What an ender pearl is
An ender pearl is a small green item that teleports you to wherever it lands when you throw it. Endermen drop them, and they are the ingredient that turns blaze powder into an eye of ender, which is how you find a stronghold and open the portal to the End.
That double purpose is why every serious playthrough collects pearls. You need at least a dozen of them to build the eye of ender count for the portal, and once you have spares, the pearls themselves become one of the fastest ways to move around: up cliffs, across ravines, out of a fight, or through a gap in a wall you cannot otherwise reach.
Pearls stack to 16, not 64. Keep that in mind when you plan inventory space for a long End trip.
How to get ender pearls
There are four practical sources. Killing endermen is the main one in most worlds, but bartering and trading are worth knowing about if you want pearls without the fight.
Enderman drops
An enderman drops 0 or 1 ender pearl when it dies. With a Looting sword the maximum goes up by one per level, so a Looting III sword can pull up to 4 pearls from a single kill. The drop happens whether the enderman dies to a player or to something else, but in practice you will be the one killing them.
Endermen spawn in the Overworld at night, all over the Nether (the warped forest is the best spot, since nothing else hostile spawns there), and in huge numbers in the End. If you only need a handful of pearls, the Overworld at night is fine. If you need a stack, the warped forest or the End is far faster.
Two tips for farming them by hand. First, endermen only aggro when you look at their eyes or attack them, so you can pick your fights. Second, stand under a 2-block-high ceiling: endermen are 3 blocks tall and cannot reach you there, but you can still hit them. A dug-out hole with a roof at head height turns enderman hunting into a very safe grind.
Piglin bartering
Throwing or giving a gold ingot to a piglin in the Nether can return 2 to 4 ender pearls. It is one of the less common bartering results, roughly a 1 in 20 chance per ingot, so you need a lot of gold to rely on it. If you already run a gold farm, bartering is a hands-off way to fill a chest with pearls over time.
Cleric villager trades
A cleric villager sells 1 ender pearl for 5 emeralds once it reaches the expert level. Clerics also buy rotten flesh, which makes this a good pairing with a zombie farm: rotten flesh in, emeralds out, emeralds into pearls. A cleric needs a brewing stand as its job block.
Five emeralds per pearl is not cheap early on, but it is the only renewable source that does not involve fighting or the Nether.
Chest loot
Ender pearls turn up in stronghold chests, often near the portal room. That is useful when you arrive at a stronghold a pearl or two short of a full portal. Do not count on chest loot as a primary source; the numbers are too small.
How throwing works
Right-click with a pearl in your hand and it flies out in an arc, similar to a snowball. When it hits a block, a mob, or the ground, you teleport to that exact spot. The pearl is used up whether the throw was useful or not.
A few details that matter once you start using pearls seriously:
- Teleporting deals 5 damage (2.5 hearts) on Java. It counts as fall damage, so Feather Falling boots reduce it, and it applies even when the pearl lands in water. At full health it is harmless; at 2 hearts it will kill you.
- There is a 1-second cooldown after each throw before you can throw another pearl. The hotbar shows the cooldown as a white overlay on the item.
- The pearl teleports you on impact, not on landing. If it hits the side of a mob or a wall in mid-flight, that is where you go.
- If you die before the pearl lands, no teleport happens.
- Each throw has a 5% chance to spawn an endermite where you arrive. Endermites are weak, but they are hostile and easy to miss underfoot.
Pearls travel in a curve, so aiming is a skill. Throwing straight ahead lands the pearl a good distance out; throwing at about 45 degrees gets the most range. Throwing straight down at your feet teleports you in place and still costs a pearl and 5 damage, which is the classic beginner mistake.
Pearls and mounts
Teleporting dismounts you from whatever you are riding. If you pearl out of a boat or off a horse, the vehicle stays behind. Plan for that when you are crossing an ocean.
Pearl tricks worth learning
Once you have a stack of pearls, movement in Minecraft changes. These are the uses that come up most often.
Climbing
Throw a pearl at the top edge of a cliff, a wall, or a tall build. It lands on the surface and you appear on top. This is faster than pillaring and does not leave a column of dirt behind you. In the End, pearling up the sides of end city towers is the standard way to reach the upper rooms.
Escaping
Pearls are the best panic button in the game. Surrounded at night, cornered by a warden, or falling into a ravine with mobs at the bottom: throw a pearl in the direction you want to go and you are gone. The 5 damage is the cost, so keep an eye on your health before you use one as an escape.
A pearl also works as a mid-air save. If you fall off a cliff, a pearl thrown at the ground below lands before you do and teleports you to the impact point. You take the 5 pearl damage instead of the full fall damage, which is a very good trade from any real height.
Crossing gaps
Lava lakes in the Nether, the void gaps between End islands, and ravines are all pearl territory. Throw across, land on the other side, done. In the End this matters most: the outer islands are separated by wide voids, and pearling between them is how you get around without building bridges. Carry more pearls than you think you need out there, because a missed throw over the void is a lost pearl.
