Ender Dragon (2024)

The ender dragon is a giant flying hostile boss mob found when first entering the End. She is the largest naturally spawning mob in the game. She guards access to the end gateways that provide entry to the outer end islands in addition to the exit portal that allows return to the Overworld as well as access to the end credits of Minecraft. Her attacks involve charging at the player and her one-of-a-kind dragon acid attacks.

Spawning

Initial spawning

The ender dragon spawns 20 ticks after an entity first arrives in the End, along with the bedrock frame for the exit portal.

Re-summoning

Players can re-summon the dragon by placing four end crystals on the edges of the exit portal, one on each side. When she is re-summoned, the four end crystals point to the tops of each pillar setting off a series of explosions that resets the obsidian pillars, iron bars, and end crystals. The top of each pillar explodes, destroying any player-placed blocks. Eventually, all of the end crystals point at the corner of (0, 128, 0) and the ender dragon spawns there. The four crystals placed around the exit portal then explode. If the player does not pick up the dragon egg and starts to re-summon the dragon, the dragon egg disappears.

If the dragon goes through an end gateway, another immediately spawns at (0, 128, 0) while the other dragon flies to (0, 128, 0).

Drops

After the ender dragon is slain for the first time, the following events take place:

• She slowly ascends, her wings and body becoming more tattered until she disappears in beams of light erupting from her 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. If killed on top of the bedrock structure, some the experience orbs can drop into the exit portal. The experience orbs can then be retrieved in the overworld.
• 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.
• A dragon egg appears above the island's central bedrock structure. If a block exists right above the center of the central bedrock structure, then the dragon egg spawns 1 block above the highest block at (0,0). If the highest block is at the height limit, then the dragon egg does not spawn.
• An end gateway portal is generated floating within 75–100 blocks of the exit portal.

When a re-summoned ender dragon is slain, the same events occur except that only 500 experience points are dropped ‌^{[Java Edition only]} and no more than 20 gateway portals are generated. The dragon egg appears the first time the ender dragon is slain in Java Edition, and the first and second time in Bedrock Edition; it does not appear after any subsequent dragon slaying.

Behavior

During the battle with the ender dragon, unique music called "Boss" plays, the edges of the screen darkens and black fog appears. This happens for as long as the player fights the dragon, except when there is no player within 190 blocks from (0, 128, 0).

The ender dragon has a light purple health bar that appears at the top of the player's screen. Her 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 damage to her.

The dragon can take damage only from explosions and player based damage, and takes damage of (¹⁄₄ × normal damage + 1) when hit on any part that is not her head, making her the most resilient mob in the game. Suffocation is completely non-applicable, as she either phases through or immediately destroys any block she touches.

The dragon is immune to all status effects.

By using the F3 + B shortcut, the dragon's bounding box appears.‌^{[Java Edition only]} She 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. She flies around the end main island while fighting the player.

The dragon can pass through all blocks, destroying almost all types, but can still be affected by flowing water, lava and bubble column. Blocks not destroyed are those that naturally generate on the central End island and those that are intended to be indestructible, such as end stone and respawn anchors:

• Barrier
• Bedrock
• Command Block
• Crying Obsidian
• End stone
• End portal (block)
• End portal frame
• End gateway (block)
• Iron bars
• Light Block^{[needstesting]}
• Obsidian
• Reinforced Deepslate
• Respawn Anchor
• Structure Block

In Java Edition, these blocks are marked under the dragon_immune tag.

Destroyed blocks are not dropped, although containers (such as chests and dispensers, but not shulker boxes) drop their contents.

Attacking

The dragon never targets any entity but the player, although other mobs may turn hostile to the dragon when hit, and the dragon may sometimes retaliate against other mobs if she takes damage to a projectile. Any entities hit by her wings are dealt 5 damage (or 10 damage if hit by her head), and in Java Edition, are thrown into the air, sometimes to fatal heights or even off the island. Neither of these effects is applied for ¹⁄₂ second after the dragon takes damage.

