but i actually get scared in hardcore because i have something to lose. it makes it funner in my opinion, and i become a tougher player. although i lost a great base i gained lots of experience about staying alive. i will incorporate what i have learned into my next world and in each world i will make it a little further until eventually i complete the challenge. yes it will take forever and yes i am stubborn but this is fun. when i finally complete the challenge i will have accomplished something to be proud of. i don't exactly want this challenge to end quickly, i want to take my time and do a good job, and a good job means not dying.
This looked like a lot of fun so I started this challenge myself on PS4 playing on Hard Survival. I am going to play it as if it were Hardcore mode (can't do that on PS4 obviously), so if I die, I'll start over. Should make it a little more interesting. I just completed the Wood Age. Nothing spectacular in the castle build so far, but I plan on doing a lot more in the coming ages. I'm using the Fantasy Texture Pack. Here's my screenshots for Wood Age completion:
Here is my first castle, made from Birch wood and Dark Oak wood. The Spawn point is inside the keep. This area was covered in a lot of Birch and Dark Oak trees which I had to clear out, but was ideal to gather all the wood needed. Very simple design for now.
I added Dark Oak around the doors to make it a little nicer than the first pic. This is the castle gate from the outside.
This is a view of the castle gate from the inside of the keep. I spawned on a hill and filled in some dirt (left of the gate) to build it up flat, leaving this part of the hill to use as a staircase leading down to the gate. To the immediate left of the gate is going to be the start of a mine.
Animal Pen with 3 cows:
Wheat Farm:
These doors are the entrance to the keep. The Dark Oak block with the torch on it is my initial spawn point. I was really close to not quite getting it covered before the first nightfall as I took too much time gathering wood, food and finding sheep for wool.
The other side of the main floor of the keep, with my storage chests, crafting table and furnaces.
This is the 2nd floor of the keep, serving as my bedroom. I haven't really decorated much, but that chest is where I keep my items for the Materials and Treasure Requirements.
This shows the completed Materials and Treasure Requirements for completing the Wood Age. Now it's time to move onto the Stone Age!
Looking forward to the Stone Age and making it look more like a traditional castle!
Edit: I created an album on Imgur to track and show my progress. I am purposely spending a lot of time in the Stone Age, planning, building and sometimes rebuilding. The area of my spawn point is a difficult location with water on 3 sides very close by and tall mountains as well. One of the water areas is a swamp, so if I build too close, I risk slimes spawning inside my walls, which is against the rules of course. They already spawn close by, outside the walls.
Hey guys! Done with the wood/copper age (at long last)!
Figure I should preface this by saying I've changed my year length to 360 days instead of the default 96. I didn't feel like I had enough time to build AND forage AND prep for winter with 8-day months. Unfortunately, this change has babified all animals that were in chunks I've explored (while maintaining other statuses like whether pregnant or not). So now I have to go farther out to find meat. Thank goodness my butchery skill is improving.
I thought it'd be nice to start things off with a map of everything. The only thing I forgot was the clay pit, which is kinda underneath the hay pile.
Here are a couple overview pics. Wall is complete and so is my house.
The wall. The third pic is before it was complete, just showing the entrance.
And this is the inside of my house. Room is upstairs. Also - nabbed a copper helm from a skelly.
Le spawnpoint
Decided to try boiling some venison.
Farm as it stands.
Babified animals.
Berry bushes and strawberry vine.
pit kilns, firepit, and clay oven (in the bg).
House with beer barrel and water vessel outside. Spawn point is there to the left.
Better shot of the clay oven. Currently drying. You can't tell but it's sitting on a block of rhyolite so as to prevent a bug from destroying it if anything is set beside it.
This guy just randomly decided to grow here.
Log piles + spawn point.
Thought this was interesting. Shoreline cliff, ravine, mountain, coal, and (of course)trees in the same picture.
And, of course, lots of sunsets.
I guess that's about it for this round. Hope you enjoyed!
