Minecraft - Game Theory: Do Not Kill The Ender Dragon
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that an Ender Dragon should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its massive body off the ground. The Ender Dragon, of course, flies anyway because Ender Dragons don't care what Minecraft builders think is impossible. Hello Internet, welcome to Game Theory, the show that's closing in on 15 million subscribers.
It's true try it there's one right now. Look at him go so majestically. You did that. And sure. I get that some of you might not want to give an Ender Dragon anything since it's, you know, the brutally destructive, final boss of Minecraft, but by the end of today's episode. I think you're going to be changing your mind.
I think you'll also want to snap up some of the new back-to-school theories that we just launched. Yeah, it wasn't a great transition, but I had to figure out a way to let you know that the new Game Theory backpack, pencil case, and keychain supplies are starting to run out, so make sure you grab them before they go the way of the Ender Dragon extinct.
I need something that can fit five honors textbooks and three binders because you're a smart theorist. Boom, this bag can handle the load. Or maybe you're not in school and you're going on a hike, doing some extra curriculars, or just doing some traveling. Well, with pockets galore and tons of straps, you'll be going strong while on the go with this newest batch of theory, so make sure you grab it before it's gone.
Today's theory is a bit overdue in my Minecraft lore series, considering that my first article started, funnily enough, at the end and with a capital E. That is, in that episode I mentioned the Ender Dragon, only briefly speculating that, based on the achievement for defeating it titled "Free the Ender," it seemed that the Ender Dragon was a tyrant oppressing the Society of Enderman, but after digging into more of the game's secrets.
I don't think that's the case anymore, or at least it's not the full story. Sure, it might be easy to look at the Enderman, the descendants of an ancient builder civilization, transformed. They spend generations in the end, some starving off of a diet of chorus fruit, and they presume that they must be at the mercy of this powerful dragon that rules over them, but if we dig into the evidence, it actually tells us something very different, so today we're going to focus on Gene and her story.
Sorry, is that name not ringing any bells for you? Well, it should. It's confirmed by Minecraft creator Notch and other members of the Minecraft development team that Gene is the official canonical name of the Ender Dragon, apparently. Minecraft Steve got his name the exact same way through a random comment by the franchise's creator, so as far as I'm concerned, these two names are equally official.
Anyway, today is all about Gene, and how we, as the players, have been ignorant to the fact that for the past decade, the game has been begging, nearly screaming, at us to not kill her. That's right, we're supposed to spare the Ender Dragon, but to understand why, let's start at the beginning of the end.
So, to call Gene the Ender Dragon is a bit misleading. Sure, she's the only dragon found in the end, but the important detail we tend to overlook is that it wasn't always that way. The end gives us clues that at least at one point in history, multiple Ender Dragons made their home here. For evidence of this, just look at the end ships found throughout the dimension.
These things have dragon heads mounted on their masts, clearly. The spoils of battles against dragons that once populated this world, and this already tells us a lot of different things. Not only that dragons, plural, once existed in this realm, but also that a dragon-hunting civilization existed.
The hunter civilization, which apparently must have been pretty successful judging by the dragon heads found at the mast, and if you're asking who these Dragon Hunters were, well. I think the answer at this point should be fairly obvious that the society of ancient builders that we've been tracking ever since episode one of this Minecraft lore series, whoever constructed these massive flying ships, were clearly guided by The end ship is just this impressive feat of engineering, with floors constructed from the finest obsidian.
There's also the fact that the ship is protected by shulkers, a mob that you might be tempted to write off as just a weird creature shoved into the end to round out the enemies found there, but it is so, so much more. You see, if you read the entry for the shulker in my favorite go-to Minecraft lore book.
The Mobestiary, which as a reminder is written from the perspective of an in-world adventurer and researcher, the shulker's purpur blocks might actually be man-made. To quote from the book, "The exterior of the shulker may be a natural adaptation to help conceal it or it may be engineered by the city's architects." That is a weird thing to call out in their book.
What a huge logical leap to make. I don't know about you, but it seems to me like it's heavily implying that is the right answer, that the shulkers were actually engineered by builders still Whether these shulkers are a feat of bioengineering or just an instance of cleverly domesticating a native end species, one thing is clear: whoever built the end ships was serious about science.
So, why were the builders hunting dragons? Were they merely trophy hunters, taking down the biggest and most dangerous game just because they could? We've talked in past theories how the civilization demonstrated a lot of hubris, convinced that their ability to build gave them the power of gods with power over life and death, so could the war against dragons just be another extension of that?
Maybe, but I don't think it's just that case in point, the elytra capes that enabled the player to fly these. Capes are kind of like the final reward in a traditional game of Minecraft. You beat the dragon, you get access to the end ship, and boom, you find this unique item that can only be found here.
And, not only are they exclusive to the end chips, but they have a texture and use that all but screams that they were made from the remains of defeated dragons. We clipped their wings so that we ourselves could obtain the power of flight. I don't think it's a coincidence that the one major flying.
This item that we obtain is being done in the one world where the main mob is a giant flying dragon. When the builders got to the end, they saw something they had yet to conquer: the skies. So they were determined to tame those skies just like they had done to the overworld. And later than nether fun fact, by the way, even though eletra seems to be a made-up fantasy word for dragon wings, the eletro wings are actually based on real life biology.
