End Cities are so far the best dungeons in Minecraft when it comes to the sheer quality of loot. These are the only structures were an abundance of diamonds and diamond gear can be found easily. Moreover, much of the gear found in these cities is typically enchanted with powerful effects.

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The most important feature of an End City is, however, the Elytra. Not every city will have an Elytra, as only one with a ship floating by its side has one. Usually, bigger cities will have a ship, but it’s perfectly possible to also find a relatively small city with a ship next to it if you’re lucky. However, finding these cities in the vast and complex End islands is a complicated task, and there’s only a few ways to make the search easier.

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Updated on August 19, 2021 by Anastasia Maillot: Although the recent 1.17 Minecraft update and the first half of the Caves and Cliffs update haven’t drastically changed the End, there are always new tools and ways in which players have figured out how to find End Cities faster. Given how rare these structures are and how difficult the End is to travel through, it’s no surprise it continues to be a major issue for most Minecraft players.

A few new methods involving mods and cheats have been included to make it easier to find End Cities more quickly in solo survival games. Moreover, a couple of important steps in preparing for the journey were also added in when facing off against Shulkers and Endermen.

Go Into Creative Mode

If your goal is to find an End City fast and you know the seed of the world in question, you can simply create a new world, put yourself in Creative Mode and enter the End. You’ll first need to use the command “/locate stronghold” and then teleport to the coordinates given to you.

Once you’re in the End, you can ignore the Ender Dragon and just fly out of the central End island off into the distance. After about 1,000 blocks, you’ll arrive at the End islands. When you find an End City, jot down the coordinates. You can find that location with those coordinates by loading up your survival world.

Use A Waypoint Mod

There’s one really useful mod out there meant for exploration in particular. It’s not just great for finding End Cities, but any type of structure in Minecraft. Xaero’s Minimap allows you to have a constant minimap in the corner of your screen, which helps when exploring the End in particular.

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Moreover, the mod lets you set up waypoints, which can make traveling and exploration in the End far more efficient. The map is so accurate it can even display mobs on the map, and there are multiple levels of zoom to choose from as well. You can download Xaero’s minimap from Curse Forge.

Equip Feather Falling Boots And A Pumpkin Head

While it’s perfectly plausible to enter the End with just iron armor, it’s recommended to have at least a full set of diamond gear or Netherite gear. That’s because Shulkers do a surprising amount of damage, especially when there are multiple of them firing at you. Feather Falling IV on diamond boots is the ideal piece of gear to have before entering an End City since Shulkers will forcefully levitate you with their projectiles before dropping you from a height.

For Endermen, you can simply prepare a carved pumpkin head. The reduced vision can be really annoying to deal with, especially in a dark dimension like the End, so it’s recommended to download the special resource pack that removes the blurred vision from Curse Forge.

Take Your Elytra And Firework Rockets

For those who already have their first Elytra, it’s a good idea to take it with you along with a bunch of firework rockets. Make sure your Elytra has the Mending enchantment on it, so you can repair it by killing a few Endermen here and there.

To craft firework rockets, you’ll need paper and gunpowder. Fireworks come in three different strengths. For Elytra flight, it’s best to always craft rockets with one paper and three pieces of gunpowder to get the longest flight duration. While flying around in the end with an Elytra is easy, low-end PCs that struggle rendering or SMP servers with lag and multiple players online might result in player deaths, so be careful when using this method.

Prepare A Lot Of Blocks

Assuming you haven’t found an Elytra yet, the best way to travel in the End is to bridge across its multiple islands. Sometimes these gaps between floating landmasses can be well over 64 blocks, so the more you can fit stacks upon stacks of blocks in your inventory, the better.

A great idea is to grab along a cheap block in its regular form, such as cobblestone, and once in the End, use a crafting table to turn it into slabs. Even better, pack along a stonecutter tool, which makes the crafting process way easier and simple for slabs. Slabs allow you to place half of a regular block and actually save up on inventory space when you craft them on the spot.

Other cheap blocks include any type of block that you most likely won’t need in the future, such as netherrack, which is easy and quick to mine and doesn’t really serve an important purpose. Dirt, diorite, granite, and andesite are also great if you happen to be low on cobblestone.

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To fit more in your inventory, create two Ender chests, one in your house and one in your inventory. Store your extra blocks in your house’s Ender chest so you can access them while in the End. Don’t forget to take a Silk Touch pickaxe with you as well so you can safely break the Ender chest while on the go.

Brew Potions Of Swiftness And Slow Falling

The End is an extremely boring and tedious dimension to traverse, given how little there is to see and experience. Most of the time you’ll be walking very long distances and possibly spending hours of real-world time looking for an End City, especially if you get particularly unlucky. In this case, anything that speeds the process is worth trying.

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Potions of Swiftness are actually a very valid strategy for the End, especially when walking across large island masses. They’re also extremely cheap to brew. You only need some sugar from sugar cane and redstone to extend the duration of the potion. Pack a few of these with you, and you won’t have to waste your hunger on running either.

You’ll also need Potions of Slow Falling if you don’t have good diamond boots with Feather Falling IV. This will help when fighting off Shulkers that levitate you. After brewing an awkward potion with Nether Wart, add in a Phantom Membrane. You can extend the duration with Redstone.

Use Ender Pearls

Another way to save time and significantly speed up the process is to use Ender pearls to move around. They can be particularly useful when closing distances on large islands where the land is relatively solid, but traveling across it might take a long time. They’re also absolutely fantastic to jump across gaps to nearby islands if the distance isn’t too long.

The use of Ender pearls is something recommended only for seasoned players, who have a good grasp on what the travel distance of pearls is. It’s possible to miss your Ender pearl throw and find yourself suddenly falling into the void, so unless you’re completely certain you know what you’re doing, it’s best to use this with as much moderation as possible.

Pick One Direction At A Time

When you initially spawn into the End islands area after taking the portal from the central dragon island, you’ll want to first look around and pick a general direction. Press F3 to find north, south, east, and west, and mark your starting location. Beginning from your first spawn, you can try traveling in each direction for several thousands of blocks, and can even use a map to mark your progress.

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Even if you find yourself stuck at the edge of an island with a long distance to bridge, having the patience to bridge across is key. That effort could be rewarded by an End City hiding just across the gap. That’s why it’s important to commit to a general direction and not always just pick the easiest islands to travel to. Eventually, you’re guaranteed to find something.

Prioritize Large Islands

The islands in the End all come in varying sizes and shapes. The type of island cities spawn on are typically quite large, and more specifically have the End midlands or End highlands biome name. You can check the biome by pressing F3 and walking around. Still, there are no guarantee End cities will always spawn in such biomes or even the largest of islands.

When trying to decide which island to go to next by building a bridge or throwing an Ender pearl, try to determine how large the island you want to go to is in size. The larger, the better. Smaller or medium-sized islands are usually not worth the time building a bridge to unless you want to use them as a way to find other, bigger islands.

Up Your Render Distance

Those with beefy PCs will benefit from a slight advantage. If your PC can handle it, try to up your render distance as much as possible. The maximum render distance in the Java version is currently 32 chunks, which is the “extreme” render distance option. This can have adverse effects on low-end computers, so use it with caution.

The extreme option allows you to see as far as 512 blocks, which is a massive help in the End where distances can be quite significant between islands. The “far” option, which is 16 chunks, gives you 256 blocks worth of visibility, so anywhere above that or under 32 chunks is still a decent boost. If your PC struggles with this, you can do this momentarily while scouting for faraway islands, and then turn it off once you’re determined which direction you’d like to go.

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