The most REALISTIC Minecraft build you will ever see!
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00:00 What happens when you combine the most beloved and critically acclaimed fantasy series with the best-selling game we all know and love?
00:07 Well, you get the masterpiece that is the Articraft server. Led by its founder Fornad, the highly skilled team of builders, artists,
00:14 developers, researchers and more have been hard at work for the last nine years
00:18 recreating the entirety of the Lord of the Rings Middle-earth in Minecraft. This includes iconic locations such as Rivendell,
00:26 Isengard,
00:28 Itaras and many more, all in the most amazing detail.
00:31 It doesn't stop there though. Every hill, every valley, every ridge in the terrain has been
00:36 handcrafted to perfection to embody the heart and soul of Middle-earth.
00:41 So I invite you to join me on this special journey through the team's most recently completed project, the village of Bree, home to the
00:47 Prancing Pony and the Hobbits' first stop on their journey out of the Shire.
00:51 Okay.
00:55 Action.
00:56 Cool. All right. Well, welcome to Articraft. I'm Fornad, I'm the kind of admin founder of the server. With me today
01:03 I've got a few of the builders and people who helped to construct the town of Bree over the last six or seven months.
01:09 So we've got on the, all the way on the right over there,
01:12 we've got Hearthseeker and then we've got Hfanz and those two guys led Bree.
01:15 We've got Darnoch here who was one of the guys who did many of the interiors and myself.
01:20 So we're gonna take you through kind of the farmland and the town itself,
01:25 show off some of the details and all the things that we've been able to achieve with Conquest and
01:29 kind of explain how we approach this world and how we approach
01:33 recreating Tolkien's world. You may notice that everything here looks very different to vanilla Minecraft.
01:38 This server uses a mod called Conquest Reforged or more recently Conquest Refabricated and that adds over
01:44 13,000 new blocks to the game and allows them to add all sorts of incredible details.
01:49 They've created a special mod pack so that anyone can join the server, look around and even become a part of this amazing
01:55 project, but more on that later in the video. The Articraft team's attention to detail doesn't just stop at the blocks
02:01 they place though, no. To create a fully immersive world
02:03 you have to know where and specifically why to place the blocks, which requires a bit more information.
02:08 This is something we're gonna talk about a lot in this video,
02:10 but we do a lot of research around medieval life and one of the things that would happen, you know, almost every day is
02:15 primarily the women would come down to
02:18 the river with the clothes and they would wash and they'd talk and hang up the clothes to dry, right?
02:24 That's kind of like our goal is how would these societies actually work in reality?
02:28 And how are we gonna represent everything, the whole range of professions and tasks that would be required to keep, you know,
02:35 a place like this going? And so you'll see that throughout and it really adds to the
02:39 explorability of the world and the kind of the realism and to make it feel like,
02:44 like you maybe said before we started recording, to make it feel like this is a real place, you know,
02:48 this isn't just like a Minecraft build, this could exist. Yeah, so we actually have a
02:52 professional botanist
02:54 who has created a pool, is working on a full map of Middle Earth with biomes based on ones from Europe.
03:02 So we know eventually we will have a full map and we'll be able to go, okay, all of this, all of these regions will be
03:07 basically accurate to the way that they would look, you know, in real life. No wonder it's taken you 10 years.
03:12 Yeah, this is a serious project.
03:14 At least it started off serious until my lack of history knowledge caught up with me.
03:20 Not a fun fact, probably a very
03:23 unfun fact, used urine for washing.
03:27 Okay, one of the first things we end up talking about is urine.
03:33 Cross the bridge, please.
03:37 We added urine to Minecraft. After introductions and a bit of familiarizing myself with their process and the method in which they create this world,
03:44 they took me through the surrounding farmlands as we headed into the village of Bree,
03:48 showing off a technique where they'd recreated a 1600s medieval farming system called ridge and furrow.
03:54 I was told the server was set somewhere between the end of summer and early autumn,
03:58 so these fields had just begun to be harvested, as you can see with the stacks of hay everywhere.