Well, if you're patient and try to learn before jumping onto hardcore in TFC, you'll get farther. Definitely not my first attempt at TFC and certainly not my last. During other attempts I forgot to go and forage before the first freeze and wound up spending a few winters hungry and hurting from the lack of fruit and balance in my diet.
Honestly there's nothing to really be impressed about... yet. Next stage will be interesting. First order is to decide between mud bricks and stone bricks. Then spend hours grinding the materials necessary for those things. Then you can be impressed, but honestly there's nothing to be truly proud of with a tiny little wood hut. It's just patience. Next stage will start the swearing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
I've returned with my castle plans (built in a creative world). Superflat isn't available in TFC, so.....
Again, I'm starting off with something I made in Paint. Level-by-level representation of the build. First level is top-left with rooftops being the lower right.
First level, and again with some of the flooring put in, and the last one at a different angle to show wall heights. I never did manage a shot of the completed floor design. The first floor contains the dining room, throne room, and I'm not sure what that back room will be yet beyond the spawn point room. That small room connected to the tiny tower I think will be a store room of some form.
This will be the second floor. The leftward room is the guest room, the large room in the back is mine. I wasn't sure what to do with the leftover space, but felt it was too big, so I threw in some walls to help divide it up. The wall where the dining room is has been flattened with the remaining space being turned into a balcony.
And, finally, the roof. I realized I hadn't made space for servants downstairs, so I gave them some space up here. I guess most of this area can be used for fancy balls or something. I dunno. I didn't snap a shot of the servant's quarters sans roof, but you get the idea.
The rest of these are just pictures of the planned build. Somewhere along the way I remembered I hadn't put glass in a few windows and hadn't popped a door in the front.
Obviously I won't be using golden lanterns at the start. Kinda dreading it because this is the largest standalone build I've done. Either way, hopefully it'll turn out well!
And there ya go. Probably a bit over-ambitions for TFC, but we'll see. Hope you like it! If you do and want to use the idea in your own world, go right ahead.
Wanted to stop by and update y'all on progress. I'm now working on the 4th layer of wall for the actual castle. I haven't put a floor in yet. That'll happen after the walls are done.
Pics in the spoiler!
So first I had to lay the plan out so I'd know where it starts and ends and whether I'm gonna need to move stuff (like berry bushes). Thankfully it falls a few blocks short of my farm so it can stay put. The stone wall will probably be just a few blocks larger in each direction than the wooden wall, but not much larger. In these days the immediate area surrounding the castle wasn't terribly huge. Just large enough for a couple farms and maybe a garden. The larger area was the royal town around the castle outside the interior wall.
Also managed to find a cherry tree and nab some saplings from it. They are now growing peacefully outside and producing a little bit of fruit.
So I dropped in a mod called schematica. This mod allows you to turn builds you've planned out into schematics that you can then import into your world so you can save a little more energy instead of wasting it on remembering all the details of the plan. I usually have the block opacity turned down some so I can see where I'm building, I just hadn't gotten around to editing that part of the config yet. It also gives me a good idea of where the castle will sit.
So, with the help of schematica and going one layer at a time, I have started building up my castle. It's slow going, requiring several mining trips. I'm going to have to stop and plan the royal smith building before I can finish the main build so I can get some bronze going. That'll make the mining trips easier. I also popped some glass in that I had setting around. I've got loads of sand so it's not much of a problem, but glass is a pain to make because you can only go one block at a time. Ugh.
So that's about it for this update! Thanks again, guys!!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
So, I return having finished the first floor of my castle. The only thing I haven't done is add the flooring for the next floor. I think between finishing this one and starting the next I'll build a smeltery so I can get some bronze going (as those are the tools I should be using now). Also need to make some bread and smoke my meat. Anyway. Pics in the spoiler like always. There are a lot of them this time.
Sidenote: TFC stone bricks are so much easier to make than vanilla bricks. Gather sand, soak in limewater (flux added to a water barrel) to make mortar (if the ratio is correct you get (I think) 16 mortar per sand block). Chisel those stones you pick up off the ground to make bricks. Combine in your inventory in a ratio of 5 bricks to 4 mortar and you get your brick block. Easy peasy.
