are both challenging to get hold of. The Ender Pearl is found as a Drop from Endermen. To acquire the Pearl, the player must first locate an Enderman and kill it. Endermen are one of the rarer mobs, and finding one may pose a challenge in itself. Successfully killing an Enderman is also a tough prospect due to the Enderman's teleporting ability and the high amount of damage they can inflict.

The second item needed is Blaze Powder, which is crafted from Blaze Rods. To craft, a player must put at least one Blaze Rod anywhere on the Crafting Table. To acquire the Blaze Powder needed to craft the Eye of Ender, the player must travel to The Nether and find and kill a Blaze. Blaze drop a Blaze Rod when killed. Blaze are another tough mob to kill, as their long range fireball attack can be hard to dodge, and the fact that they spawn in a Nether Fortress from a Mob Spawner means that they are more common in Nether Fortresses.

Another way to acquire an Eye Of Ender is through trading with NPC Villagers. It costs between 7 and 10 emeralds. In this way, it can be acquired without having to find endermen or travel to the nether.

Uses


The Eye of Ender is primarily used for locating End Portals, along with their strongholds. When thrown, it will float diagonally upwards for twelve blocks in the direction of the nearest Ender Portal Frame, traveling through any type of block, leaving a trail of purple particles. It will float in the air for three seconds before either falling back to the ground as a collectable item or shattering into pieces and disappearing. If it does shatter, it means that you are not near a portal. When thrown within twenty blocks of a Stronghold's portal, it will float toward the ground directly above the portal. Locating the portal requires minimum of two eyes, if triangulating method is used. This however requires some mathematical skills, but is very efficient and accurate.

Players traveling to The End are advised to craft multiple Eyes of Ender since each one has a chance of disappearing after being used to locate the Stronghold containing the portal and up to 12 Eyes will be needed to activate it.

The Eye is also the key ingredient in the crafting of an Ender Chest, which will enable a network of chests to be set up, with the items placed in the chest being stored automatically in every Ender Chest created. For more detailed information, click the link (Ender Chest) to see the main page for the chests.

The Eye of Ender is one of the more useful items available. Its ability to locate a Stronghold can give the player access to the Stronghold's resources, such as Stone Bricks, Bookshelves and Iron Bars. The Eye of Ender is also needed to light the End Portal, although up to twelve Eyes may be needed to complete the Portal.

Bugs

 * Sometimes when trying to locate a stronghold, the eyes will lead you in circles, even though you may be up to 1000 blocks away from the stronghold. This bug can make it difficult to find a stronghold, as it may mislead you.The best way to fix this is to walk a ways past this circle in the way the eyes first led you. Then throw the eye again.


 * When the eye is thrown over water, it will dissappear instead of dropping back to an item, making it unretrievable. Whether or not this is linked to the EnderMen's weakness to water is unknown.

Trivia

 * If the world is generated with the "Generate structures" option disabled, the Eye of Ender will lead you to the place where the Stronghold would have been generated.
 * The Eye of Ender's right-click function only works in the Overworld in normal worlds. It does nothing in the Nether, the End, or in Superflat worlds, as there are no Strongholds there.
 * In Weekly 12w21a, you can now trade Eyes of Ender for Emerald. This means you can now get easy Emeralds, especially if you have both a Blaze and Enderman farm.
 * In the 12w22a snapshot, you can buy Eyes of Ender, which means you can potentially activate the end portal without ever setting foot in the nether.