Minecraft Ender Dragon Guide: How to Prepare, Fight, and Win

Defeating the Minecraft Ender Dragon is one of the key goals for any player in survival mode. Nonetheless, the battle against this beast is much more difficult than fighting the majority of mobs in the game. It requires proper preparation, finding the Stronghold, activating the End Portal, destroying the End Crystals, and killing the Dragon itself.

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So, if you want to discover how to beat the Ender Dragon and what to do next, our guide is just for you! We’ll go through all the possible ways to fight this mob and provide you with the tips to ensure you survive this encounter.

What Is the Ender Dragon in Minecraft?

The Ender Dragon is Minecraft's final boss that lives in the End dimension and is the main antagonist in the game. This flying hostile mob features the largest model in the game, dark scales, and glowing purple eyes. The Dragon can deliver melee hits, breathe a damaging purple cloud, and shoot dragon fireballs. Also, it restores its health via End Crystals on tall obsidian pillars.

The fight takes place on the main End island, an asteroid-like central landmass located in the Void. In addition to the Ender Dragon, you’ll also meet many Endermen, who may also make it more difficult to defeat the beast. Nonetheless, if you manage to win the Ender Dragon fight, the exit portal to the Overworld and End Gateways to the outer islands will appear, allowing you to visit the outer End islands.

How to Reach The End in Minecraft

Well, before you even start fighting the Ender Dragon, you should know how to find the End Portal in Minecraft. Of course, you can start digging randomly, hoping that you’ll eventually find the Stronghold with the Minecraft End Portal. However, it’s way more reasonable to follow a more efficient way to reach the End:

1. Collect Blaze Powder: First of all, go to the Nether to find a Nether Fortress. There, you’ll need to defeat Blazes to obtain Blaze Rods and turn them into Blaze Powder.
2. Hunt Endermen: Start killing Endermen in the Overworld to collect Ender Pearls.
3. Craft Eyes of Ender: Use a crafting table to combine Blaze Powder and Ender Pearls to make Eyes of Ender. As a rule, you’ll need up to 16 Eyes of Ender.
4. Find the Stronghold: Another important step in our Minecraft Ender Dragon guide is searching for the Stronghold, which is located deep underground. Throw your Eyes of Ender into the air, and they’ll fly in the direction of the nearest Stronghold. Once you notice that the eyes start going straight down, start digging carefully until you reach the stone brick walls.
5. Find and activate the End Portal: The Stronghold consists of numerous rooms, but your task is to find the one with the End Portal and a lava pit. Approach the frame and right-click the End Portal frame blocks to fill them all with your Eyes of Ender if necessary. Once all 12 frames have an eye, the portal to the End will be activated.

Before you jump right into the portal, it’ll be a good idea to find out what to bring to the Ender Dragon fight. Consider that it’ll be a challenging battle without being able to leave the End until you kill the dragon or die. Thus, it requires proper preparation.

How to prepare for the fight with the Ender Dragon 

Don’t enter the End dimension in Minecraft without ensuring you have the items and blocks from this checklist:

• Enchanted diamond or netherite armor.
• A diamond or netherite sword and a diamond axe.
• Bow or crossbow with plenty of arrows.
• Diamond pickaxe and several stacks of cobblestone.
• Food and a water bucket.
• Slow Falling and Healing potions.
• Ender pearls for teleportation.
• Carved pumpkin to reduce the chance of provoking Endermen.
• Empty glass bottles to collect Dragon's Breath.
• Totem of Undying (highly recommended).

Also, before you jump into the portal, it’ll be a good idea to place a bed near the portal and sleep through the night, so you can respawn near the End Portal if something goes wrong. You should also prepare a chest with spare gear so you can immediately get ready to continue the fight.

Ender Dragon Fight: Risks to Consider

Our Minecraft Ender Dragon solo guide also offers a list of the main dangers waiting for you in the End. It’s better to avoid them at any cost if you don’t want to reduce your winning chances significantly:

1. Don’t take all your valuable gear or rare items. Fighting the Ender Dragon is a challenging quest, especially for new players, so if something goes wrong and you die, you should still have powerful items to return and defeat the dragon.
2. Avoid placing beds in the End. Although using beds is an efficient strategy against the Ender Dragon, it can cause a lot of damage to the player.
3. Never rely solely on a melee weapon. Yeah, an enchanted diamond sword is great for defeating a dragon, but you’ll also need ranged weapons, food, potions, and extra blocks to build structures for reaching End Crystals.
4. Avoid looking into the Endermen’s eyes. A dragon itself is a dangerous threat, and you surely don’t want to make the fight more difficult by provoking hordes of Endermen.
5. Stay away from the island’s edge. If you accidentally fall into the Void, you won’t just die but also lose all your items with no chance to get them back.

End Crystals explained

This part of our Ender Dragon guide is essential to read if you don’t want to spend hours trying to kill the boss and wondering how it restores health. Once you reach the main End island, you’ll see large obsidian pillars with magical crystals:

End Crystals are blocks that can heal the Ender Dragon during battle. They trigger a massive explosion when attacked, causing enough damage to seriously injure or kill nearby players. Also, two of the ten End Crystals may be caged inside iron bars to prevent players from shooting them with a bow or crossbow.

If you want to learn how to beat the Ender Dragon in Minecraft, consider destroying the crystals before you start the key damage phase. This ensures the boss won’t get extra health, negating your efforts.

How to destroy End Crystals safely

So, how can you approach and destroy End Crystals without getting blown up? Here are some practical tactics:

• Shoot End Crystals from a distance with your bow or crossbow.
• Build safe pillars of blocks to get to caged End Crystals, use a pickaxe to break a gap through the iron cage, shoot, and immediately hide behind the blocks.
• Always keep a water bucket in your inventory to use it if you accidentally fall from a pillar.
• Keep watching the Ender Dragon while destroying the crystals to dodge its attacks in time.
• Always keep a long distance from End Crystals.

