TRAVELING TO THE OUTER END ISLANDS
To get to these new lands in Minecraft you need to first defeat the dragon. When the dragon dies, it leaves not just the working exit portal, but another portal floating in the air. This is called the End gateway portal, and you’ll typically find it about seventy blocks away from the island center. When it first appears, the portal emits a purplish beam above and below it. Look for this when you kill the dragon.
The purple beam at the portal only appears for a few moments after the death of the dragon.
Like the exit portal, the portal to the Outer End Islands is made of bedrock. These are much smaller and are just a few blocks of bedrock above and below a space-warpy block that looks like the middle of an activated End portal.
Once you’ve located the End gateway portal, you’ll likely have to build a bridge or stairway to it. And you can’t walk through the portal, because it is only one block. You throw an Ender pearl through it and that will teleport you to the Islands. There, you may land on a larger islands or one of the many small islands. If you’re on a small island, you’ll need blocks to build bridges to larger islands. If you’re good at Ender pearling, you can use Ender pearls to jump between closer islands.
The new End gateway portal hovers in the air, so you’ll have to build or Ender pearl up to it.
How to Get to the End Islands Without Killing the Dragon
If you have incredible patience, you can build a thousand block bridge out from the central islands. It took me a full fifteen minutes of sneaking backward (with Invisibility potions), placing obsidian blocks, and then cobblestone one block at a time, to travel the 1,060 or so blocks to the Outer End Islands. I just barely had enough blocks to get to a small island. On the small island, I had to mine a stack and a half of End stone to make a bridge to the nearest big island. Getting back was about twice as fast, but I did aggro (make aggressive) an Endermen when I was just twenty blocks from the main island. That Enderman dispatched me into the void quickly and prematurely, with very little sympathy for my arduous journey.
Building a thousand-block bridge to the Outer End Islands is not impossible!
Fly Me to the End
There’s a popular redstone contraption you can build to get to the outer islands. It’s not too difficult to build, but it is slow, so you won’t get to the islands much faster than building a bridge. That said, it is a fun and simple build. And theoretically, you could set yourself up in this flying contraption, then go do something for ten minutes while you’re flying, and come back to commandeer your arrival at the outer islands. To make this contraption, you need two pistons, one sticky piston, three blocks of redstone, and two slime blocks. You’ll also need some extra helper blocks to help you place these blocks in the right location, including a platform to stand on.
1. Two blocks above the ground, or away from the island, place a regular piston that faces away from the island. Since the Outer End Islands form a doughnut-like ring around the center island, any direction you choose is fine.*
2. Place a slime block in front of the piston, as shown.
* Here, and with other steps, you’ll have to place temporary helper blocks in order to place certain blocks. To keep these steps clear, I haven’t shown these helper blocks.
3. Place a sticky piston facing into the slime block and toward the island, as shown.
4. On the other side of the sticky piston, place another regular piston, again facing away from the island.
5. Place a slime block on the front of the regular piston.
6. Now place a redstone block on top of each of the two slime blocks.
7. Finally, place a redstone block on top of the second regular piston (the one that is furthest from the island). The contraption will expand. Stand on top of this redstone or the piston behind it.
8. Now break this last redstone block. The contraption will start extending and closing, the slime blocks and pistons pulling themselves along.
9. You can stop the contraption by placing a redstone block again on the second regular piston, and restart it by breaking that redstone block. Also, when this flying contraption reaches an End stone block on an island, it will stop.
You’ll know when you are close at the Outer End Islands because you’ll see the islands instead of the dark purple void. A lot of these islands are barely platforms; you’ll want to make your way to one of the larger islands, as that is where the good stuff is.