So we're picking up where we left off last time.
I finished the exterior walls with the 4th and 5th layers and made quick work of dismantling my old house. Next was the floor.
I started by marking off spawn. The original design has the castle pushed back and over a few blocks, but, because of the landscape, I had to pull it forward a tiny bit and adjust the floor design accordingly. I then took care of the most detailed parts of the floor, leaving spaces where the walls would be (I'm not wasting blocks on spaces we won't see).
I decided to grab a shot from the minimap of the castle floor cus why not?
So once the hardest parts were complete, I filled the spire floors with Douglas Fir (I have a castle being built for me, therefore I'm rich, therefore I can have somewhat expensive woods if I want them) and the middle with Hickory. The pinkish wood is Spruce (both Hickory and Spruce are local woods, so there, tree huggers). Once that was done, I started on the interior walls.
When I'm building interior walls, I deliberately leave a space between it and the layer for the floor of the next level so that I don't have to worry about conflicting floor plans. Makes it a lot easier to plan builds.
These are just overhead shots of the floor plan.
So I got some shots from around the castle, too, to get an idea of what it'll be like to walk up on this from any of the sides. Also got more shots from the castle grounds.
With this, I'm torn. I love the asesthetic of the log wall behind it. I don't want to take this section of wall down. I was thinking of keeping it and just putting up some fencing around the remaining area. The animal pit won't be staying. Given that (as far as I can tell) the babified animals haven't grown very much, I'm considering killing them and getting more adult animals. Then again, I've worked very hard to get these animals familiar, so I may just set these off in their own pens and get new adult animals to breed.
A shot of my berry bushes. I will rearrange these to be aesthetically pleasing so they can double as a royal garden (not like the agricultural kind).
Ugh. This mess. This will be moved to a building and the hill it's sitting on will be removed. After the castle is done, though. Or maybe before.
And my raspberries safely tucked in a corner (because ow). I actually had some blueberries, gooseberries, and raspberries ready for harvest this morning, which was quite the nice surprise.
And... that's it! Hope you enjoy it! My next post will probably show some other builds like a shed for tools and wood and a smeltery. I should also make a tannery (for leather). We'll see what I come up with.
Thanks, guys!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
Been awhile since I've posted as I have been super busy with life, the holidays were especially tough with work. While I have been doing many things and playing many games, I'm still slowly working on my castle challenge.
Well, I started this a LONG time ago...and never got around to finishing XD. In fact, I'm still on the stone age, but looking at other pics I think that I am also going for a totally different style. Anyways, here are my pics to prove that I completed the wood age:
Hey, I have a question, are we allowed to use shears in the stone age? Do they count as an iron tool? I was wanting to shear my sheep to make purple carpets for decorating my keep but I don't want to break any rules, I'll wait until the Iron Age if I have to. Thanks.
Holy wow, windrider! THAT'S your stone-age wall?!?!
It's certainly ambitious..
And good job Cauwelken for finishing!
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
here are the pics. i meant to post them a while ago. i am still on the wood age.
http://imgur.com/a/2DAjM
Can we please stop competing for "most ambitious castle"? You're making me feel bad about my wood house.
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
sorry bout that. i was working on that sucker for 4 months
i almost finished the wood age in TFC!
http://imgur.com/a/AssWM
This is why i keep telling you to do either normal or hard! At least those two options give you a slightly better chance at living!
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
but i actually get scared in hardcore because i have something to lose. it makes it funner in my opinion, and i become a tougher player. although i lost a great base i gained lots of experience about staying alive. i will incorporate what i have learned into my next world and in each world i will make it a little further until eventually i complete the challenge. yes it will take forever and yes i am stubborn but this is fun. when i finally complete the challenge i will have accomplished something to be proud of. i don't exactly want this challenge to end quickly, i want to take my time and do a good job, and a good job means not dying.
do you have a backup of the world?
maybe there is a way to get it back?
i'm sure the internet has an article on retrieving corrupt worlds. the internet has everything.
i know a you-tuber that lost his first world then found it many years later somehow. he thought he lost it forever.
