You've spent hours mining diamonds. You finally found the stronghold, jumped through that swirling portal, and stared down the Ender Dragon while dodging purple fireballs. Now what? Honestly, killing the dragon is just the prologue. The real game starts when you figure out how to get elytra minecraft enthusiasts consider the true "creative mode" of survival.
Flying is a total game-changer. It turns a ten-minute trek across a mountain range into a thirty-second glide. But the path to getting those wings is surprisingly easy to mess up if you aren't prepared for the sheer verticality of the End's outer islands.
The Brutal Reality of the Outer Islands
Most people think that once the dragon dies, the wings just appear. Nope. You have to find a tiny, flickering gateway—the End Gateway—hovering somewhere near the edge of the main island. You’ll need an Ender Pearl to teleport through it. Don't miss. If you throw that pearl into the void, your items are gone forever. No gravestone, no recovery. Just a "You Died" screen and a lot of regret.
Once you’re through, you’ll see the "Chorus Trees." They look like weird, purple cacti. This is the Outer End. It’s a massive, fractured archipelago floating in an endless dark void. Your goal isn't just any landmass; you are hunting for an End City. Specifically, an End City that has a floating ship docked nearby. Not every city has one. If you find a city without a ship, you’ve basically found a very dangerous parkour course with no prize at the end.
How to Get Elytra Minecraft: The Search and the Shulkers
Finding the ship is the hardest part of knowing how to get elytra minecraft players often struggle with. You might walk for thousands of blocks. I’ve had runs where I found three cities in ten minutes, and others where I wandered for two hours seeing nothing but purple fruit.
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Why the End Ship is Your Only Target
The Elytra is always—and I mean always—found inside the End Ship. It hangs in a generic-looking item frame on the wall of the lower deck. It’s guarded by a single Shulker. These little box-monsters are the most annoying thing in the game. They shoot tracking bullets that don't just hurt; they give you the Levitation effect.
Getting hit by a Shulker bullet while you're standing on a narrow bridge over the void is a death sentence. You’ll float up, and up, and up. Then the effect wears off. Then you fall. Unless you have a water bucket and incredible timing, that’s the end of your hardcore world. Pro tip: bring a shield. Shields completely block the levitation projectiles. It makes the "climb" much less of a gamble.
Looting the Ship Safely
Once you board the ship, don't just run for the wings. There are usually two brewing stands with Instant Health potions—grab those. There’s also a Dragon Head at the front of the ship. Most people forget to break it. Use a silk touch pickaxe or just put a block under it before you break it so it doesn't fall into the void. It’s a great trophy.
The Elytra itself sits in that item frame. Just punch it. It drops. You have it. But you can't really "fly" yet.
Physics, Durability, and the Rocket Problem
An Elytra without Enchantments is a liability. It has 432 durability points. That sounds like a lot, but every second of flight uses one point. If it breaks while you are mid-air over a lava lake in the Nether, you’re toast.
You absolutely need two things: Unbreaking III and Mending. Without Mending, you have to repair the Elytra using Phantom Membranes at an anvil. That gets expensive fast because of the "Too Expensive!" cap on anvils. Mending lets you repair the wings just by picking up XP orbs. It's the only way to make them permanent.
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Also, you don't actually "fly" with just wings. You glide. To move like an airplane, you need firework rockets. But not just any fireworks. If you use the ones with "Firework Stars" (the ones that explode), you will literally blow yourself up in mid-air. You need "Flight Duration 3" rockets made of just gunpowder and paper.
Common Mistakes People Make in the End
- Not bringing enough blocks. You will need stacks—and I mean stacks—of cobblestone or dirt to bridge between islands. Endermen don't care about you unless you look at them, but the void cares a lot.
- Forgetting the Chorus Fruit. If you're falling, eating a Chorus Fruit can sometimes teleport you back to solid ground. It's a literal life-saver.
- Underestimating Shulkers. Their damage isn't the problem. It's the height. If you get hit, try to find a ceiling to bump into so you don't keep rising.
- Ignoring the coordinates. Write down the coordinates of your gateway ($x, y, z$). If you get lost in the infinite islands, you won't find your way back to the overworld without those numbers.
Beyond the First Pair
Once you know how to get elytra minecraft becomes a different game. You’ll want more than one pair. Why? Because eventually, you will die in a way that makes your items unrecoverable. Maybe you fly into a wall at 70 miles per hour (Kinetic Energy death is real), or you fall into the void. Having a "backup" Elytra in an Ender Chest back at your base is the mark of an experienced player.
Some players use the "Wither Method" to clear End Cities faster, but that’s high-level stuff. For your first time, stick to the basics. Bring a bow with plenty of arrows to snipe Shulkers from a distance. If they can't hit you, they can't make you float.
Immediate Next Steps for Your Flight Journey
Stop what you're doing and craft an Ender Chest if you haven't already. When you finally find those wings, put them inside the Ender Chest immediately. Even if you die on the way back to the portal, your Elytra will be safe in any other Ender Chest in the world.
Next, set up a simple sugarcane and gunpowder farm. You are going to burn through rockets faster than you think. A single trip across a 5,000-block map can eat up half a stack of rockets. Without a steady supply of fuel, your fancy new wings are just a glorified cape. Get your Mending villager traded for and ready to go before you even step into the End. Flying is a privilege, but maintaining the ability to fly is a full-time job in survival.