Small End Islands

Scattered stepping stones in the void, between the central island and the outer ring. Each one is a lump of end stone, and there is nothing on it.

Crossing them is the point: an ender pearl thrown at the next island is the cheapest way over, and a bridge is the safest. No structure and no chorus plant generates on them, and endermen are the only company you will get.

Temperature 0.5, permanently weatherless, so no weather, no rain and no snow, and the void underneath. minecraft:small_end_islands has filled that gap since 1.9, and 26.2 still scatters them.

Scattered rock in the void, reached after a Stronghold and an End Portal like everything else out here. The End and End Highlands lie on either side of the gap.

These are the scattered little islands in the void between the central island and the outer ring, crossed with Ender Pearls or bridges.

Common in that ring and awkward with it: nothing but end stone and endermen, and the space between islands is a straight drop. Pearls or a bridge, and never meet an enderman's eye while you are carrying blocks. The eyes of ender come first, as they do for everything through that portal. Being scattered, the islands reveal themselves slowly: travel out and the void soon turns to end stone, then back again. Watch your footing, because ordinary jumps do not cross the gap to the neighbours listed here.

Endermen are the only thing listed for these rocks, four at a time, on islands barely wide enough to stand on.

They teleport, they carry blocks around, and they leave you alone until you look at a head, which is difficult to avoid while lining up a jump across the void. Nothing else spawns out here, so the islands are as empty as they look right up to the moment one appears behind you. Per attempt the enderman is all of the hostile spawns, 4 at a time, and it teleports and picks up blocks whether or not you look directly at it. Counted per attempt that is one mob, and if it teleports behind you the island is smaller than you thought.

Enderman

End Stone again, on islands small enough to walk across in a few seconds, with void between every one of them. The block list is short because there is nothing here but the ground itself.

That ground is put down by a rule of its own: the islands are decorated as they generate, so the chorus plants growing on them arrive with the island instead of being planted afterwards, and no two of them come out the same shape.

What sets these islands apart is that they are made and laid down in a single pass, so the pattern of chorus on them is part of the island rather than something added afterwards.

End Stone is the beginning and the end of the block list out on these small end islands.

End Stone

Tiny floating islands with void between them and nothing built on any of them. No build is tied to these islands, so the islands themselves and the gaps you have to cross are the entire experience.

Any End structure you reach from here belongs to the neighbouring outer islands, not to these. What the small islands are good for is the crossing itself, since a pair of Elytra and the end stone under your feet turn them into stepping stones towards the cities on the larger land. Exploring rewards you with scenery and a long jump rather than buildings. Nothing generated on these rocks belongs to them, and they belong to nothing else either.

One pass in total, and it is the island itself: decorated end islands at one or two per chunk on one chunk in 14. Nothing grows on them afterwards, because no vegetation pass runs out here at all. That single number is the whole generation of this biome.

The small islands are cold ground on paper like the rest of the End. Endermen spawn on them, nothing else does, and no variant rule has any effect out here.

It is the last page in this comparison and the one with the fewest rules that ever fire.

Nothing is built on the small islands either: they are terrain and chorus and nothing else.

That leaves the highlands and the midlands as the only two biomes in the dimension where the game puts a building down.

Counting only what the spawn list can give you, Small End Islands yields 1 drop: ender pearls.

The heaviest roll in Small End Islands is Enderman at 100 percent of the monster draw, which makes ender pearls the easiest thing to gather here.

The Small End Islands are the gap between the main island and the outer ring, and they are mostly void with end stone floating in it. Nothing generates on them and only endermen spawn there.

They matter for one reason: they are what you glide over. An elytra flight out of the central End crosses the small end islands before it reaches anything worth landing on, and each rock is a place to stop if your rockets run out.

The Small End Islands are one of the four Java biomes with no counterpart on Bedrock at all: that edition uses the_end for every island beyond the central one.

Java lists them at temperature 0.5 and downfall 0.5. They are the biome of the gap between the main island and the outer ring, which is why they are mostly void with rocks floating in it.

Small End Islands goes back to 1.9 and has been listed under this name in 51 releases, the oldest of them 1.13. No rename has ever touched it.

No advancement asks you to stand in Small End Islands. Adventuring Time wants 56 of the game's 67 biomes and Small End Islands is one of the 11 it leaves out, along with the rest of the 5 End biomes. Going there costs you nothing and earns you nothing on the advancement screen.