The ender dragon has four main states of behavior:

Guarding

• The dragon begins in this state, circling 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, she takes damage and there is an increased chance of the dragon switching states.

Targeting

• Whenever the dragon finds herself less than 10 blocks or more than 150 blocks from her current target, she attempts to choose a new target. When damaged she targets a point just behind herself, causing her to turn away and choose a new target.

Strafing

• Upon the destruction of an end crystal, the dragon switches to strafing. As soon as she is within 64 blocks, she 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 she actually hit the player.

Perching

• While Guarding and the dragon has reached the end of the path, she has 1 in (3 + crystals alive) chance (~7.7% up to 33%) to go 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), up to (y=101).‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} If there is no block in (x=0, z=0) the dragon freezes right when she switches to perching.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} The dragon is immune to arrows in this state; they all catch fire and bounce off. In Java Edition she is also immune to thrown tridents in this state.

Dragon's Breath

• Unless the player is in Peaceful difficulty, after 1.25 seconds, if a player is within 20 blocks of the exit portal structure, the dragon roars and use her 3-second breath attack, damaging players similarly to a lingering potion of Harming. An area of visible particles in the shape of a horizontal disc one block tall and 5 to 6 blocks in diameter appears where the breath attack strikes, either on the ground or floating in the air, at whatever point the breath attack struck a block. The harming effect zone where the player takes damage is confined to a smaller area in the center this visible cloud, covering about 3 to 4 blocks.
• The harming effect portion of the purple clouds emitted from the dragon's breath attack can be collected in a glass bottle to obtain dragon's breath. Each bottle of dragon's breath collected removes one block from the lingering damage zone of the breath attack. The visible clouds remain for 3 seconds whether the dragons breath is bottled or not. By rapidly collecting all of the harmful blocks, usually around three, even a direct hit from the breath attack can be mostly and even entirely negated before the player suffers any damage.

Charge

• If the player is not near the portal within 5 seconds of the dragon's landing, she 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, she takes off from her perch. She always takes off in Peaceful difficulty, making it difficult to land melee hits.
• 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 she does not take enough damage.
• The dragon resumes circling after this state.

In Java Edition, when the dragon finally takes a fatal blow, she flies toward the exit portal structure before dying, unless she 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 effect clouds across the ground that damages players the same way a lingering potion of Harming does. This means that the ender dragon's fireballs deal magic damage, which ignores any damage reduction that comes from the player's armor. However its damage does get reduced by armor enchanted with the Protection enchantment. The purple effect cloud's hitbox slowly grows larger in diameter until it disappears.

As with her close-ranged breath attack, the purple clouds can be bottled to obtain the dragon's breath.

Unlike lingering potions of Harming, the effect cloud does not shrink when affecting mobs.

Sounds

Java Edition:
Ender dragons use the Hostile Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.Dragon fireballs use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

Bedrock Edition:

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Entity data

Ender dragons have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Java Edition:

Dragon fireballs have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Command details

The /summon ender_dragon command, by default, summons a harmless ender dragon that hovers in place ‌^{[JE only]}. Setting the DragonPhase tag (by issuing either the /summon ender_dragon ~ ~ ~ {DragonPhase:0} or the /data merge entity <selector> {DragonPhase:0} commands) starts the ender dragon's ordinary behavior, although the health bar does not appear because it is managed by the ender dragon fight status rather than by the dragon entity herself ‌^{[JE only]}. If spawned away from the center of the map (x=0, z=0), she flies to the center then resumes normal behavior (see #Behavior).

Target selectors for the ender dragon target a total of 9 entities per dragon, as the ender dragon actually consists of 9 entities internally‌^{[Java Edition only]}. So executing at a dragon to summon an arrow summons 9 arrows.

