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gyroncraft · 11 months

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🏰Build Process & Guide💁‍♂️

I'm making this in-depth post about my process, @lordoftablecloths asked how i planned the build and ill make this a separate post for all interested, this might be pretty long so it'll be under the cut, i'll add pictures where i can to help explain :3 will contain mostly explanations why i did what i did with a few technical tips mixed in.

I • Introduction & Inspiration

I'm going to try and structure this like a guide from the bottom up on how i made my castle build. let it be known that the order I've presented here isn't the exact order i built it in, and you don't have to follow exactly either, I'm choosing an order that i hope makes the most sense. whether you're planning a castle in creative or survival i hope this is useful. as for what inspired the look of the castle, its hard to pin down anything exactly, i love the look of places like Neuschwanstein Castle and Mont-Saint-Michel to give some basic examples, i recommend looking around Wikipedia (and the rest of the internet) for examples of existing churches castles fortresses etc around the world to draw from, sometimes you can even find floor plans and architectural drawings etc on google images

I HIGHLY recommend you build with XYZ coordinates enabled! even in survival it can help with your builds, it can be enabled in the settings on world creation or by using the command:

/gamerule showcoordinates true

II • Picking a Build Location

I started a new world with normal settings creative mode and cheats (i also use world-edit but won't be going over that in this post as i barely understand it myself lol) basically just fly around your world until you see some interesting looking geography, a certain biome, anything that brings you some inspiration

this castle mount i found is isolated by itself in a small valley between two large ridges and a river, thus i thought a castle would be the perfect thing to build here, there's plenty of room for a town as well

III • Terraforming & Laying Foundations

when starting a foundation on a hill/slope i try and find a good flat area to start clearing, you can shave off a few layers to get a level starting area, what to then do to get a terraced look is simply stand on your top level, sneak to the edge, and while keeping your Y level look straight down and fill outwards as far as you can reach, this will make 4 block high walls; exact heights are always up to you, treat every number like a suggestion and build what YOU think looks good! the number of tiers is also your choice, multiple is nice if you want multilevel walkways implemented into any steep area you want to be more accessible.

and dont forget to extend your build material all the way into the ground!

IV • Central Core & Courtyard

I think the very first thing i put on the mountain was the circle which would eventually be the main tower, acting as a main core for the building containing the main starway and a throne room at the top. I'd suggest having multiple intersecting shapes for your base, as you can build each of those shapes up in and out in separate ways the higher you go, which is pretty much the philosophy i had for this build, just remember to account for multiple stairways if you separate those shapes higher up.

i figured there should be some sort of tiered system of courtyards and walls since the hill has a natural gentle(ish) slope on the west. if you have the space for it i recommend filling in some green spaces for your castle residents, don't be afraid to have a steep cutoff like in the above image, you can put a castle wall or structure there later. for me, i wanted it to feel like a hike up to the castle through a winding path of gates, stairs, courtyards, and green areas

The hall with the rainbow windows was the first enclosed room i built, essentially a chunk of the floorplan reserved for a kind of reception space/grand entrance, once you've got a basic foundation down a small building like this can help you get a grasp of what kind of style/materials the rest of the castle will have. this is where i decided the castle would consist of stone brick foundations, smooth stone walls, a band of bricks on each floor; this can be super helpful while building inside and outside, i also like how it looks.

V • Main Building Facade

since i didn't want this entire build to be a blob of stone bricks i decided to add a decorative facade on the outside of the main keep, the idea is to have more blackstone near the top, to emphasize that the upper parts contain more important... stuff :P

these are built more or less outside of the main stone walls (except for some window protrusions) this means the interior rooms won't have to have one weird wall of blackstone, as i wanted the inside of the castle to have relatively plain smooth stone rooms

VI • "Defensive" Walls & Extra Foundations

castles need some sort of protection against people wandering in, right? the placement of these outer walls was kinda random, i just tried to enclose some courtyard spaces without going out too far to keep the walls a reasonable height

the way most of the outer walls were built was i started with a one block wide guide, making sure i didnt cut off any diagonals so that when built up there would be a small but navigable corridor within them (see below) this way people/guards etc. can move about the lower areas of the castle complex without being seen. I tried to keep most of the walls like this 3 blocks wide with a step out to 5 blocks at the top to account for a 3x path with walls/battlements on both sides

i also added towers at junctions to sort of act like small hubs (useful for stairways, ladders, guard barracks, defensive supplies and buildings etc.

