The ender dragon is a dangerous, flying boss mob found when first entering the End. It is also the largest mob naturally spawning in the game.
Spawning
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
This image shows how the player can arrange end crystals to respawn the ender dragon.
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 Player did not pick up the dragon egg and start re-summon the dragon, the dragon egg will disappear.
Drops
Once slain, the ender dragon slowly ascends, its wings and body becoming more tattered until it wilts into nothingness, 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) — 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 only, its egg warps in 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 10![]()
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damage to it.
The dragon can take damage only from explosions and player based damage, and takes 1⁄4 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.
The green hitboxes of the Ender Dragon.
By using the F3 + B 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:
- Obsidian
- End stone
- Bedrock
- Command Block
- Barrier
- Iron bars
- End portal (block)
- End portal frame
- End gateway (block)
- Crying Obsidian
- Structure Block
Attacking
The dragon "bathing" endermen with its toxic breath attack.
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 5![]()
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damage (or 10![]()
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damage if hit by its head) and are thrown into the air, sometimes to fatal heights or even off the island. However, this is actually unintetional. Neither of these effects is applied for 1⁄2 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 50
× 25, 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.
- Entity data
- Tags common to all entities
- Tags common to all fireballs
- Tags common to all projectiles
Sounds
| Sound | Subtitles | Source | Description | Resource location | Translation key | Volume | Pitch | Attenuation distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dragon roars | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Dragon dies | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Dragon flaps | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Dragon growls | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Dragon hurts | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Dragon shoots | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Explosion | ? | ? | entity | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 |
Data values
The ender dragon has entity data containing various entity properties.
- Entity data
- Tags common to all entities
- Tags common to all mobs
- DragonPhase: A number indicating the dragon's current state. Valid values are: 0=circling, 1=strafing (preparing to shoot a fireball), 2=flying to the portal to land (part of transition to landed state), 3=landing on the portal (part of transition to landed state), 4=taking off from the portal (part of transition out of landed state), 5=landed, performing breath attack, 6=landed, looking for a player for breath attack, 7=landed, roar before beginning breath attack, 8=charging player, 9=flying to portal to die, 10=hovering with no AI (default when using the
/summoncommand).
A dragon fireball spawned by a command (Left) and the damage and the explosion it caused (Right).
Summon command
The /summon ender_dragon command, by default, summons a harmless ender dragon that hovers in place. Setting the DragonPhase tag (by issuing either the /summon ender_dragon ~ ~ ~ {DragonPhase:0} or the /data merge entity <targetUUID> {DragonPhase:0} 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 #Behavior).
Achievements
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Gamerscore earned | Trophy type (PS4) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PS4 | Other | |||||
| The End? | Enter an End Portal | Enter a stronghold End Portal activated with all twelve eyes of ender. | 20G | Gold | ||
| The End | Kill the Enderdragon [sic] | Enter the end exit portal. | 40G | Bronze | ||
| You Need a Mint | Collect dragons breath in a glass bottle | Have a dragon's breath bottle in your inventory | 30G | Silver | ||
| The End... Again... | Respawn the Enderdragon [sic] | — | 30G | Silver | ||
Advancements
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Parent | Actual requirements (if different) | Resource location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | Free the End | Good luck | The End | Kill the ender dragon. If multiple players are involved in the dragon fight, only the player that deals the final blow to the dragon receives the advancement.[1] | end/kill_dragon
|
![]() | The Next Generation | Hold the Dragon Egg | Free the End | Have a dragon egg in your inventory. | end/dragon_egg
|
![]() | The End... Again... | Respawn the Ender Dragon | Free the End | Be within a 192 block radius from the coordinates (0.0, 128, 0.0) when an ender dragon is summoned using end crystals. | end/respawn_dragon
|
![]() | You Need a Mint | Collect Dragon's Breath in a Glass Bottle | Free the End | Have a bottle of dragon's breath in your inventory. | end/dragon_breath
|
![]() | Monster Hunter | Kill any hostile monster | Adventure | Kill one of these 34 mobs:
| adventure/kill_a_mob
|
![]() | Monsters Hunted | Kill one of every hostile monster | Monster Hunter | Kill each of these 34 mobs:
| adventure/kill_all_mobs
|
History
| June 14, 2009 | Notch believed that survival mode should have some sort of goal, which he had not yet formulated: "While it could be fun to just see how long you can survive in survival mode, I believe there might be a need for some kind of goal. Make the most money in a month? Kill a big evil mob in the shortest time? I don’t know yet." | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 30, 2010 | In a video called "Minecraft Flight" posted by Notch on YouTube, he mentioned that dragon lairs may be an addition in the video description. | ||||
