I Killed The Ender Dragon Sort Of By Accident

Dragon prow from End Ship

 I had pretty much given up on killing the Ender Dragon so I decided to try to kill a Wither instead. Hah! The Wither bashed its way up through 20 layers of rock and proceeded to lay waste to the landscape around my base*. After it defeated me multiple times, and its path looked to be veering towards my village, I cheated and switched to Peaceful mode to turn it off. Then it took me almost a Minecraft week to patch up the surface and gather wither roses.

Reading about what I should have done I saw a recommendation for 'arrows of harm' - but they needed dragon breath as an ingredient. I thought 'Well, I can't kill the Ender Dragon, but I can certainly get her to breathe on me..."

While I was trying to catch her breath I turned off a few of the pillars, but it was becoming clear that I wasn't making much progress. I couldn't get from one pillar to the other without the Dragon seeing me...

I ended up tunneling under the surface to see if I could get to the pillars that way. Instead, I ended up right next to the nest. I had read that the Dragon could not pass through obsidian or iron, so I set up a cage around the base of the nest and huddled inside.

When the dragon came back I thought it would be the end of me, but instead I found it was possible to spear** up through the bars and damage her that way. Even though I hadn't turned off all the pillars, she came back a bit weaker every time, and I eventually killed her. Unfortunately I never found the egg, but I got to read the poem and see the end credits, and it was a great morale booster.

Correction: I had thought that without an egg I couldn't spawn another dragon, but it seems as if you can do that by making end crystals. I still won't have an egg. I was lucky in that the portal that generated was not too far from an End City and an End Ship.

Maybe some day I'll get the Wither too.

*Pay no attention to those YouTube videos that show you 'how easy' it is to kill a Wither.  Next time I spawn one I am going as far away as I can, and as deep as I can - maybe even figure out how to make an Obsidian ceiling. 

**I used a trident with 'loyalty' and 'mending' charms. I call it my "Vampire Trident".

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