u/blergymcblerg

...Well...now I have no idea what I am going to do for the next 3 weeks.

Listen. I'm barely competent in Valheim and know nothing about doing anything on video, so like...be gentle with the judgements. I'm sorry there is no sound. I tried to give a sense of scope. I tried to do the video with freefly, but, for whatever reason, that was producing weird rendering stuff.

I'm about 53% done. I kinda took a few days off to work on other projects.

I made every room it's own module, as are the halls. I want to redo the floors. This is the first MOC I've ever made and my tiling skills are non-existent right now. I have some door designs in the works, and some ideas for the furniture. It's 114 studs by 156 studs, currently uses just short of 3,000 pieces, and would weigh about 18 pounds.

so like...I've leveled out a fair chunk of the 61,000 sq. meters of this hilltop. I took a break from leveling it out to pick a location for the Lego 375 castle rebuild. I am (optimistically) hoping I can "fake" a small river or something. So, I "blue rugged" an ugly little line as a place holder and set the footprint of the castle (on the left there).

In front of the castle there will be a path, some small hills and forests and then an area based around the Lego 383 jousting set and some alternative builds as "tournament grounds" that will be visible from the castle, but you know...some landscaping to break it up. Then a road leading deeper into the area where it will go through forest and stuff to other castles.

...maybe someday I will play this game right.

We listen and we don't judge.

6040 (blacksmith's shop) was one of the rare sets that actually came with instructions for one of the back of the box builds. From what I can tell...it might be the only one. But, I found instructions for 3 others.

This also gave me a chance to try some new approaches to doing that "castle wall sections" piece that comes up in Castle sets All. The. Time. Mostly, I redid the top feature and how I do the windows. I like these windows MUCH better.

I found this website called "back of the box builds" that has instructions for a bunch of the models that used to be on the back of the Lego set boxes. Some of them looked so cool...I just could not help myself.

These are not "official lego" models...not really...maybe sorta. They were on the box...well...technically one of them showed up in a Lego Ideas book back in 1980. One of them is a near perfect rebuild of 375. The stability on the taller one was a bit of a trick. I'm not 100% sure how it's actually stable.

Anyway, I also found alternative builds for the blacksmith and I started working on those too. Not done with them though, so I'll wrap those up when I can.

However...I am starting to wonder if we could build the old Lincoln log sets...not sure. Maybe? If I ever run out of Lego sets I might try that...or maybe someone with a stronger connection to Lincoln Logs will.

This build was a beast.
It has the same basic foot print of the 375 castle, but with a larger drawbridge, higher walls, larger and taller central tower and more details.

This monster is something. If you actually owned this set, I seethe with jealousy. I wish I could replicate the functional portcullis, the drawbridge, and the angled lances over the front tower.

I hope someone out there loves this thing as much as I do.

I was intimidated to start this one. Once I got going I couldn't stop.

This is a fairly small castle. It had a few tricky parts, but nothing overwhelming. In the original, the front stones are "red", I have no idea why. But, to add some contrasts (without relying on mass-banners), I did the front bit in stone. I dunno...maybe I should go back and add banners?

Starting with 6040, the castles started having little connection points on the edges of walls. It allowed you to connect the sets together to expand the castles. In hindsight, I really wish I had planned for that. Maybe at some point I will make a plan to incorporate the sets that can connect into one "mega-castle".

This one was more than a little tricky. The wall sections were easy, I've pretty well gotten my head around how to do those. I could build wall sections forever. But that tower...geezus. Building "lego" with wood pieces is harder, you have to reinforce everything with buckets of iron, it's...well...I am getting better at it. Also, those "75 degree" angles are rough. I can fudge them with the black marble plinths. But with wood...the best you can do is stagger the sections. I think I got fairly close. The idea of a slope is there.

The easy part was using shields as wheels. They are too small, but...meh, it's a wheel.

The next one on my list is 6073, Knight's castle. I am both excited and intimidated.

This model is neat because it also has instructions for a separate tower. In pure Lego fashion, it absolutely does not suggest a play script for this and trusts the child/person to just play. This model uses "hollow" wall sections. To replicate that I had to get creative with grausten, which I've been trying to get better at using.

When I started this, I thought I would stick to just the big flashy castles, but having done a couple of the smaller sets, I kinda love them. They allow me to have the medieval town I wanted to build as a kid.

This set actually had a horse figure with it and I wish Valheim had horses I could spawn in.

This was a pretty quick build. I used a bunch of banners to kinda get the same color scheme. This set actually pre-dates the first lego horse figure by about 5 years, so the horses are build with lego. I tried to replicate one of them. That kinda helps give an idea of the scaling issues I am running into.

Still, I think it kinda works okay. There's a couple thrones, the tankards, and a shady place for the lord and lady to watch a people knock each other off horses with pointy sticks.

At some point I will probably get back to playing this game the right way...but right now...I am obsessed.

I didn't love the first version and I am still learning how to build in Valheim. I switched to black marble because it is a bit more "lego friendly". It makes it look way more grim, but I guess that's okay. I'm trying to learn to decorate a bit better. Not my skill set yet. As a nod to the original garish yellow blocks, I gave it intentionally too many yellow banners.

I hope you all enjoy this as much as I do.

Not sure which one I am going to do next, and I learned a lot doing this one.

I clearly could use some advice on decorating and landscaping.

The castle and the inspiration.