44

Since Endermen are capable of picking up blocks, they can pick up your blocks from your house.

What's the best way to prevent Endermen from stealing your blocks?

Ryan Berger
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Warface
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  • Related to your other question? http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/30414/can-enderman-enter-your-house-when-you-sleep – Joe the Person Sep 14 '11 at 22:18
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    No since the other question is to know if they can wake you up. This one is to know how to protect your house from them stealing blocks. – Warface Sep 14 '11 at 22:21
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    @fireDude67 I agree that it's possible to merge the two questions, but I don't see any need to. They are both separate questions which can stand on there own, and having them separate can help with SEO – Wipqozn Sep 14 '11 at 23:16
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    This question has me worried now! – wonea Sep 15 '11 at 08:48

12 Answers12

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Put vines on the outside of your house. Instead of grabbing blocks from your house, they will grab the vines, and the vines will just grow back. It's a self-preserving defense mechanism against endermen.

Invader Skoodge
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44

Endermen take damage from water. So: surround your house with a moat. As long as every floor tile on the same side of the moat as your house is sufficiently illuminated (i.e., within 7 blocks of a torch, 8 blocks of glowstone, close to burning netherrack, etc.), Endermen should not be able to get to your house to disassemble it.

Bear in mind that, generally, the roof of your house is probably also a valid place for Endermen to spawn—put torches up there, too!

Note that lava is also an effective deterrent, but it will also destroy any dropped items from enemies.

Update (October 3, 2012): a mere moat is no longer sufficient. My current strategy for preventing harassment by endermen to build my house with a diagonally sloping roof and put a water source block at the uppermost point, completely submerging my house in running water; the interior contains only a nether portal in waist-deep water. The nether portal emerges into an enclosed tunnel that spirals down into the depths of the nether and is heavily illuminated, where a second portal returns you to the real world in my actual subterranean home.

jsnlxndrlv
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7

Endermen can't take some types of block, so make a wall around your house with those materials. They can't take obsidian but it's hard to harvest, but if you wait for 1.9 Endermen won't be able to carry stone-type blocks. (Already in 1.9 pre-release 2 they can't)

Last of all: don't look at them so that they won't teleport inside your house!

fredley
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5

It's possible to use a cobblestone generator and pistons to build a self-repairing house. If you're clever with the redstone you won't spot where the pistons and circuitry is hidden.

Edit: Here is a video example of a stone self-repairing house.

AncientSwordRage
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4

Endermen are 3 blocks tall, so:

  1. Make a moat full of water as jsnlxndrlv's answer suggests.
  2. Make your house interior shorter than 3 blocks. Not three blocks or less, but no higher than 2 blocks!
  3. Make your exterior walls from diamond blocks as chichiwauwa09's answer suggests.

They can't get to your house, can't steal blocks, and can't teleport into your house! So do this, and you're Endermen-proof.

SevenSidedDie
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cassidy
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  • What's the moat thingy? 2) What's the diamond thing? Please add these details into your answer.
  • – Frank Sep 21 '12 at 22:31
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    @fbueckert That's just a 1-rep user thinking this is a top-to-bottom forum, not a sortable list of answers. They're referring to the accepted answer and the the last-submitted one prior to this. – SevenSidedDie Sep 21 '12 at 23:50
  • Minor quibble: using slabs you can make your house interior 2.5 blocks high, so technically it just need to be less than three. – User1000547 Sep 10 '14 at 13:03