How many creepers does it take to blow up the Ender Dragon in Minecraft?

For almost a decade, Minecraft players have been devising new ways to take down the Ender Dragon. A rather novel idea to try would be to use creepers to defeat the Ender Dragon.

This niche idea may be impossible in vanilla or survival Minecraft, but it is still fun to hypothesize. Would it be possible to slay the Ender Dragon using only creeper explosions? How would players make this method work?

This article dives into everything players need to know about blowing up the Ender Dragon using only creepers.

---

How many creepers do players need to blow up the Ender Dragon in Minecraft?

To find out the answer, a few important pieces of information must be clarified. Everything must be done in Minecraft hard mode for the sake of continuity.

Keep in mind, this situation is hypothetical and hasn't been tested in Minecraft. All the information presented in this article is purely based on math and game mechanics.

Step #1: How much health does the Ender Dragon have?

Ender dragon health points (Image via happygamer)

According to the official Minecraft wiki, Ender Dragons have 200 health points or 100 player hearts. This is the second-most health point for any Minecraft mob, only trumped by the feared Wither.

Step #2: How much damage does a creeper explosion do on hard mode?

Creeper's damage points (Image via messymom)

In Minecraft's hard mode, creepers can deal up to 64.5 damage points with a single explosion. This is 32.25 player hearts.

Step #3: Applying math

Ender dragon with dark red background (Image via turbosquid)

To calculate how many creepers it would take, we need to divide the health points of the Ender Dragon by the damage points from a creeper attack.

This base equation is: 200 / 64.5.

There also has to be a creeper for each end crystal on top of the obsidian spikes. There are 10 obsidian spikes around the Ender Dragon, meaning there needs to be 10 extra creepers.

The equation now looks like: (200 / 64.5) + 10.

Step #4: Calculating

Creeper in Minecraft (Image via getwallpapers)

The equation equals a total of 13.1 creepers. Round up to 14 to ensure that the Ender Dragon is killed in one blow.

Players might be surprised to learn that it only takes 3.1 creepers to kill the Ender Dragon in one blow. The extra 10 creepers are for taking out the end crystal towers. The extra creeper added to the equation accounts for the 0.1 extra creeper damage needed to blow up the Ender Dragon since Minecraft can only generate whole creepers and not 0.1 creepers.

---

Under what circumstances would this be possible?

These circumstances assume that all four creepers can attack the Ender Dragon at the same time. It also assumes that the 10 other creepers have already successfully blown up the end crystals on top of the obsidian spikes, so the end crystals cannot heal the Ender Dragon. It will allow the creepers to kill the Ender Dragon in one swift blow.

The most difficult part of completing this experiment would be getting the creepers to explode around the Ender Dragon. The only way they would be hostile enough to explode is if their code was changed to act hostile towards Ender Dragons. A player could try to be close to both and trigger them at the same time.

The Ender Dragon would likely have to be stationary near the ground for this method to work. Otherwise, the creepers' explosions wouldn't reach or harm the Ender Dragon.