4 Gemini agents beat Minecraft's Ender Dragon in 27 hours for about $520 in API costs
DynamicWebPaige · x · 2026-10-16
Google DeepMind dropped four Gemini 4 Argon-powered agents into Minecraft with a single instruction — beat the Ender Dragon — and they finished in 27 hours 14 minutes.
Human-like tactics:
- Exploited 3-block-tall Endermen by hiding in 2-block ceilings
- Triangulated the stronghold from two Ender Eye throws (43m error)
- After dying to the dragon 69 times, wrote shared team rules like "don't wait on arrived platforms" and "only approach when it's stationary"
Cost & mechanics: 24,000 model calls, 1.35B input tokens (91% served from context cache), 16M output tokens incl. 4M thinking tokens — roughly $520 at introductory list price, $810 for the full session. Agents received numeric block/enemy data, not screen pixels. Researchers see this as the same competence needed for long-horizon coding agents.
Related event: DeepMind's Four Gemini Agents Beat Minecraft's Ender Dragon in 27 Hours(4 posts)→
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