Level 4.2: Tips, tricks and secrets of Minecraft's item - the ender pearl!

ITEM OF THE MONTH

In a monthly feature, we’re looking at all the tips, tricks and secrets of Minecraft’s items! This month: the ender pearl!

Throw a pearl to teleport

Kill endermen to collect pearls

Eyes of ender float when thrown

Endermites spawn where you teleport from

COLLECTING ENDER PEARLS

When a player or a tame wolf kills an enderman, it has a 50% chance to drop an ender pearl. The number of chances can be increased by the Looting enchantment to a maximum of four pearls with Level III Looting.

Pearls can also be found in stronghold altar chests, or traded for by expert-level cleric villagers who sell one pearl for five emeralds. Piglins have a roughly one in 50 chance to offer 2–4 ender pearls in exchange for a gold ingot.

USING AN ENDER PEARL

As items, ender pearls can be used to safely teleport short distances. When a pearl is thrown, it will teleport the player who threw it to the location the pearl has landed, retaining their speed and momentum if they are moving. The pearl is consumed from the player’s inventory as soon as it is thrown.

Pearls can be thrown around 54 blocks distance if thrown at the optimum angle of 35 degrees, although this can be extended if a pearl is thrown down from a great height (e.g. from the top of a mountain). Pearls that fall into the void disappear without teleporting the player, although pearls thrown into lava will not be destroyed before teleporting their thrower!

Be careful when throwing a pearl – their accuracy is not perfect and two pearls thrown at the same time may land in slightly different positions.

CRAFTING WITH ENDER PEARLS

Ender pearls can only be used in one crafting recipe: the eye of ender.

To create an eye of ender, you simply need to combine an ender pearl with a piece of blaze powder (obtained from blaze rods which are dropped by blazes in the Nether). You can do this on any crafting grid.

Once turned into an eye of ender, the pearl will lose its ability to teleport; however, eyes of ender will float in the direction of strongholds when thrown and can be used to activate the portal to the End (by placing them in the portal frame blocks).

There is no way to turn eyes of ender back into ender pearls, and no other way to craft them.

ENDER PEARL SECRETS

When thrown, ender pearls follow the same arc as a snowball, so use the latter to predict where a thrown pearl might end up!

You will receive the ‘Beam me up’ achievement on some console editions of Minecraft if you teleport over 100 blocks distance using an ender pearl.

An ender pearl has a one in 20 chance of spawning an endermite when it lands. This is the only way endermites can spawn. They spawn at the player’s original position (before teleportation) rather than the pearl’s landing position!

Within the game, you can use the ender pearl to get the ‘Remote Getaway’ advancement by throwing an ender pearl into an End gateway.

Ender pearls can be thrown into End gateways and the exit portal and teleport the player to the target of the portal instantly – however, they cannot be thrown into Nether portals and simply pass through them. ■