How to Build a Minecraft Castle from Start to Finish! – Medieval Castle Let’s Build Guide/Tutorial!

Hello everyone this is bodhi and welcome to a very special minecraft video my channel recently hit 100 subscribers and although it is still a pretty small channel this is still a very exciting milestone for me so i wanted to take a break from the typical cornerstone episodes and do a different

Style of video to celebrate the occasion so today i am going to be building a castle but i didn’t want this to just be a video where i’m like here sit back and enjoy a time lapse of a castle being built don’t get me wrong there will be time

Lapses but i wanted to walk through with everyone my thought process and the steps that i’m going to be taking to build a castle from scratch now i can’t say that castles are something i have a ton of experience with in minecraft although they are something that i want

To do more of and i want to get better with and i definitely feel like i have improved a lot as a builder since the last time i took a shot at one of these things so hopefully this can be a bit of a learning experience for both me

The builder and you the viewer oh and by the way guys if you enjoyed the video please hit that like button and consider subscribing to the channel if you’re new i would really appreciate it as there is a ton of work going into today’s video

But let’s move on and the last time that i was actually serious about building a castle was almost a year ago now and i started this project in one of the earliest videos on my channel when i was still playing on a completely different survival server now unfortunately that server ended up

Dying out and eventually closing so i never really got a chance to finish this castle so it is still mostly incomplete and looking back on it now uh it definitely brings back some good memories but i really don’t think it is that bad of a build for how good i was

At the time but i definitely do see several things that could definitely be improved upon and that we could do better in our castle build today and just a quick disclaimer this video is not going to be a block by block tutorial by any means

It is more meant to be an overview of the steps that i’m taking to build a castle so that i can hopefully provide insights and ideas to other people building castles rather than showing how to replicate exactly what i’m building a block for block okay so let’s get started so i

Definitely have been doing my research on how to build castles in minecraft and i’ve divided the process into six steps concept planning wireframe block palette filling in and detail now none of this is set in stone you don’t have to follow these steps exactly

This is just my take on how to go about building a castle so now let’s go ahead and look into these steps a little bit further as we make our way through them all oh and by the way guys i am not going to be doing the interiors for this castle

Interiors are just not something that i’m super confident with so to do them would be a whole separate process and would take a lot of extra work so they are just not going to be a part of today’s video but we are going to do every other part

Of the castle so let’s get started the first step isn’t too complicated it is just the concept and this consists of inspiration and build style now inspiration can mean multiple things maybe you’re actually basing your build off of an image or maybe you just have some vague ideas of what you want to

Include in your castle both are completely fine but you want to have some inspiration before you get started looking online for videos and images of castles is a great way to find inspiration one of my favorite platforms to use is pinterest they have tons of images and concept art and it’s

A great way to get ideas for builds in minecraft if you don’t have any already and moving on to build style there are tons of different styles of building in minecraft and you don’t have to have yours 100 figured out but it is a good idea to have a concept

Of what type of castle you’re going to build whether it be a medieval castle or a fantasy castle or a nordic castle or tons of different other types you can choose from you want to have some of that figured out because the different styles will definitely influence the architectural techniques and the

Types of structures that are incorporated in the castle in the later steps so for the concept of my castle i really just want to build a typical medieval castle now this is definitely the most commonly chosen one but there’s nothing wrong with that because it is a great

And straightforward way to get started building castles so that is what i am going to be going with today and that brings us on to step two the planning which will definitely take a bit longer than step one now the first part of this is location and that’s pretty

Straightforward you just need to find a good spot to build your castle uh it can be anywhere you want as long as it suits your needs and then the second part of that is terrain which uh kind of sounds like it would go with location

But to be fair you can always tweak the terrain around the location that you’ve chosen the terrain in the location doesn’t have to be perfect to begin with you can always add on to it remove it add some cliffs hills or flatten out an area

Now this might not be as easy to do in survival mode but since i’m going to be doing this in creative mode and be using some world edit here and there this will definitely be a big part of the planning phase for me and then finally here we have the

2d layout which is basically where you’re going to be laying down a single layer of blocks on the area where you’re going to be building the castle and this is meant to represent and lay out where all these structures walls and towers and whatever else is going to be

Going in your castle and this is one of the most important steps and it’s the one that we’re going to do right now so let’s hop in to the first time lapse so in terms of location i found this nice area in the plains biome here and i’m

Going to start off by removing the trees and the grass in this area all that stuff can be added back in later but for now it’s going to be easier to build if we get rid of it moving on from that i really liked the look of these

Little raised hills at the edge of the plains biome here but there isn’t quite a large enough surface to actually support a castle so using some more world edit i raise the land to create a larger building platform and it’s going to look a little bit weird in the process but it

