When initially approaching the End, the ender dragon is a massive flying hostile boss mob. She is the game’s largest naturally spawning monster and is commonly regarded as the game’s last boss Ender Dragon in Minecraft.
Spawning
The ender dragon, along with the bedrock frame for the escape portal, spawns 20 ticks after an entity first lands in the End.
The first spawning
Re-summoning
Players may resurrect the ender dragon by planting four end crystals, one on each side of the exit portal. The four end crystals point to the summits of each pillar when the dragon is re-summoned, causing a sequence of explosions that reset the obsidian pillars, iron bars, and end crystals. Each pillar’s top bursts, destroying all blocks put by the player. Eventually, all of the end crystals will point to (0, 128, 0), where the ender dragon will hatch. The four crystals around the escape portal then detonate. The dragon egg vanishes if the player does not pick up the dragon egg and begins to re-summon the dragon.
Ender Dragon in Minecraft
If a dragon passes through an end gateway, another spawns at (0, 128, 0), while the other dragon flies to (0, 128, 0). ( 0, 128, 0 ).
Drops
Following the initial slaying of the ender dragon, the following events occur:
- Her wings and body become more torn as she ascends, until she vanishes in a blaze of light exploding from her heart.
- A total of 12,000 experience points (ten drops of 960 and one drop of 2400) are released, which is enough to raise a player from level 0 to level 68.
- The end portal interface fills in the bedrock structure to create the exit portal, allowing the player to return to the Overworld and respawn at their spawn spot.
- Above the island’s primary bedrock structure, a dragon egg emerges. The dragon egg spawns 1 block above the topmost block in the centre of the core bedrock structure if a block exists directly above it (0,0). The dragon egg does not hatch if the topmost block is at the height limit.
- Within 75–100 blocks of the exit portal, an end gateway portal is created.
The same events occur when a re-summoned ender dragon is slain, with the exception that only 500 experience points are lost [Java Edition only] and no more than 20 gateway portals are formed. The dragon egg occurs the first and second times the ender dragon is slaughtered in Java Edition, as well as the first and second times in Bedrock Edition; it does not appear after any further dragon slayings.
Behavior
Unique music named “Boss” plays during the battle with the ender dragon, the borders of the screen darken, and black fog arises. This continues as long as the player is fighting the dragon, unless there are no other players within 190 blocks (0, 128, 0).
A pale purple health bar displays at the top of the player’s screen for the ender dragon. Nearby end crystals regularly replenish her health, as seen by a mystical white beam linking the dragon to the crystal. The dragon takes 10 damage when an end crystal that is actively healing her is destroyed.
The dragon is solely vulnerable to explosions and player-based damage, and suffers (14% regular damage + 1) when hit on any area of her body other than her head, making her the game’s most tough monster. Suffocation is irrelevant since she either phases through or destroys every barrier she comes into contact with.
All status affects have no impact on the dragon.
The dragon’s bounding box displays when you press F3 + B.
[Only for Java Edition] She can’t be hurt in any part of this massive volume: There are also eight green sub-hitboxes that highlight where the dragon can receive damage: the tail, body, head, and wings.
Movement
The ender dragon is a winged creature that cannot stand on its own. She fights the player while flying around the end of the main island.
The dragon can move through all blocks and destroy practically all of them, but it is still vulnerable to flowing water, lava, and bubble columns. Except for crying obsidian and respawn anchors, blocks that naturally form on the centre End island and those that are meant to be indestructible are not destroyed:
- Barrier
- Bedrock
- Command Block
- Crying Obsidian
- End stone
- End portal (block)
- End portal frame
- End gateway (block)
- Iron bars
- Light Block[needs testing][upcoming: JE 1.19]
- Obsidian
- Reinforced Deepslate[upcoming: 1.19]
- Respawn Anchor
- Structure Block
These blocks are identified in Java Edition by the dragon immune tag.
Containers (such as chests and dispensers, but not shulker boxes) lose their contents, whereas destroyed blocks do not.
