Enderman: Understanding Their Behavior in Minecraft
Knowing how to kill enderman in Minecraft is an essential skill for any player looking to progress toward the End dimension. Enderman are unique, neutral mobs in Minecraft. You can find them in the nether, the overworld, and the End. They drop ender pearls which are essential for crafting Eyes of Ender, a key item needed to locate and activate the End Portal. Enderman are neutral but if you attack them, they will turn hostile.
How to Kill Enderman in Minecraft: Spawning and Behavior
Enderman generally spawn at night though they may spawn in the day if there is low light. They can also spawn in caves. Since they start out as neutral mobs, they won’t attack you and you will need to get their attention. They can teleport and they actually take damage from water, which makes water a useful tool when hunting them.
Place water between you and an Enderman to force it to back off — it will take damage and may teleport away. You can also stand in or next to shallow water as a defensive reset, since Endermen will avoid it. Keep in mind that water can trigger their teleportation, so once you’ve used it to create distance, move in for melee to finish the fight cleanly. Also, if you’re playing Minecraft at school and want to access features like hunting Endermen without restrictions, check out our guide on minecraft unblocked at school to learn how to bypass common network blocks.
How to Kill Enderman in Minecraft: Best Methods
Taking down an Enderman efficiently comes down to preparation and knowing which method works best for your situation. For a broader Enderman battle guide, here are the main approaches, from safest to most direct.
Before you start: preparation checklist
- Wear at least iron armor — diamond is ideal for extended farming sessions.
- Bring a sword or axe as your primary weapon. A diamond or netherite sword is the fastest option.
- Carry a shield to block any hits you do take.
- Optionally, bring a water bucket for the defensive reset trick described above.
Method 1: The 2-block shelter
This is the safest method to kill enderman without taking damage. Build or find a space that is exactly two blocks high and stand inside it. Endermen are three blocks tall, so they cannot follow you in or reach you — but you can still swing at their legs from inside. Look at the Enderman to provoke it, then back into your shelter and strike upward as it tries to attack.
- Wait for night and wait for Endermen to spawn.
- Once you see an Enderman, point the cursor at it. Endermen become hostile when you look at them. You will hear them ‘screaming’.
- The enderman will teleport and attack you.
- As long as you’re under the shelf, you won’t be harmed and you can strike back.
- Be careful of other mobs.
Method 2: Fence or gate barrier
Place a fence or fence gate between you and the Enderman. The Enderman will try to path toward you but gets stuck on the fence, letting you land hits safely from the other side. This works especially well in flat, open areas where you can place fencing quickly before aggroing the mob.
Method 3: Open-ground melee
If you have strong armor and a good sword, you can fight Endermen in the open. Aim your crosshair at the Enderman’s legs or feet and keep attacking at close range. If you also play Minecraft Dungeons, our best weapon rankings can help you compare melee options there. Staying near their base makes it harder for them to land a full swing and reduces the chance of them teleporting mid-fight. Move in aggressively and keep swinging — hesitating gives them time to reposition.
A note on bows and ranged weapons: Avoid relying on a bow against Endermen. They almost always teleport away from incoming projectiles, making ranged attacks largely ineffective and a waste of arrows. Melee is almost always the better choice when you need to kill enderman quickly and efficiently.
Ender Pearls: What You Get When You Kill Enderman
Killing an Enderman does not guarantee that a pearl will drop. There is always a chance that it won’t. Ender pearls are primarily used for teleportation and as a crafting ingredient — they are not inserted directly into the End Portal. According to the official Minecraft Wiki, Endermen have a 50% chance of dropping one ender pearl when killed.
To activate the End Portal inside a stronghold, you need Eyes of Ender, not raw ender pearls. To create an Eye of Ender, you need to put the ender pearl and blaze powder in the crafting table. Blaze powder is obtained by killing a Blaze in the nether. The Blaze will drop Blaze rods which, when placed in the crafting table, yield blaze powder.
Once you have Eyes of Ender, you insert them into the empty End Portal Frame blocks surrounding the portal to activate it and open the gateway to the End dimension.
Conclusion
For many players, finding Endermen is the biggest problem. In the bedrock edition of Minecraft, they seem to spawn far less often than they do in the Java edition. Different versions of the game have also had different spawn rates of this particular mob, though it is attributed to a bug and not a change in the core mechanics of the game. Endermen spawn in mobs of five but they’re quick to despawn so you may have to hunt several nights before you have as many ender pearls as you need. Once you know how to kill enderman reliably using the methods above, farming ender pearls becomes much more manageable.