| August 31, 2010 | Later in an interview on MinecraftCon 2010, Notch hinted at dragons as a possible planned mob. Then, for about one year, there was no more mention of it and dragons solely remained a potential work-in-progress. | ||||
| June 18, 2011 | Notch has stated in the past that if dragons are added, they would not be mountable as it would put too much pressure on multiplayer servers. | ||||
| September 1, 2011 | Notch stated that "dragons will be added eventually". | ||||
| October 6, 2011 | The name "ender dragon" was first made known through a tweet by Notch reading "raqreqentba", which could be decoded using the ROT13 cipher, translating to "enderdragon". | ||||
| October 7, 2011 | Notch reveals a screenshot of the "progress so far" on the ender dragon: the dragon flying through the skies of the End. He also shared an album of images of the ender dragon in flight through the Overworld, showcasing its animation. | ||||
| October 9, 2011 | Notch tweets an example of a "texture packer tool" he wrote for the purpose of giving the ender dragon its skin. He shared his progress midway through designing the skin, later announced when the base texture was done, and posted when he had enlarged the wings. | ||||
| October 10, 2011 | Notch released a video showing a small clip of the End that also shows the ender dragon fly into the top of the frame. "Brightened version here". | ||||
| October 12, 2011 | In a Reddit post Notch also said, "They will be different dragons. The Ender Dragon will probably become larger, and the ones in the main world will be this size, won't go through terrain, and will be red because dragons are red."[2] | ||||
| Notch stated in a Twitter post that "Dragons have 6 limbs", consisting of 2 wings, and 4 legs.[3] | |||||
| Java Edition | |||||
| 1.0.0 | Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4 | ||||
| The ender dragon currently exists in the code, mostly functional, however, the dragon has not been enabled in-game yet and players are unable to damage it. Certain mods can allow the spawning of the ender dragon, but again, no physical interactions are currently available. | |||||
| Beta 1.9 Prerelease 5 | Added the ability for players to damage ender dragons. Ender dragons require mods or a mob-spawner to be brought into the game, however. | ||||
| The ender dragon's health has been changed to 1 | |||||
| Beta 1.9 Prerelease 6 | Ender dragons has been officially implemented into the game. This includes a single ender dragon as a boss battle, spawning naturally when the player first enters the End. | ||||
| April 28, 2012 | Jeb mentioned that he wouldn't be adding any more boss mobs until he makes the ender dragon "more fun first". | ||||
| 1.3.1 | ? | The bug where after being damaged once, ender dragons would do no contact damage has been fixed. | |||
| The experience drop of ender dragons has been reduced from 20,000 to 12,000. | |||||
| 1.4.2 | 12w34b | "Boss Health" now says "Ender Dragon". | |||
| ? | Before this update, ender dragons used the same damage sound as the player. Ender dragons now have their own sound. | ||||
| 1.5 | ? | A bug where swords take no damage when used on the ender dragon has been fixed. | |||
| 1.5.1 | 13w11a | Before this snapshot, the gamerule mobGriefing didn't prevent the ender dragons from destroying blocks when they fly through them. Now, mobGriefing from the /gamerule command prevents the ender dragon from destroying blocks at their sight. | |||
| 2013 Music Update | A music track now accompanies the ender dragon boss fight. | ||||
| 1.8 | 14w20a | The ender dragon no longer breaks barriers. | |||
| 1.9 | 15w31a | The ender dragon boss fight has been revamped to be similar to the Legacy Console Edition. | |||
| The ender dragon no longer destroys iron bars. | |||||
| 15w32a | The ender dragon's fireballs now give off Ender Acid particles upon exploding and no longer light ground on fire. | ||||
| The ender dragon's charge/knockback attack has now returned. | |||||
| The ender dragon's wings now damage the player, prevent side and back melee attacks when the dragon lands on the portal. | |||||
| Dragon breath from the ender dragon now shoots out farther. | |||||
| The ender dragon now immediately charges at the player after finishing the ender acid attack. | |||||
| The ender dragon's ender acid attack now goes around the whole portal. | |||||
| The ender dragon no longer stops attacking from single hits. | |||||
| The ender dragon now flies back to portal before finishing the death animation. | |||||
| The ender dragon no longer takes damage from snowballs, eggs, or other attacks that normally do no damage. | |||||
| 15w32b | When fatally damaged, the ender dragon now flies to the portal and dies rather than resetting to 1 | ||||
| 15w33a | The ender dragon's wings no longer deal damage while the ender dragon is landed. | ||||
| The ender dragon is now immune to arrows while landed. | |||||
| The ender dragon no longer destroys End portal blocks, end portal frame blocks, or End gateway blocks. | |||||
| The ender dragon's breath attack now lasts longer. | |||||
| The ender dragon's fireball attack is now more or less equivalent to a lingering potion of Harming II. | |||||
| 15w33c | Respawned ender dragons now drop 500 experience. | ||||
| Respawning the dragon also respawns the pillars and end crystals. | |||||
| 15w44b | Respawning ender dragons now require placing 4 end crystals near the exit portal. | ||||
| 15w49a | The ender dragon no longer travels through portals. | ||||
| The ender dragon no longer rides rideable entities such as minecarts or boats. | |||||
| The ender dragon no longer affected by status effects. | |||||
| 1.11 | 16w32a | The entity ID of the ender dragon has been changed from EnderDragon to ender_dragon.
