MinecraftBible Field Guide
Enderman Field Guide
Three-block tall, teleporting, water-allergic — and the only End-portal ingredient source.
What is Enderman?
Endermen are tall neutral mobs that spawn in low-light areas in the Overworld, the Nether, and the End. They will not attack the player unless provoked — but looking directly at their head, hitting them, or being within striking range with no eye contact triggers an aggressive response. Endermen can teleport up to 32 blocks in any direction to avoid damage or close gaps, and they take 1 heart of damage per second from contact with water or rain. They can also pick up and place certain blocks (sand, dirt, grass blocks, sandstone, mushrooms, flowers) which is the source of their "blocks slowly disappearing from my desert" problem.
How to obtain it
Endermen spawn at light level 0 in the Overworld and Nether, and across the entire End in massive numbers. The End is the standard farming biome — endermen are the only naturally spawning mob there, and they spawn at near the mob cap continuously, so an enderman farm built on the central island is the highest-XP-per-hour farm in the game. Killing an enderman drops 0–1 ender pearls (Looting III pushes the max to 4), the only renewable ender pearl source. Twelve ender pearls plus 12 blaze rods are required to craft the eyes of ender that locate and activate the End portal.
What to use it for
Ender pearls craft into eyes of ender (1 ender pearl + 1 blaze powder), which locate strongholds and activate End portals. Pearls themselves can be thrown to teleport — instant 30-block jump in the direction thrown, at the cost of 5 hearts of damage. Ender chests, crafted from 8 obsidian + 1 eye of ender, share their inventory across every ender chest in the world. The endermite, a hostile mob that spawns from a thrown pearl with a 5% chance, is the standard input for an Aerial Ender enderman farm trigger.
Tips, tricks & common mistakes
- ▸Wear a pumpkin or a carved jack o'lantern on your head to look at endermen safely. Pumpkins remove the line-of-sight provocation, so you can attack first instead of getting teleport-jumped.
- ▸Build End enderman farms with a one-block water trench at the kill chamber — endermen take damage from rain and standing water, plus the trench prevents them from teleporting out.
- ▸Endermen cannot pick up blocks above Y=255 or below Y=0 — building your base at Y=256 in the End or sealing the floor at Y=-1 prevents the "missing block" problem.
- ▸Throw ender pearls down a hill or off a cliff to skip falling damage — the teleport relocation cancels mid-air momentum.
- ▸A single endermite trapped in a minecart at the centre of an End enderman farm pulls every enderman in spawn range to the kill chamber. Endermen treat endermites as a target.
Connected Systems