Through small gaps
A pearl is a tiny projectile and can fit through spaces you cannot. If there is a gap in a wall, a slab-height opening, or a fence with a pearl-sized hole, the pearl can pass through and you teleport to the other side. This is how players get into and out of enclosed spaces without breaking blocks.
The pearl stasis chamber
This one is the most advanced pearl trick and it is worth understanding even if you never build one. A thrown pearl only teleports you when it hits something. If it never lands, it just floats, and you can trigger the landing later from anywhere.
The standard build is a small pool of water with an upward bubble column from soul sand. You throw a pearl into it, and the bubble column holds the pearl in place indefinitely. When you want to come home, you trigger a mechanism (usually a redstone-controlled piston or trapdoor) that removes the pearl’s support so it drops and lands. The moment it lands, you teleport back to the chamber, no matter how far away you are.
On Java, this became far more reliable in version 1.21.2, when thrown pearls were changed to keep their chunk loaded and to survive the player logging out and back in. Before that, a pearl in an unloaded chunk was effectively frozen, and quitting the game could break the trick. If you build a stasis chamber on a current Java version, it works across dimensions and across sessions. Trigger it from another player, a redstone clock, or even a chat-controlled setup, and you get a one-way ticket home.
Crafting the eye of ender
An eye of ender is a shapeless recipe: 1 ender pearl plus 1 blaze powder, placed anywhere in a crafting grid. Blaze powder comes from blaze rods, which drop from blazes in a nether fortress. One rod crafts into 2 powder, so each blaze rod is worth 2 eyes if you have the pearls to match.
You need eyes for two jobs. Throwing an eye in the Overworld makes it fly toward the nearest stronghold and drop (or occasionally break), which is how you locate the portal room. Then the end portal frame needs 12 eyes to activate, minus any that generated already filled in. Frames spawn with each slot having a small chance to hold an eye, so you usually need 10 to 12.
The math for a portal run, then, is roughly 12 pearls and 6 blaze rods for the eyes themselves, plus a few extra eyes for the search, plus spare pearls for travel once you are in the End. A comfortable target before you head out is 16 to 20 pearls and 8 blaze rods.
Common mistakes
The pearl-at-your-feet mistake gets everyone once. Right-clicking with a pearl selected while looking down teleports you nowhere and takes 2.5 hearts. Swap to a different hotbar slot before you start placing or interacting with things.
Throwing at low health is the other big one. Pearl damage does not care about the fall height, so if you are at 2 hearts or below, the teleport kills you. Eat or drink first.
Pearls also fail as an escape from the End’s void. If you fall past the edge of an island, a pearl thrown sideways can save you only if it hits the island’s side before you drop too far. Throw early and at the nearest solid surface.
Finally, remember the endermite chance. If you pearl into a tight spot and hear a small squeak, look down. An endermite next to an enderman farm or a villager area is a nuisance, and endermen will attack it and each other around it.
Java vs Bedrock differences
The basics are the same on both editions: pearls stack to 16, endermen drop them, clerics sell them, and one pearl plus one blaze powder makes an eye of ender.
The clearest difference is the stasis chamber behavior described above. The Java 1.21.2 change that keeps a thrown pearl loaded and tied to the player across logouts is a Java feature. Stasis chambers on Bedrock rely on the pearl’s chunk staying loaded by other means, and players on Bedrock report them as less dependable. If you are on Bedrock, test the chamber in a throwaway world before you trust it with a long trip.
The 5 damage figure in this article is the Java value. Bedrock also damages you on teleport, but if you play on Bedrock and care about the exact number, check it in-game rather than assuming they match.
Frequently asked questions
How many ender pearls do you need to get to the End?
Twelve is the maximum for the portal itself, since the frame has 12 slots and some may generate already filled. Bring a few more to throw while searching for the stronghold, and extra pearls for traveling once you arrive.
Do ender pearls stack to 64?
No. Ender pearls stack to 16 in both Java and Bedrock, the same as eggs and snowballs.
Does throwing an ender pearl always hurt you?
On Java, yes: every teleport deals 5 damage, even into water. Feather Falling reduces it. The Nether and the End do not change the amount.
Can you throw an ender pearl in Creative mode?
Yes. In Creative on Java, the pearl teleports you normally and is not consumed from your inventory.
Why did an endermite appear when I teleported?
Every pearl teleport has a 5% chance to spawn an endermite at the landing point. It is random, and it is the only way endermites spawn in survival.
What is the best place to farm ender pearls?
The End, once you can get there, because endermen spawn constantly on the main island and the outer islands. Before that, the Nether’s warped forest is the safest place, since endermen are the only hostile mob that spawns there.
Do ender pearls despawn?
A pearl dropped on the ground despawns after 5 minutes like any other item. A thrown pearl is different: it stays in the air until it hits something, which is the whole basis of the stasis chamber.
Keep a stack on you
Once a world gets past the first portal, the habit that pays off most is never leaving base without a stack of pearls in the hotbar. They replace a lot of scaffolding, save you from falls you would otherwise not survive, and get you across the End far faster than any bridge. Pair them with a stasis chamber at home and long trips lose most of their risk.