How to fight the Ender Dragon

Let’s get straight to how to survive the Ender Dragon fight so you can collect the rewards after your victory. We can divide the entire battle into two stages:

Also, try to avoid Endermen during each stage if you don’t want to make the fight much more difficult. However, if you accidentally provoke them, use water to create some safe space.

Dragon’s Breath

Dragon’s Breath Minecraft mechanic is unique because it’s not just the boss’s attack or a rare brewing item that you can obtain during the fight. Once you see the dragon breathing a purple mist onto the ground or shooting purple dragon fireballs, use an empty glass bottle to collect the Dragon’s Breath cloud.

Afterward, you can combine Dragon's Breath with any Splash Potion using a Brewing Stand to craft Lingering Potions. Also, if you combine a Lingering Potion with arrows in a crafting grid, you’ll make tipped arrows. These projectiles apply different status effects once they hit a target.

Endermen during the fight

Endermen may become an even bigger threat than a dragon itself if you provoke too many of them. Thus, you should always stay careful in the End and avoid looking in their eyes. Alternatively, you can equip a Carved Pumpkin, but consider that it’ll reduce your visibility, making it more difficult to keep an eye on the dragon. Also, keep a water bucket in your inventory in case the situation gets out of control. By placing water, you’ll create enough safe space to prevent Endermen from attacking you.

Finally, these mobs are less threatening when fighting the Minecraft Ender Dragon with friends. In that case, decide who attacks the dragon and who focuses on killing Endermen.

Bed strategy warning

Some players also opt for a bed strategy. It involves placing beds near the Exit Portal when the dragon lands near it. This causes an explosion that deals massive damage (up to 30 hearts). 

At this point, you may wonder: “Are beds good against the Ender Dragon?” Well, they surely are, but the strategy itself is too risky, especially for new players. Thus, we strongly recommend using it only after practicing in Creative mode.

Rewards after defeating the Dragon

So, you’ve managed to kill the beast, and you’re probably wondering what happens after killing Ender Dragon. First of all, you’ll get a lot of valuable rewards:

• XP: The first time a player kills the dragon, they get 12,000 experience points. The subsequent dragon kills will drop only 500 XP.
• Dragon Egg: This is a unique trophy block that spawns on top of the Exit Portal.
• Exit Portal: You can finally return to the Overworld.
• Minecraft End Gateways: Small bedrock portal frames will appear, allowing the players to throw an Ender Pearl through and teleport to outer End islands. There you’ll discover End Cities and Ships, where you can find Elytra and Shulkers, whose shells you can use to craft portable storage boxes.

What to do after beating the Ender Dragon

After killing the dragon, we strongly recommend you explore the End before returning to the Overworld. Here is a checklist to ensure you won’t miss anything:

• Collect the Dragon Egg
• Search for End Cities to get an Elytra and Shulker Shells
• Find chorus fruit
• Build an Enderman farm
• Respawn the Dragon if you want to initiate a boss fight once again

How to Respawn the Ender Dragon

The Dragon Egg isn’t just a decoration for your home. It’s one of the rarest items in the game, since it appears only after the first defeat of the Ender Dragon.

At the same time, if you want, you can respawn the boss an infinite number of times in Minecraft. To do it, you’ll need to craft four End Crystals using 28 glass, four Ghast Tears, and four Eyes of Ender. With the End Crystals in your inventory, go to the main island in the End and place one crystal on each side of the Exit Portal:

Step back and watch the beams shoot into the sky. They’ll also reset the obsidian towers and bring the dragon back. Defeating the respawned boss will give fewer experience points (500 XP).

Solo vs Multiplayer Ender Dragon Fight

Solo fighting against the Ender Dragon requires you to be extremely careful, since even the tiniest mistake may cost you the loss of your valuable items. However, if you prefer playing on online servers together with your friends, it may be way easier to win this encounter, especially if you divide the roles between your team members:

• Crystal Shooter: A player responsible for the destruction of the crystals. Once all the crystals are destroyed, this player starts shooting the dragon.
• Tower Climber: A team member who destroys the caged crystals.
• Endermen Watcher: A player who protects your team from Endermen attacks.
• Melee Fighter: A player who attacks the dragon when it lands on the ground.
• Support: A teammate who takes care of the entire team by building covers and preparing items necessary during the fight.

Besides, when you host an online Minecraft survival server, it’ll be a good idea to set clear rules regarding sharing the obtained rewards. Decide fairly who will get the Dragon Egg, Elytras, and other useful resources.

Common Mistakes During the Dragon Fight

Now, you know how to get the Dragon Egg in Minecraft after defeating one of the most dangerous bosses in the game. However, you may still make some mistakes, so we’ve listed the things that may turn the adventure in the End into a real catastrophe:

• Entering the End dimension without a crossbow, bow, and materials to craft them.
• Forgetting blocks for building covers and climbing the obsidian pillars.
• Not bringing enough food, which can leave you vulnerable and eventually kill you.
• Looking directly into the eyes of every Enderman you meet in the End.
• Walking too close to the edge of the island and falling into the Void after getting hit by the dragon or an Enderman.
• Staying too close to the Ender Crystals when damaging them.

• Using beds without really understanding the bed strategy.
• Ignoring Dragon’s Breath clouds or forgetting empty glass bottles.
• Leaving no backup gear in the Outerworld.
• Not setting a respawn point near the End Portal.

We strongly recommend avoiding the mentioned mistakes so you can successfully defeat the Dragon and collect valuable rewards. At the same time, don’t get too upset if you get killed by the dragon for the first time, since fighting against it may take several attempts, especially if you’re a new player.