04:02 Hearthseeker then took us over to his mill that he was super proud of, but I wasn't convinced it was safe for the server.
04:08 Believe me, I got a working version of this mill that fully rotates. It just about crashed the server, so
04:14 we're not going to turn it on.
04:17 But this would actually allow you to rotate the top of the windmill to face into the wind.
04:23 Wait, really?
04:25 Yes. And this is like a real-life thing. It's not just like a fantasy. It is a real-life thing.
04:29 What?
04:30 And they even had replicated the method in which the miller would vent smoke up into the gears to prevent bugs from eating the wood
04:37 and destroying the mechanisms inside, which was just another amazing attention to detail.
04:41 I feel like I'm gonna be saying that a lot in this video.
04:44 Believe me, I watched an hour-long windmill documentary just to get a good look at everything.
04:50 Moving now into the built-up part of the village, the team took me through what I can only describe as the most beautifully detailed and realistic
04:59 Minecraft build I have ever seen.
05:01 Every single structure and every point of interest had a reason for being there.
05:05 This very well could have been a real town.
05:07 The autograph guarantee is you'll go into any interior and it's all done and it will make sense.
05:12 Every proficient that would be needed to sustain a community like this had been added from the blacksmith to the bartender,
05:18 which segues us nicely to the Prancing Pony, the iconic location where the hobbits meet Aragon and often a spiritual home for many Tolkien fans.
05:26 And I think
05:28 someone might have to correct me on this, but I think this was actually based on
05:31 there was an inn in real life that Tolkien went to a few times and based the Prancing Pony on and we looked at the
05:38 way that this place was shaped and they had this sort of big back courtyard,
05:41 laced between two wings and that's kind of how it's described in the book as well.
05:45 So we went with this kind of look. I think it works quite well.
05:50 As someone who has seen the movies but doesn't know much about Middle-earth,
05:54 I also learned on this tour that Bree is not only home to humans, but also to many hobbits.
05:59 We took a trip up the hill to check out all the hobbit holes that have been carved into the landscape,
06:04 once again, all in incredible detail.
06:07 They live kind of higher up the hill than the men do.
06:10 Near the top here, we're actually getting quite close to the summit.
06:14 And that's not because they've been kicked out of town, that's just how they prefer their architecture to be located.
06:20 I think so. Yeah, they like living in the side of hills. So I guess it makes sense for them to live up here.
06:24 Bilbo's got actually a mansion by Hobbit's end.
06:27 I mean, we can go there at the end just to look around, but it's enormous compared to this.
06:31 He's very rich. He's like the 1% in the Shire.
06:34 Lord of the Rings is a story about a bunch of nobles and royalty going off on adventures.
06:40 There's not that many poor people, apart from Sam, I suppose.
06:43 Sam's the real hero. Yeah, exactly. He's the working class.
06:47 The most relatable character. Yeah, for sure.
06:50 Okay, I didn't know that.
06:52 He's the one who saves it all in the end.
06:56 It's great, I could have a picnic up here. Easily.
06:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in fact, if you come along here, it's funny you've said that.
07:04 Because there is a picnic right here.
07:07 You guys prepared a spot for a nice picnic. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
07:10 One of the things that impressed me the most during this whole tour was the trees.
07:14 I'm sure you've noticed how incredibly realistic they all look.
07:17 Well, remember this guy, HFrance?
07:19 He has been hard at work making a seemingly endless repository of trees
07:24 from a huge range of different species, all in different shapes and sizes.
07:28 We took a walk to the outskirts of Bree, and the whole time I felt like I was just at home
07:32 going for a bushwalk, just with like 0% of the actual exercise.
07:36 But yeah, using the new conquest blocks for trees has just been monumental for tree building
07:41 when compared to like 1.12 standards for trees.
07:44 I mean, the contrast between this and a vanilla Minecraft woodland is,
07:47 it's kind of, yeah, it's kind of wild, right?