don't give up there is bound to be a way to get your world back!
that sucks. i hope your next castle is everything your last one was and more. good luck
This looked like a lot of fun so I started this challenge myself on PS4 playing on Hard Survival. I am going to play it as if it were Hardcore mode (can't do that on PS4 obviously), so if I die, I'll start over. Should make it a little more interesting. I just completed the Wood Age. Nothing spectacular in the castle build so far, but I plan on doing a lot more in the coming ages. I'm using the Fantasy Texture Pack. Here's my screenshots for Wood Age completion:
Here is my first castle, made from Birch wood and Dark Oak wood. The Spawn point is inside the keep. This area was covered in a lot of Birch and Dark Oak trees which I had to clear out, but was ideal to gather all the wood needed. Very simple design for now.
I added Dark Oak around the doors to make it a little nicer than the first pic. This is the castle gate from the outside.
This is a view of the castle gate from the inside of the keep. I spawned on a hill and filled in some dirt (left of the gate) to build it up flat, leaving this part of the hill to use as a staircase leading down to the gate. To the immediate left of the gate is going to be the start of a mine.
Animal Pen with 3 cows:
Wheat Farm:
These doors are the entrance to the keep. The Dark Oak block with the torch on it is my initial spawn point. I was really close to not quite getting it covered before the first nightfall as I took too much time gathering wood, food and finding sheep for wool.
The other side of the main floor of the keep, with my storage chests, crafting table and furnaces.
This is the 2nd floor of the keep, serving as my bedroom. I haven't really decorated much, but that chest is where I keep my items for the Materials and Treasure Requirements.
This shows the completed Materials and Treasure Requirements for completing the Wood Age. Now it's time to move onto the Stone Age!
Looking forward to the Stone Age and making it look more like a traditional castle!
Edit: I created an album on Imgur to track and show my progress. I am purposely spending a lot of time in the Stone Age, planning, building and sometimes rebuilding. The area of my spawn point is a difficult location with water on 3 sides very close by and tall mountains as well. One of the water areas is a swamp, so if I build too close, I risk slimes spawning inside my walls, which is against the rules of course. They already spawn close by, outside the walls.
Here's the album is anyone is interested: http://imgur.com/a/TU8zk
Hey guys! Done with the wood/copper age (at long last)!
Figure I should preface this by saying I've changed my year length to 360 days instead of the default 96. I didn't feel like I had enough time to build AND forage AND prep for winter with 8-day months. Unfortunately, this change has babified all animals that were in chunks I've explored (while maintaining other statuses like whether pregnant or not). So now I have to go farther out to find meat. Thank goodness my butchery skill is improving.
I thought it'd be nice to start things off with a map of everything. The only thing I forgot was the clay pit, which is kinda underneath the hay pile.
Here are a couple overview pics. Wall is complete and so is my house.
The wall. The third pic is before it was complete, just showing the entrance.
And this is the inside of my house. Room is upstairs. Also - nabbed a copper helm from a skelly.
Le spawnpoint
Decided to try boiling some venison.
Farm as it stands.
Babified animals.
Berry bushes and strawberry vine.
pit kilns, firepit, and clay oven (in the bg).
House with beer barrel and water vessel outside. Spawn point is there to the left.
Better shot of the clay oven. Currently drying. You can't tell but it's sitting on a block of rhyolite so as to prevent a bug from destroying it if anything is set beside it.
This guy just randomly decided to grow here.
Log piles + spawn point.
Thought this was interesting. Shoreline cliff, ravine, mountain, coal, and (of course)trees in the same picture.
And, of course, lots of sunsets.
I guess that's about it for this round. Hope you enjoyed!
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
good job
i will attempt this challenge once more on hard survival no mods so i can actually complete it
great job on the castle monarch! i am impressed.
Well, if you're patient and try to learn before jumping onto hardcore in TFC, you'll get farther. Definitely not my first attempt at TFC and certainly not my last. During other attempts I forgot to go and forage before the first freeze and wound up spending a few winters hungry and hurting from the lack of fruit and balance in my diet.
