Is it possible to trap the Ender Dragon in Minecraft?

Unfortunately, the Ender Dragon can no longer be put in a boat as of Minecraft Snapshot 15w49a.

The glitch that allowed players to trap the Ender Dragon in a boat surfaced from Minecraft Snapshots 15w41a to 15w47c (1.9 Minecraft Snapshots). It allowed the dragon to enter the boat if it was placed on the very top of the bedrock pillar, which the dragon swoops down on.

Although trapping the formidable dragon in boats has been discontinued for some time, there have been other successful attempts to find ways to trap the Ender Dragon.

Disclaimer: These methods have not been tested in each version of Minecraft that's been released since. There is a possibility that readers might be unable to recreate these methods of trapping the dragon in newer versions of the game.

Command Block trapping the Ender Dragon

The Ender Dragon can break through nearly every block in the game, except blocks that were already in its terrains, such as the obsidian towers, the bedrock portal, and the endstone of the island itself.

In 2015, Redditor "KamikazeRusher" discovered a way to keep the dragon inside a cage using command blocks.

However, his dragon wasn't the final boss found in the end. Instead, it was one spawned into the overworld through server cheats and commands. But the mechanics of keeping this dragon in its bedrock cage are the same. They described the process in a Reddit thread here, saying:

"It's nowhere near perfect, nor was it planned out, but it was pretty cool. I thought it would be nice to post our findings and get feedback from this subreddit community."

"First and foremost, the cage and system. As we know, you can't really trap an Ender Dragon. It goes through everything and destroys nearly everything. However, we recently discovered the use of Command Blocks."

"Now, my roommate found out how to get command blocks and we researched commands. Disappointed that you cannot nest commands within a single block, we created an "if-then" logic circuit."

"It begins with an active clock. This clock frequently checks for the Ender Dragon. If it returns true the second clock is active, checking in a much, much, much shorter interval. Two command blocks are checked simultaneously. One makes sure that the Ender Dragon is in its cage, and upon failure brings it back.* The second checks for an Ender Crystal that we had to encase in bedrock."

"The end result was a caged Ender Dragon. We even tossed in a Wither to chase it around because, well, why not? The system allows for you to roam around as you wish without worrying if the Ender Dragon will escape. However, you have to watch out for random shots from the Wither!"

"I should note that our clock system is very compact. I tried to reduce the size in order to reduce the time it takes to perform these checks as well as allow room for more checks in case we try to expand the concept. We want to have a system check for holes in the base of the cage in case someone kills it by hand (because my roommate is a TNT-cannon psychopath) or if the Wither(s) somehow kill it while we're away from the server."

"The cage itself was made on a whim and not at all calculated. Somehow it worked out for there being 3-block-high holes so the Wither cannot escape but it doesn't do well with keeping the dragon in the center. Our teleport system puts him more towards the front of the cage. I'm sure that someone who likes to perfect design and execution will find a way to calculate it all. . . but we don't care. It's pretty sweet, as it is."

"Commands can be found in the album, as well as a monument to the reason why I have to oversee the activity of my roommates."

Trapping the Ender Dragon in unloaded chunks

Trapping the Ender Dragon in a cage where players can marvel at it is an impressive feat, but it's also possible to trap the Ender Dragon in a place where it can't be seen.

This feature supposedly doesn't work past Minecraft version 1.9. However, it's still worth mentioning as it's conceptually the easiest method of trapping the dragon.

If the player leads the Ender Dragon far away from the main island, it will get trapped in unloaded chunks when the player moves back to the island.

This happens because the player can move much faster than the dragon can. Ultimately, chunks are loaded and unloaded based on where the player goes. If the player leads the dragon away from the island and then moves quickly back, chunks, where the dragon is, will unload faster than the dragon can chase the player.

If this is done successfully, players can now build structures on the main island without being destroyed. Moreover, technically, the dragon is kept alive.

However, players must be wary of the direction in which the dragon is trapped. If players move towards that area where the dragon is kept, the chunks around it will load once again and allow the beast to make its way back to the main island.

Trapping the Ender Dragon with pistons

Players can see a bit of the piston formation at the top (Image via Minecraft)

This method utilizes aspects of trapping the Ender Dragon in unloaded chunks, but it capitalizes on using a dying dragon. It's complicated to trap a dragon alive, even with Redstone and pistons.

In this method, the Ender Dragon is trapped in a four-pronged piston formation that keeps it level while its death animation plays. This build is often on an island far away from the main one so that the dragon can be held on the brink of death in unloaded chunks.

Often, this method is used for farming experience points as the Ender Dragon drops some of the most XP in the game. This method was reportedly working as of Minecraft version 1.9.