07:50 This video just does not do it justice, I promise you.
07:55 If you are able to, I would 100% recommend downloading the mod pack
08:00 and hopping on the server to explore this amazing world for yourself.
08:04 There's a simple step-by-step guide on their website on how to install it,
08:07 which I'll have linked down in the description.
08:10 Not only can you stand where we are now and explore this amazing village of Bree,
08:14 but you can also build using the conquest refabricated mod on the creative plot world
08:19 and be inspired by all the different and amazing builds on the server.
08:22 If you want to take it another step and actually join the recreation project,
08:26 well, the team gave me a little peek behind the curtain at how it all works and what you can expect.
08:31 Maybe some people are curious about how actually our process works
08:34 and how we actually get from, you know, nothing to something.
08:37 There's a little hobbit village just over the hill by Bree called Saville,
08:41 which is being constructed right now.
08:43 Yes, you get this great final product,
08:45 but how does it look when it's being built and how do we actually approach building?
08:49 You join the server, you look around,
08:50 you get an idea of how our styles look and work,
08:53 and then you apply so you can build in a single player.
08:55 We've got a Discord server where you can apply and, you know,
08:58 show us how you build and we'll review it.
09:01 If you're successful, you become what's called an apprentice,
09:03 where you learn for a few months how to actually build in our styles and how to contribute.
09:07 And eventually we kind of take you out of that probation period and make you a builder,
09:12 and then you can lead your own projects from there.
09:13 So it's kind of about, you know, teaching and learning is a really big part of Articraft
09:18 and, you know, developing people's skills as builders is really important.
09:22 Just to talk about how the project works, you can see if you fly up,
09:24 there's like plots above each house, you'll see.
09:28 And there's like little, like, this is what the roof should be made out of.
09:32 It's like a system, yeah.
09:33 Yeah, exactly. This is what the profession should be.
09:36 This is the little purple block is who's claimed it, the name of the person.
09:39 He said, "Look, it's waiting approval."
09:41 And then the project leaders come back and said, "Not approved."
09:44 And this is the reason why this is what you need to do to get it approved.
09:48 And so that's kind of the quality control system that we have in place for everything.
09:52 To wrap things up, the whole team gathered together in the Prancing Pony
09:55 and gave me the most incredibly wholesome send-off.
09:58 Let's get, in fact, let's get everyone.
09:59 Let's get, okay, everyone who's in spectator mode and everyone who's on the server,
10:03 like everyone just pop out, come into creative and come and sit in.
10:06 It's going to get very crowded in a moment, but I think this will be nice.
10:09 It's a party, guys.
10:11 Everyone, everyone, everyone pack in.
10:12 All we want, we just want people to come and come and see for themselves.
10:15 And if they're really inspired by what we're doing to maybe help out,
10:18 because, you know, as you can tell, this is a big project
10:20 and we need all the help we can get really.
10:22 The Articraft server is not only an incredible project of absolutely epic proportions,
10:27 but it also has a very special place in my heart.
10:30 You see, I was first exposed to the Conquest Reforged mod through Articraft
10:33 by watching videos from YouTubers like Dukon Red.
10:36 And now that it's been ported to Fabric, it's going to be more accessible than ever.
10:39 And I really hope people can see the amazing creative potential of this mod.
10:43 So that's going to be it for the video.
10:45 I just want to say a huge thank you to Fornad and the Articraft team for having me on.
10:48 It's been an absolute treat getting to tour this amazing village with you.
10:52 And also a big thank you to the Conquest mod developers and artists.
10:55 You guys have done some incredible work.
10:57 Lastly, I'd like to just plug the Articraft Discord and YouTube channel.
11:01 Make sure you're following them there to keep up with the progress
11:03 and stay up to date with the latest news on the project.
11:05 And also check out HFriends YouTube.
11:07 They've got some amazing stuff.
11:08 If you like high quality builds and history, it's the place to be.
11:11 But that's it for the video.
11:12 Thanks for watching.
11:14 [Music]