How to Get an Elytra and Fly Across Your World
Beat the Ender Dragon, throw an Ender Pearl into the End Gateway and find an End City with a ship. The Elytra hangs in an Item Frame below its deck.
There is no recipe, villager trade or mob drop for Elytra, so an End Ship is the only source in Survival. Each ship holds a single pair, and not every End City has a ship. An End Gateway throws you across about 1,000 blocks of void to the outer islands, where the towers are guarded by shulkers.
Pack for the outer islands
- Ender Pearls, a full stack of 16. One gets you into the gateway, one gets you back through the return gateway, and the rest cover short gaps between islands.
- A stack or two of blocks for bridging. The gaps between islands are open void.
- A shield, a bow and arrows for shulkers.
- A Milk Bucket. Drinking it clears Levitation, along with every other effect.
- Potions of Slow Falling if you have them. While the effect lasts, you take no fall damage.
- A pickaxe, food and your best armour.
Step 1: Get through the End Gateway
- 1.Defeat the Ender Dragon. The Ender Dragon guide covers the fight and how to respawn the dragon.
- 2.When the dragon dies, an End Gateway appears 96 blocks from the centre of the main island, floating at Y=75.
- 3.The gateway is a single portal block caged in bedrock, so you can't walk into it. Build up level with it and throw an Ender Pearl into the portal block.
- 4.You land on the outer islands next to a second gateway, which leads back to the main island and the exit portal home. Press F3 and note its coordinates before you walk away. After an hour of island-hopping it's easy to lose.
The return gateway is caged in bedrock just like the first one. A pearl or an Elytra is by far the easiest way in, so keep spares.
Each gateway points in a fixed direction. To open another and search elsewhere, respawn the dragon and kill it again.
Step 2: Find an End City
End Cities only generate in the End Highlands and End Midlands biomes, which make up the large outer islands. The game tries at most one city per 320 × 320-block region, and that spot only becomes a city if it lands in one of those two biomes. Expect to cross a few islands before you see one.
Scan the horizon for tall purpur towers. When you step inside a city, you earn the advancement The City at the End of the Game.
Two shortcuts:
- In a world with cheats on,
/locate structure minecraft:end_citygives the coordinates of the nearest city. - The MineSpecs seed map has an End view that marks End City candidate spots for your seed. Each spot still needs the right biome, so confirm it in-game.
Step 3: Check the city for a ship
The ship floats beside the city, off the end of a bridge from one of its towers. A city can have at most one ship, and many have none. Look at the city from every side before you give up on it.
If there is no ship, loot the city anyway. Its chests use the same treasure table as the ship's, and shulkers are the only source of Shulker Shells, which you need for a Shulker Box. Then head for the next city.
| What | Where on the ship |
|---|---|
| Elytra, in an Item Frame | Treasure room below deck, on its front wall just above and between the two chests |
| 2 chests of End City loot | The same treasure room |
| Dragon Head | Mounted on the tip of the bow |
| Brewing Stand with 2 Potions of Healing II | Cabin at the stern |
| 3 shulkers | One in the treasure room, two at the stern |
The ship's Dragon Head is the only way to get one in Survival, so break it and take it with you.
Step 4: Take the Elytra
- 1.Clear the two shulkers at the stern, and any on the nearby tower, from range. Each bullet that lands gives you 10 seconds of Levitation and then drops you, so fight over solid blocks, never over the void. A shield blocks the bullets, and milk clears the effect the moment you're hit. The shulker box guide has more on fighting shulkers.
- 2.Get into the treasure room. It starts about seven blocks behind the Dragon Head and runs back under the deck past the mast. Break the Magenta Stained Glass block set in the deck beside the mast, on the bow side, and drop in. Don't dig at the narrow tip of the bow: there is nothing under it but void.
- 3.Kill the shulker in the room before you go near the frame. It has 30 health and sits right in front of the Elytra.
- 4.Punch the Item Frame. The Elytra drops and the empty frame stays on the wall. Right-clicking only rotates the Elytra inside the frame.
- 5.Empty both chests and break the Dragon Head.
Picking the Elytra up earns the goal advancement Sky's the Limit. It goes in your chest slot, so it replaces your chestplate and gives no armour. Keep the chestplate on while you fight, and swap only when you want to glide.
Loot in the ship's chests
Each chest makes 2 to 6 draws from the End City treasure table, plus a separate 1 in 15 roll for a Spire Armor Trim Smithing Template. Each draw is one of these:
| Loot | Stack size | Chance per draw |
|---|---|---|
| Enchanted diamond gear (8 items, including the Diamond Spear) | 1 | 27.0% |
| Enchanted iron gear (7 items) | 1 | 23.6% |
| Gold Ingot | 2–7 | 16.9% |
| Iron Ingot | 4–8 | 11.2% |
| Diamond | 2–7 | 5.6% |
| Beetroot Seeds | 1–10 | 5.6% |
| Horse Armor (copper, iron, gold or diamond) | 1 | 4.5% |
| Saddle | 1 | 3.4% |
| Emerald | 2–6 | 2.2% |
The gear comes enchanted at levels 20 to 39. A single chest has about a 69% chance of holding at least one enchanted diamond item, so between the two ship chests your odds are about 90%.
Enchanting your Elytra
An Elytra loses 1 durability for every second you glide, which is about seven minutes of flight from new. The enchanting table can't enchant it, so apply enchanted books on an anvil instead. Only Unbreaking (up to III), Mending, Curse of Binding and Curse of Vanishing fit, and the first two are the ones worth having. Mending repairs it from the XP you collect.
The Elytra flying guide covers rocket boosting, repairs and safe landings.