| |||
The fireball's entity ID has been changed from DragonFireball to dragon_fireball. | |||||
| 16w35a | Hitboxes of the damageable portions of the ender dragon are now visible using F3 + B. | ||||
| 16w40a | The tags xTile, yTile, zTile, inTile and inGround have been removed from the dragon fireball entity data.
| ||||
The life tag of ender dragons is no longer used for anything, but still saved/read. | |||||
| 16w43a | The ender dragon is now able to draw from its own loot table. | ||||
| 1.15 | 19w39a | The ender dragon no longer has a separate texture for the bottom of its wing anymore. | |||
| 19w41a | A black dot on transparent parts of wing texture has been removed from ender dragons. | ||||
| A texture for part of wing bottom in the exploding ender dragon has been removed. | |||||
| 19w46a | |||||
| Pocket Edition | |||||
| 1.0.0 | alpha 0.17.0.1 | ||||
| alpha 1.0.0.2 | The ender dragon now goes to the nearest end crystal. | ||||
| 1.1.0 | alpha 1.1.0.0 | The entity ID of the ender dragon has been changed from dragon to ender_dragon. | |||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.10.0 | beta 1.10.0.3 | ||||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU9 | CU1 | 1.0 | Patch 1 | ||
| New Nintendo 3DS Edition | |||||
| 1.7.10 | |||||
Issues
Issues relating to "Ender Dragon" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Trivia
- Health depletion effect of The Void does not affect Ender Dragons.
- If low enough on health, the Ender Dragon will give off a few beams of light without dying, as if it was “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.
- When perching, the ender dragon always faces roughly west, although the exact direction can vary by several degrees.
- 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?".[4]
- Dinnerbone later stated that he thinks the name is officially "Jean?"[5]
- 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.
- This is understandable because if the ender dragon was male, it would not make sense why there would be a dragon egg. By killing the dragon and destroying the egg, the player essentially commits genocide against the ender dragon species, unless a new one is spawned in.
- Before it was textured, Notch reported that he was afraid to texture it as it was a complicated model.[6] 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.[7][8]
- Notch joked about how Minecraft was "going next-gen" when deadmau5 mentioned this.[9]
- Notch has uploaded a video showing why ender dragons do not spawn in the main world, as they would destroy any block they touch.[10]
- On Reddit, Notch explained why ender dragons destroy overworld matter and phase through ender matter.[11]
Gallery
Dozens of player-spawned Ender dragons and withers fighting each other.
The ender dragon's death inside netherrack
The ender dragon dying as seen when the player has night vision
- Ender Dragon Mobestiary.jpeg
References
- ↑ MC-199994 — Advancement "Free the End" is only granted to one player
- ↑ http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/l9m8m/why_ender_dragons_wont_spawn_in_main_world/c2qxhwh
- ↑ https://twitter.com/notch/status/124246459775328257
- ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/l9m8m/why_ender_dragons_wont_spawn_in_main_world/c2qxl5z?context=1
- ↑ https://twitter.com/Dinnerbone/status/558263033173389313
- ↑ https://twitter.com/notch/status/122600570170249216
- ↑ https://twitter.com/notch/status/122978062143979522 Twitter; texture packer
- ↑ http://pastebin.com/0AcY6YV2 link to the texture packer
- ↑ https://twitter.com/notch/status/122980577832992768
- ↑ https://youtu.be/XTpFDRZExAg
- ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/l9m8m/why_ender_dragons_wont_spawn_in_main_world/c2qx6qk?context=1





