Achievements

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.	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 in a certain radius[needstesting] from the exit portal 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: Blaze Cave Spider Creeper Drowned Elder Guardian Ender Dragon Enderman Endermite Evoker Ghast Guardian Hoglin Husk Magma Cube Phantom Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Ravager Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Slime Spider Stray Vex Vindicator Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Other mobs, if any, may be killed, but are ignored for this advancement. Only the riders of the chicken jockeys and skeleton horsem*n are counted in this advancement.	adventure/kill_a_mob
	Monsters Hunted	Kill one of every hostile monster	Monster Hunter	Kill each of these 34 mobs: Blaze Cave Spider Creeper Drowned Elder Guardian Ender Dragon Enderman Endermite Evoker Ghast Guardian Hoglin Husk Magma Cube Phantom Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Ravager Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Slime Spider Stray Vex Vindicator Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Other mobs, if any, may be killed, but are ignored for this advancement. Only the riders of the chicken jockeys and skeleton horsem*n are counted in this advancement.	adventure/kill_all_mobs
	Is It a Plane?	Look at the Ender Dragon through a spyglass	Is It a Balloon?	—	adventure/spyglass_at_dragon

History

|The ender dragon no longer destroys iron bars.| The ender dragon produces a fireball during her attack.}}

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 her animation.
October 9, 2011					Notch tweets an example of a "texture packer tool" he wrote for the purpose of giving the ender dragon her 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.
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."[1]
					Notch stated in a Twitter post that "Dragons have 6 limbs", consisting of 2 wings, and 4 legs.[2]
Java Edition
1.0.0		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4			Added the ender dragon.
					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 her. 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 to test her new death animation.
		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 6			Ender dragons have 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		12w24a			The bug in which the ender dragon would be unable to damage the player after the player was attacked once 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".
		1.4			Before this update, ender dragons used the same damage sound as the player. Ender dragons now have their own sound.
1.5		13w09c			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 can now be re-summoned by placing clay in a creeper face pattern in the End.
		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 and landing.
		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.
		15w44a			Respawning ender dragons now require placing 4 end crystals near the exit portal.
					The ender dragon can no longer be re-summoned using clay.
		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 is 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 her own loot table.
1.14		19w08b			The ender dragon no longer dives straight down to the fountain, instead she slowly descends.
					The ender dragon's AI in general has been heavily altered.[3]
1.15		19w39a			The ender dragon no longer has a separate texture for the bottom of her 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			The texture of the dragon fireball has been changed.
1.19.3		22w44a			Added spawn eggs for ender dragons, which can only be obtained with commands as to avoid potential destruction of creative builds.[4]
Pocket Edition
1.0.0		alpha 0.17.0.1			Added the ender dragon.
					The ender dragon produces a fireball during her attack.
		alpha 1.0.0.2			The ender dragon now goes to the nearest end crystal.
?					Dragon fireballs no longer make a glass sound on impact.
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			The texture of the dragon fireball has been changed.
1.19.20		beta 1.19.20.22			Ender dragons can no longer destroy crying obsidian, respawn anchors, light blocks, deny blocks, allow blocks, borders, and jigsaw blocks.
1.19.60		beta 1.19.60.20			Added spawn eggs for ender dragons.
Legacy Console Edition
TU9	CU1	1.0	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added the ender dragon with new attacks (dragon's breath and ender charges).
					The ender dragon produces a fireball during her attack.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
1.7.10					Added the ender dragon.
					The ender dragon produces a fireball during her attack.

• 

  The first screenshot of the ender dragon.

• 

  The same screenshot, only brighter.

• 

  The ender dragon before being textured.

• 

  See Also

  Ender DragonNether DragonBaby ender dragonEnder Dragon

  The ender dragon before being textured.

• 

  The ender dragon before being textured.

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  The ender dragon before being textured.

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  The ender dragon before being textured.

• 

  The first ender dragon texture.

• 

  The ender dragon with its first texture.

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  The ender dragon's texture taking shape.

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  The ender dragon with its first semi-complete texture.

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  The ender dragon's texture at this stage.

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  The ender dragon with wings more closely resembling their modern form.

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  The ender dragon's texture at this stage.

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  The ender dragon's head and neck were lowered to make it look more "evil".

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  The ender dragon flying over the Overworld.