Honestly there's nothing to really be impressed about... yet. Next stage will be interesting. First order is to decide between mud bricks and stone bricks. Then spend hours grinding the materials necessary for those things. Then you can be impressed, but honestly there's nothing to be truly proud of with a tiny little wood hut. It's just patience. Next stage will start the swearing.
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
I've returned with my castle plans (built in a creative world). Superflat isn't available in TFC, so.....
Again, I'm starting off with something I made in Paint. Level-by-level representation of the build. First level is top-left with rooftops being the lower right.
First level, and again with some of the flooring put in, and the last one at a different angle to show wall heights. I never did manage a shot of the completed floor design. The first floor contains the dining room, throne room, and I'm not sure what that back room will be yet beyond the spawn point room. That small room connected to the tiny tower I think will be a store room of some form.
This will be the second floor. The leftward room is the guest room, the large room in the back is mine. I wasn't sure what to do with the leftover space, but felt it was too big, so I threw in some walls to help divide it up. The wall where the dining room is has been flattened with the remaining space being turned into a balcony.
And, finally, the roof. I realized I hadn't made space for servants downstairs, so I gave them some space up here. I guess most of this area can be used for fancy balls or something. I dunno. I didn't snap a shot of the servant's quarters sans roof, but you get the idea.
The rest of these are just pictures of the planned build. Somewhere along the way I remembered I hadn't put glass in a few windows and hadn't popped a door in the front.
Obviously I won't be using golden lanterns at the start. Kinda dreading it because this is the largest standalone build I've done. Either way, hopefully it'll turn out well!
And there ya go. Probably a bit over-ambitions for TFC, but we'll see. Hope you like it! If you do and want to use the idea in your own world, go right ahead.
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
Bleh. Triple post. Bite me.
Wanted to stop by and update y'all on progress. I'm now working on the 4th layer of wall for the actual castle. I haven't put a floor in yet. That'll happen after the walls are done.
Pics in the spoiler!
So first I had to lay the plan out so I'd know where it starts and ends and whether I'm gonna need to move stuff (like berry bushes). Thankfully it falls a few blocks short of my farm so it can stay put. The stone wall will probably be just a few blocks larger in each direction than the wooden wall, but not much larger. In these days the immediate area surrounding the castle wasn't terribly huge. Just large enough for a couple farms and maybe a garden. The larger area was the royal town around the castle outside the interior wall.
Also managed to find a cherry tree and nab some saplings from it. They are now growing peacefully outside and producing a little bit of fruit.
So I dropped in a mod called schematica. This mod allows you to turn builds you've planned out into schematics that you can then import into your world so you can save a little more energy instead of wasting it on remembering all the details of the plan. I usually have the block opacity turned down some so I can see where I'm building, I just hadn't gotten around to editing that part of the config yet. It also gives me a good idea of where the castle will sit.
So, with the help of schematica and going one layer at a time, I have started building up my castle. It's slow going, requiring several mining trips. I'm going to have to stop and plan the royal smith building before I can finish the main build so I can get some bronze going. That'll make the mining trips easier. I also popped some glass in that I had setting around. I've got loads of sand so it's not much of a problem, but glass is a pain to make because you can only go one block at a time. Ugh.
So that's about it for this update! Thanks again, guys!!
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
good job monarch! it looks like it is coming along really well. keep up the amazing work! and i love the castle design
So, I return having finished the first floor of my castle. The only thing I haven't done is add the flooring for the next floor. I think between finishing this one and starting the next I'll build a smeltery so I can get some bronze going (as those are the tools I should be using now). Also need to make some bread and smoke my meat. Anyway. Pics in the spoiler like always. There are a lot of them this time.
Sidenote: TFC stone bricks are so much easier to make than vanilla bricks. Gather sand, soak in limewater (flux added to a water barrel) to make mortar (if the ratio is correct you get (I think) 16 mortar per sand block). Chisel those stones you pick up off the ground to make bricks. Combine in your inventory in a ratio of 5 bricks to 4 mortar and you get your brick block. Easy peasy.
