Updates in Cair Denbar

The other day I started planning out making a video of Imperial City. One thing led to another, and now I’m working on a laundry list of upgrades for Cair Denbar, my royal palace (my home on the server).

This is actually a good sign. Usually when I loose my “mojo” for Minecraft for a bit, what gets me back into the game is upgrading or adding onto my main castle 🙂

Cair Denbar is the oldest structure on my server. I laid the original foundation on April 7, 2012 – the day I got Minecraft. It started out as a small castle on an epic mountaintop. Over the last nearly 7 years, it has grown and expanded over and over. It grew into a large castle spanning two mountaintops, and they a village sprung up in front of it. The castle eventually expanded to fill all 4 mountaintops, and the small village has grown into Imperial City, my single largest city on the server.

I started with something that had been bugging me for ages – the Royal Vault.  It had a two-digit combination lock that was very easy to figure out, and once you had entered it anyone could walk by and see the combination.  The interior also needed some love.  I created an entrance hallway outside the door, where you now pull a lever to seal the two entrances to that hallway. It then opens access to a small room with the new 4-digit combination lock.  Also, while the vault door is open, the hallway doors cannot be opened. It feels much more secure now.

I also did some updates on the inside, making it look more vault-like. Previously, it just looked another storage room with precious-gem columns.   It looks much more vault-like to me now, and I’ve even placed a bunch of items in there to store in shulker boxes 🙂

I then went on to the Storage Level. I had purposed a level in the complex simply for storage, but never did more than put a warehouse room on it and ton of boxes.  I knocked out a wall and made a large loading area with a crane down to the Courtyard Level.  It looks really cool!!

To finish off, I finally finished a project I started eons ago. I found this design for an awesome hidden staircase inside a fireplace, and I’ve wanted to add it to Cair Denbar for ages. Problem was, the castle is so old, compact, and dense, I couldn’t find anywhere to fit it in. Especially where It needed access to the floor below, as the castle has multiple levels down into the mountain.

I changed a few things around in the oldest section of the castle, and managed to fit it into the Emperor’s Study!  I had to remove a sitting area by the South Landing and vacate the Royal Healer, but I made it work!  The hidden stairs access a room three floors below (lots of stairs).  I still need to figure out what I’m going to put down there though.