Minecraft would beat itself in 2 billion years without a player, simulation finds

A Minecraft world could automatically beat itself by killing the Ender Dragon and triggering the end scene credits after roughly 2 billion years, according to a new experiment by YouTuber RedLogic exploring whether the game can play itself without human input.

To beat Minecraft, players must travel to The End and kill the Ender Dragon, typically by firing arrows at it after destroying the healing crystals surrounding it. Minecraft mobs can theoretically perform these actions without a player. The critical requirement is an active 12-eye End Portal already present in the world, since mobs cannot create Eyes of Ender or activate portals themselves.

RedLogic wanted to determine how long this would actually take. Rather than running a world for billions of years, he used a Monte Carlo simulation to model the probability of rare mob behaviors occurring in the correct sequence. The simulation tracked a specific world seed and predicted events based on random variables representing mob actions like Endermen moving between points, picking up blocks, or entering portals.

The experiment depended on an improbable chain of events. An Enderman must place pumpkin blocks on snow to create Snow Golems in a snowy biome. Those golems then move underground near the End Portal and detonate Creepers to destroy blocking terrain. The Enderman must pass through the portal, place blocks in The End to create paths, and allow Snow Golems to follow and fire snow at the dragon while occasionally destroying its healing crystals. Finally, Creepers must detonate near the dragon as it flies close to them.

By calculating the odds of individual mob behaviors rather than simulating every action, RedLogic compressed the problem into manageable variables. Instead of tracking millions of tiny random decisions, the simulator sampled how long each meaningful event would take. This allowed him to estimate probable outcomes across the vast timescale.

The results reveal the staggering scale required. One Snow Golem wandered The End for 18 million years before destroying a second crystal. After nearly 250 million years, the dragon had lost only 2% of its health. A pumpkin took 2,000 years to transport after first appearing 34,777 years into the simulation. It took 2.9 million years for a route to open from the End-side portal room. Approximately 1.975 billion years into the simulation, the Ender Dragon finally fell and the game's credits rolled.

The experiment highlights how dependent Minecraft's victory condition is on specific, low-probability mob interactions occurring in precise sequence over incomprehensible spans of time.