I finished the exterior walls with the 4th and 5th layers and made quick work of dismantling my old house. Next was the floor.
I started by marking off spawn. The original design has the castle pushed back and over a few blocks, but, because of the landscape, I had to pull it forward a tiny bit and adjust the floor design accordingly. I then took care of the most detailed parts of the floor, leaving spaces where the walls would be (I'm not wasting blocks on spaces we won't see).
I decided to grab a shot from the minimap of the castle floor cus why not?
So once the hardest parts were complete, I filled the spire floors with Douglas Fir (I have a castle being built for me, therefore I'm rich, therefore I can have somewhat expensive woods if I want them) and the middle with Hickory. The pinkish wood is Spruce (both Hickory and Spruce are local woods, so there, tree huggers). Once that was done, I started on the interior walls.
When I'm building interior walls, I deliberately leave a space between it and the layer for the floor of the next level so that I don't have to worry about conflicting floor plans. Makes it a lot easier to plan builds.
These are just overhead shots of the floor plan.
So I got some shots from around the castle, too, to get an idea of what it'll be like to walk up on this from any of the sides. Also got more shots from the castle grounds.
With this, I'm torn. I love the asesthetic of the log wall behind it. I don't want to take this section of wall down. I was thinking of keeping it and just putting up some fencing around the remaining area. The animal pit won't be staying. Given that (as far as I can tell) the babified animals haven't grown very much, I'm considering killing them and getting more adult animals. Then again, I've worked very hard to get these animals familiar, so I may just set these off in their own pens and get new adult animals to breed.
A shot of my berry bushes. I will rearrange these to be aesthetically pleasing so they can double as a royal garden (not like the agricultural kind).
Ugh. This mess. This will be moved to a building and the hill it's sitting on will be removed. After the castle is done, though. Or maybe before.
And my raspberries safely tucked in a corner (because ow). I actually had some blueberries, gooseberries, and raspberries ready for harvest this morning, which was quite the nice surprise.
And... that's it! Hope you enjoy it! My next post will probably show some other builds like a shed for tools and wood and a smeltery. I should also make a tannery (for leather). We'll see what I come up with.
Thanks, guys!
I don't mean to be unapproachable. I accept critiques and suggestions well, so please, by all means, make as many suggestions as you would like.
Hi all,
Been awhile since I've posted as I have been super busy with life, the holidays were especially tough with work. While I have been doing many things and playing many games, I'm still slowly working on my castle challenge.
Here it is, the tour at the end of the Iron Age!
Hope you all enjoy!
Well, I started this a LONG time ago...and never got around to finishing XD. In fact, I'm still on the stone age, but looking at other pics I think that I am also going for a totally different style. Anyways, here are my pics to prove that I completed the wood age:
http://imgur.com/a/f14rk
That's me outside the front gate across the lake.
http://imgur.com/a/ucBl1
The bridge just inside the front gate and the wheat farm.
http://imgur.com/a/gwRy1
Across the bridge, just past the wheat farm. In the distance that's my keep, and yes...those are skeleton horses.
http://imgur.com/a/BRVm2
Keep, and a closer view of the skeleton horses.
http://imgur.com/8d4xx55
http://imgur.com/ajVrnL6
There's the animal pens.
http://imgur.com/f4c7LOf
http://imgur.com/CIJhZXf
http://imgur.com/IqRuorh
Views from the top of the keep, and my bed. ;D
http://imgur.com/aCX08bK
And finally, my inventory of treasure. Wood Age complete!
I should also mention that inside of the keep is my spawnpoint and chest... I just didn't take a pic at the time ;P
Also worth noting how long ago I completed this, the 27th of June. That was like, 25 months ago?
Anyways, I'll keep updating. The stone age is taking me forever but this is such a clever, fun challenge that I know I won't be quitting anytime soon!
Hey, I have a question, are we allowed to use shears in the stone age? Do they count as an iron tool? I was wanting to shear my sheep to make purple carpets for decorating my keep but I don't want to break any rules, I'll wait until the Iron Age if I have to. Thanks.