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 emits beams of light without dying, as if she cracked.
• Name tags cannot be used on an ender dragon.
• The ender dragon's hitbox is larger than the ender dragon herself, causing players to be pushed away from her.
• If the player kills a summoned dragon in the Overworld or Nether, she does not create a portal or an egg.
• In Spectator mode, the player cannot view the perspective of the ender dragon, unlike any other mob. However, it is possible through the use of commands (like /spectate). When this happens, the player's camera appears about 1 block over the dragon's body.
• Using F3+B to show hitboxes reveals that the ender dragon's head rotation faces in the opposite direction to where her 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, she flies to coordinates X=0 and Z=0 and dives at the ground or does the same behavior as if in the End. If end crystals are placed in the Overworld, they heal the dragon as normal, but she does not perch anywhere, and continues to fly around forever.
• In Bedrock Edition, there is an unused texture file for a dragon fireball item.
• In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, one of the spirits that comes with the Steve/Alex DLC is the ender dragon. She appears as a Legend-class "spirit" that makes the user breathe fire for a long time at the start of each battle.
• A wither that is summoned to battle the ender dragon cannot deal damage because the ender dragon flies too fast, and she is immune to projectiles when perching.
• If commands or Creative mode are used to get end portal frames and eyes of ender, a player can basically skip to the end poem.
  • If a player destroys ender crystals or even hurts the dragon and then uses a player-made portal, upon returning, the player retains their progress.‌^{[BE only]}

Notch-related

• 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?".^[5]
  • Dinnerbone later stated that he thinks the name is officially "Jean?".^[6]
  • 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.
• Before she was textured, Notch reported that he was afraid to texture the ender dragon as she was a complicated model.^[7] 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. (Link to the texture packer)^[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 that ender dragons destroy Overworld matter because "trying to make an AI to properly navigate arbitrary terrain before the code freeze next tuesday [sic] isn't feasible".^[11]

Gallery

Screenshots

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  The first screenshot of ender dragon with toxic breath attack.

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  The ender dragon after defeat.

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  A dragon egg and the End portal after the ender dragon is defeated.

• 

  See Also

  The Dragons

  An ender dragon being healed by an End crystal.

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  The ender dragon flying over the End.

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  The ender dragon attacks a player while being healed.

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  The ender dragon defeated.

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  Dozens of player-spawned ender dragons and withers fighting each other.

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  More ender dragons fighting withers.

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  The ender dragon's death inside netherrack.

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  The ender dragon dying from the explosion of the end crystal she was using.

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  The dragon perching on the end portal frame.

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  The dragon firing an ender Acid ball at the player.

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  The dying dragon quickly charging toward the end portal frame to roost. A pool of acid lies in the foreground.

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  The green hitboxes, visible when F3 + B is toggled.

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  The ender dragon dying as seen when the player has night vision in Bedrock Edition.

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  Four ender crystals placed at the bottom to respawn the ender dragon.

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  Comparison between the ender dragon and the wither.

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  Screenshot of a possible glitch resulting in the spawning of two ender dragon.

In other media

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  The ender dragon in promotional artwork for the Ender Update.

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  The ender dragon pictured in the Mobestiary.

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  The ender dragon micromob from Lego Minecraft.

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  Lego Minecraft Ender Dragon minifigure.

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  The ender dragon spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

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  The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ender dragon spirit.

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  Ender Dragon Plush in Minecraft.

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  Unboxed Ender Dragon Plush in Minecraft.

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  The ender dragon artwork in the official Minecraft site.

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  Official T-shirt artwork "Enderdragon" featuring Steve fighting the ender dragon. Made by JINX.

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  Official T-shirt artwork "Heroes Crest" which features an iron golem and an ender dragon. Made by JINX.

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  Official T-shirt artwork "Battle" which features a creeper, an enderman, Steve, a ghast, and either an ender dragon or a red dragon. Made by SamCube.

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  Official T-shirt artwork "The End is Nigh" made by JINX.

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  A newer version of "The End is Nigh." The text is the Standard Galactic Alphabet which translates to its title.

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  Ender dragon plush made by JINX.

References