By playing as ender dragon, you get to play with the following abilities:
- Ender breath.
- Ender fireballs.
- End crystal healing.
- Several upgradeable abilities with experience that give permanent stat buffs.
- Flight, obviously, but at the cost of hunger.
You also gain an ability to perform rituals - special abilities that require presence of at least 4 end crystals, that allow you to:
- Summon enderman minions.
- Purify all nearby dragon players from negative effects.
- Open a temporary portal between the overworld and the end.
- Conjure loot that would nomally have to be obtained the violent way.
As of challenges you'll have to work with:
- You mostly feed off magic-themed items, like crystals, enchanted books and chorus fruit. Early on, those items are very hard to come by so best you can afford is eat diorite for trace amounts of quartz, still better than nothing.
- Your healing without end crystals is very slow due to low saturation values of all foods you eat.
- You're not physically strong either, you rely on magic, but it takes time to achieve full potential.
- And generally speaking you'll have extremely rough early game, but extremely powerful endgame, will feel comfortable when near end crystals but weak without those.