VII • Other Structures

a castle build can be more than just a keep and some walls, some supporting structures are:

the windmill(s), if the people here are growing grain they must have somewhere to mill it, right? of course all you need to actually do that is a crafting table, stuff like this also won't move (unless you use a mod like technic, but bedrock users are SOL for mods like that afaik) but i like to add elements of realism into my builds, suspend your disbelief!

the "library", originally this was going to be a sparring arena, then a temple, then a library, but as of now there's a much better stocked library in the central keep, i'm trying to think of what to turn this into,

the alchemist's tower, a detached tower containing a brewing lab along with a nether portal and some ingredient storage. only accessible via a small bridge, if i ever expand the dungeons or construct a sewer system i'll consider connecting it through a new stairway in here 🤫

VIII • Farms & Irrigation

this is the first field of crops i built for the castle (intended to be private and for the castle only), very simple with some covered water troughs for irrigation, i didn't plan the stepped farms until much later so this will probably get changed without completely redoing it, maybe turned into a greenhouse with farmed flowers

the newer farms cover much more area and have more variety, as well as a more organic looking irrigation system, these might be extended even further at some point to be a food source for the whole area.

there are small channels of waterlogged stair blocks i've kinda snaked through the farmland to make quarter block wide water channels, my idea is that this castle sits on a (possibly mystical) spring which feeds the fresh water needs of the castle complex and town (aqueducts may appear in the future)

IX • Outer Wall Details

since having nothing but flat walls isnt very interesting, i'll show some ways to give them more... visual texture? interest? either way.

you can really just stick a layer of arches or even simple columns over a flat wall and itll look 10x better

i recommend stair and wall blocks mainly for this, if you're building in wood you can use trap doors to add just a little more to an arch

X • Floor Appearance & Hierarchy

one of the most important things to decide when i start a build is what floor height i want to have, i try to keep each floor in the castle the same height for consistency. below i have an example of six floors with different block heights

I always try to have each floor made of distinct layers (the stone brick band helps me remember where the floor block is supposed to be) the way i like to do it is as follows (top to bottom):

[1 Block] floor, solid block, this is the floor of the next level

[1-3 Blocks] ceiling, i like to use stairs and slabs so you dont see the bottom of the next floor up, but you can decide if you want that to show or not, using single lines of slabs can look like wood beams

[2-5 Blocks] walls and windows, the main section of the wall, solid

[1 Block] guide layer made of a different material, or just use the same throughout, this should be where your legs are

[1 Block] floor, solid block, you'll walk upon this

about the hierarchy, thats just relating to the fact that i didnt want (too many) glass windows in the dungeon sections of the castle, i wanted it to feel cold, grimy, and drafty ya know? so the lowest levels have a few iron barred windows as well as a bunch of slit windows made using stair blocks, there are also more and more windows the higher up you go. There are some windows that extend out each floor as well

XI • Interior Details

The lowest parts of the castle consist of stonebrick halls, storage rooms, connections to the outer wall corridors, and possibly forgotten paths to the depths... as stated earlier i try to have a floor material, and a wall+ceiling material

above: undercroft level, steel bar windows, stone brick, dingy

below: mid-level central keep (facing south) the windows here are glass, but still small, wood floors throughout, upper floors get the benefit of more natural light

pictured above is the central spiral staircase, it does take up quite a bit of the floorspace, but the wide and easy slope makes it easier to navigate so i think its worth it

the most fantastical details are currently in the ballroom, library, and throne room but im running out of picture slots so onto the next category

XII • Spires & Roofing

all of the roofing (aside from some detailing on the entrance hall) is mangrove wood, and i recommend choosing one roofing material to have throughout, though you'll see here that i'm using red nether brick walls, why? Well fence blocks don't connect to wall blocks, and iron rods won't connect to fence blocks (if this is bedrock only or something let me know..) i find it really useful to add these alternating stacks of those blocks to make quite sharp looking points along the ridges of the roof. i recommend trying out whatever different color palettes you can with the blocks we have in-game

the heights of the stacks also go up the higher (and thus farther away) you go, meaning the highest ridges will have 3 of each block stacked, like 3,3,3 and 2,2,2 instead of the 1,1,1 seen in the foreground above

XIII • :3

thank u for coming to my ted talk! i might update this post to add some clarity if i need to, hope you enjoyed it if you made it this far. I had fun writing it up, might do more posts like this in the future.

#mineblr #minecraft screenshots #minecraft #minecraft build #minecraft wip #minecraft tutorial #minecraft tumblr #castleburgh

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