Ender pearls aren’t super easy to get hold of. The easiest way is probably to defeat an Enderman. There’s a 50:50 chance it’ll drop one. A Looting enchantment on your weapon will increase the number you can get to a maximum of 4. They can also be found in strongholds and trial chambers, in some woodland mansions, and can be traded with cleric villagers and piglins.
To use an Ender pearl, just hold it in your hand and press the use button. But wait! Before you do that, you’ll want to be careful about which direction you’re facing. Using the Ender pearl involves throwing it in front of you, and you’ll teleport to where it lands. If that’s a pool of lava then... Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The other thing you’ll want to do with Ender pearls is to craft them into Eyes of Ender, which allow you to locate a stronghold and access the End dimension. To do this, pop it in a crafting grid with some blaze powder. But my advice is to only convert one at a time, as you need them, because there’s no way of converting them back again afterwards.
As noted above, teleportation isn’t a thing in the real world (damn you, physics). But pearls are! These beautiful and valuable gemstones are not dug out of mines like most other gems, but are instead dug out of the bodies of living creatures.
Technically speaking, a pearl is created by shellfish in the same way that human bodies form scars. When one of these creatures’ shells is harmed in some way, its body releases a substance called “nacre” as part of the healing process. This builds up in layers inside the shellfish until it forms a spherical object.
In nature, pearls form by chance and they’re incredibly rare – hundreds of oysters or mussels would need to be opened (and killed in the process) before locating even one. Luckily, we’ve developed a way of farming pearls without killing so many creatures – a tiny bit of shell from another shellfish is inserted into the host creature’s shell, which reliably forms a pearl over time. Today, about 95% of pearls on the market are made in this way.
In Minecraft, unfortunately, there’s no easy way to farm Ender pearls. That means that you’re going to need to select one of two options – trading with villagers and Piglins, or a wholesale Endermen farmfest. Which will it be? The choice is yours...
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