How much TNT does it take to blow up the Ender Dragon in Minecraft?

The Ender Dragon is one of the hardest mobs to kill in all of Minecraft. Players have spent countless hours devising ways to take down this beast. Yet few players have ever tried to defeat the Ender Dragon using only TNT.

Recently, we discovered how many creepers it would take to blow up the Ender Dragon. Today we'll explore the other most explosive block in Minecraft, TNT. Here's how many TNT blocks it takes to blow up the Ender Dragon in Minecraft.

How many TNT blocks does it take to kill the Ender Dragon in Minecraft?

To discover how many TNT blocks it takes to slay the beast, we'll first need to learn a few things about TNT and the Ender Dragon.

How much damage does one TNT block do? How much health does the Ender Dragon have? How many resources would it take to create all the TNT necessary? All of these questions can be solved and answered through official Minecraft information and math.

How much damage does TNT do?

TNT is a very interesting block in Minecraft. For those who haven't used TNT in Minecraft, it is Minecraft's only explosive block. This block is very dangerous as players can use fire and Redstone to cause explosions.

TNT blocks act as regular blocks a majority of the time. These blocks can be placed in mid-air without dropping until they are primed to explode. When TNT blocks are primed to explode they take on a flashing white appearance. They also move slightly horizontally and vertically and become subject to gravity.

TNT blocks do different amounts of damage depending on how close the player or entity is to the explosion. According to the Minecraft wiki, standing directly next to TNT harms the player by 65 damage points or 32.5 hearts.

How much health does the Ender Dragon have?

The Ender Dragon is one of the strongest mobs in all of Minecraft. The Ender Dragon has 200 health points, or 100 player hearts. This makes her incredibly difficult to kill and even more difficult to blow up.

The math work

Calculating how many blocks of TNT it would take to blow up the Ender Dragon is tricky. Even though each TNT block inflicts 65 damage points, it's highly unlikely that each block of TNT would hit the Ender Dragon from the closest distance possible.

Nevertheless, it's assumed that when TNT blocks are further away during detonation they do only half of their original damage, or about 32.5 damage points.

We'll calculate how many TNT blocks it takes to kill the Ender Dragon when each block is directly next to the dragon, and when the dragon is slightly further away.

Directly next to the Ender Dragon

The Ender Dragon has 200 health points, and each block of TNT will inflict 65 damage points. This means the equation is 200 / 65 = 3.08. We'll round this number up to 4.

The player will also need to place a TNT block on each Obsidian Tower to blow up the End Crystals. There are 10 obsidian towers. 10 + 4 = 14.

If the TNT block detonates directly next to the Ender Dragon, it will take 14 TNT blocks. Not too bad for fighting one of the most dangerous mobs in all of Minecraft.

Further away from the Ender Dragon

TNT from slightly further away will do about half the damage. This means the new equation is 200 / 32.5 = 6.15. We'll round this up to 7. With the 10 obsidian towers added on 7 + 10 = 17. The player will only need 3 extra TNT blocks.