Block of the Month: Dragon Egg

Getting a dragon egg just means doing all the stuff listed above, up to and including killing the Ender Dragon. Once you do, you’ll see it sitting on top of the exit portal that allows you to get back to the Overworld. But don’t just mosey on over there and whack it with a pickaxe, because it’ll just teleport away. Instead, you need to mine out the block it’s sitting on and cause it to fall onto a block where it can’t fit – like a torch or a slab. You can also give it a shove with a piston. Either way, it’ll then drop as an item, allowing it to be collected.

What does it do? Well... nothing. OK, ok, not nothing. It emits a very faint light level. It teleports, as noted above. But that’s more or less it. Its value is simply that it’s arguably the rarest item in the game – in Java edition you can only ever get one, and in Bedrock edition you can get two (by defeating the Ender Dragon twice). So maybe don’t go throwing it into a pool of lava. Or do! It’s up to you really.

You might be thinking: “If the Ender Dragon lays eggs, then is it a bird?” The answer is no – loads of different types of animals lay eggs, including birds, mollusks, insects, spiders, fish and even some mammals. “So is the Ender Dragon a fish?” Also no. While none of the biologists we’ve sent to study the Ender Dragon have returned alive, our best guess is that it’s most likely a reptile.

Why? Well, in the real-world there are several reptiles called “dragons” – including the bearded dragon and the komodo dragon. In fact there’s a whole family of lizards, consisting of 582 species, that are often called dragons but which scientists refer to as Agamidae. Sure there are dragonfish too – but we’ve never seen the Ender Dragon swimming, so we ruled that one out.

So, over to you. How do you celebrate your victory over the Ender Dragon? Do you build a trophy room and install the egg as the centerpiece? Or do you hurl it into the void so that no Ender dragons can ever plague this world again? It’s not an easy choice, but the only person who can make it is you.