Attacking
The dragon never attacks anything other than the player. When the dragon is struck, other mobs may become hostile. Any creatures hit by her wings take 5 damage (or 10 damage if hit by her head) and are propelled into the air, often to dangerous heights or even off the island in Java Edition. After the dragon suffers damage, neither of these effects is administered for 12 seconds.
The ender dragon has four distinct personalities:
Guarding
In this condition, the dragon circles the ring of obsidian pillars on the outside if end crystals are still present, or on the inside if the crystals have been destroyed. She receives damage with each crystal she destroys, and the dragon’s chances of flipping states rise.
Targeting
The dragon tries to pick a new target if she is fewer than 10 blocks or more than 150 blocks away from her present target. She turns aside and chooses a new target when she is harmed and targets a place immediately behind her.
Strafing
The dragon shifts to strafing after destroying an end crystal. She fires a fireball at the player as soon as she gets within 64 blocks.
After this condition, the dragon resumes its circling.
Diving
The dragon dives upon the position of the target player, which was chosen at the start of the dive.
Whether or whether the dragon really hit the player, the dragon keeps circling following this condition.
Perching
When the dragon is Guarding and has reached the end of the road, she has a 1 in 3 chance (7.7% to 33%) of going to the exit portal structure (approaching from the side opposing the player if feasible) and landing on the tallest block of the coordinates (x=0, z=0), up to (y=101).
Breath of the Dragon
Unless the player is on Peaceful difficulty, the dragon roars and uses her 3-second breath attack every 1.25 seconds if they are within 20 blocks of the exit portal construction, inflicting damage comparable to a lingering potion of Harming. Wherever the breath assault impacts a block, a visible region of visible particles in the shape of a horizontal disc one block tall and 5 to 6 blocks in diameter appears, either on the ground or floating in the air. The damaging effect zone, which causes the player to incur damage, is restricted to a smaller region in the middle of the visible cloud, encompassing around 3 to 4 blocks.
To gain dragon’s breath, collect the harmful effect portion of the purple clouds released by the dragon’s breath assault in a glass container. Each bottle of dragon’s breath gathered eliminates one block from the breath attack’s lingering damage zone. Whether the dragon’s breath is bottled or not, the visible clouds last 3 seconds. Even a direct hit from the breath attack may be mainly or completely nullified by fast collecting all of the damaging blocks, generally around three, before the player takes any damage.
Charge
She charges towards players within 150 blocks if the person is not near the portal within 5 seconds of the dragon landing.
Take-off
The dragon will leave her perch after four consecutive breath assaults or if she cannot locate a player within 150 blocks. She always takes off in Peaceful difficulty, making melee attacks tough.
After this condition, the dragon resumes its circling.
Escape
The dragon lifts off and resets the damage accumulator if total damage suffered while perched surpasses 50 25. If she does not take enough damage, the accumulator is not reset.
After this condition, the dragon resumes its circling.
Unless she can’t find it within 150 blocks or it’s inside blocks, the dragon will fly toward the escape portal structure before dying.
Dragon fireballs
Dragon fireballs are unique fireballs fired by the ender dragon while strafing. Unlike ghast fireballs, they cannot be deflected and deal no harm on hit. Instead, they scatter purple effect clouds across the ground, inflicting damage similar to a lingering Potion of Harming. This implies that the ender dragon’s fireballs do magical damage, regardless of the player’s armor’s damage mitigation. However, armour equipped with the Protection enchantment reduces its damage.
The purple clouds, like her close-ranged breath strike, may be bottled to get the dragon’s breath.
Command details
By default, the /summon ender dragon command summons an ender dragon that hovers in situ [JE only]. Setting the DragonPhase tag (using the /summon ender dragon DragonPhase:0 or /data merge entity selector> DragonPhase:0 commands) initiates the ender dragon’s normal behaviour, though the health bar does not appear because it is controlled by the ender dragon fight status rather than the dragon entity herself [JE only]. She flies to the centre of the map if created distant from it (x=0, z=0), then continues regular behaviour (see #Behavior).
Because the ender dragon is made up of 9 entities internally [Java Edition only], target selectors for the ender dragon target a total of 9 entities per dragon. So, summoning an arrow at a dragon summons 9 arrows.