Eventually all fits in with the normal terrain and this is done by just using some brushes to raise the terrain and then smooth it out and convert it back to grass and then finally we’re gonna just make some small tweaks to the land smoothing out some of the terrain and removing

The random little patches of water that you find in plains biomes and at this point we’re pretty much ready to start building the layout so i decided to start off the layout with the most important structure of the castle which is the keep or the throne room and then

Out from there i’m extending the walls which are made up of the two wide stone layers just to keep track of them and then i connect up another structure and a tower to the side of the keep uh extending out the wall further from there and adding another tower we then

Add in a diagonal structure and a sort of square tower next to that and also i don’t 100 have in mind a purpose for all of these structures obviously some of them definitely have a defined purpose like the keep but some of them will just have to

Figure out when we start to fill in the castle later on so not all of them are specifically designated for something as of right now next to that i add another tower on the right side and as you can see i go back and tweak a lot of the structures

As we’re going along i’m not 100 confident in all of the decisions i’m making with the layout so i definitely do come back to some of the decisions i’ve already made and tweak them a bit from time to time if i think the shape could be improved upon or

The that it would help the overall layout to change it um so back on the right side now i decided to add in a big rectangular structure which is sort of meant to be like the great hall of the castle where they would host banquets and maybe in the upper levels

Have some housing for whoever would be living in the castle adding in another diagonal structure coming out from there connected up to a tower and those uh diagonal structures more near the front of the castle are sort of meant to be like the barracks where the soldiers or

The guards would be adding in another square tower in the center center of the castle and then finally a circular tower alongside that diagonal structure just to add a some variation there and finally we have the gatehouse here which is that final rectangular structure in the front to finish up the layout of

The castle alright so we have our castle design all laid out now to provide us with a bit of a blueprint of how to build it up going forward and i really like how it came together this definitely has me excited and i think that we nailed the size pretty well because i

Definitely wouldn’t want to have bitten off more than i could chew in terms of how big it is i wouldn’t want to have to be building way too many structures but i think that this is definitely doable so i’m happy with that and also i did add in these polished diorites just

To differentiate from the stone and show that this is the entrance gate house here uh so you can clearly tell what’s going on and yeah i like how it’s looking we’re good to go on this step for now and we can go ahead and keep moving forward

Okay so i actually decided to switch step three and four out for each other because i think that would be better for us to do the block palette now uh honestly you can really do this whenever you want as long as it’s before you actually need to start using the

Blocks but i just figured it’s best to do it before we continue to the next steps so we will get it out of the way now and for the block palette you really just need to choose blocks for the main parts of the castle which would be the walls the roofs the ground

And pathways and some detail blocks and you don’t just want one for each of these you definitely want to be able to use some variation later on but you can definitely add on to it as you start to build and we don’t need to have it a hundred

Percent figured out at this point but we can definitely make a start on it and get a lot of the base materials laid out so let’s get to work on that all right so we have a nice block palette laid out now and i don’t want to spend

Too long going over it but let’s just take a quick look so first off we’ve got the walls for which the main three blocks will be these ones right here to provide a bit of texture variation and a gradient that we will take a look at later when

We actually start to build the walls now for the roofs the main block is going to be red nether bricks now i might include some other textures but for the most part it seems like a lot of medieval castles really just stick with one color overall for their roofs so

I think we’re probably just gonna be sticking with mostly the red nether brick might throw some other stuff in but we will see what looks best now for the detail blocks mainly we have these two woods the dark oak and the spruce and then we’ve got some other stuff

Going on in case we need like windows or light sources and some accent bits and whatnot and then finally we’ve got the ground and pathways now uh for these i don’t know which design is going to work the best so i just have a couple possibilities here i definitely want to do some

Experimentation once we start to build it just to see which one will actually look the best so yeah once again these are just some possibilities and we’ll choose which ones to use later on but yeah i think we have a good start on the block palette now so we can go

Ahead and move on to the next step and the next step is going to be where this build really starts to feel like a castle and what i’ve decided to do is actually combine step four and five into one section now if you want to do these separately that’s completely fine

I’ve seen it done both ways now what step four is is the wire frame which would be just like making a skeleton of the castle so just building up like the corners to get an idea of the outline and the height variation of the structures and the towers

And then filling in would be just filling those uh walls and structures in with the actual blocks but just the simplest form so there wouldn’t be any texture variation yet because that would come next and you would fill in the walls and the roofs with just the

Basic forms of the blocks without any detailing or anything like that but i think that the easiest way for us to do this is to incorporate it into one step and just sort of build up the walls of the structures and the roofs and uh just keep it simple no detailing

Yet but to get an idea of the height variation still and what all the structures are going to be looking like in terms of shape and size so here is where we’re going to start another time lapse for today’s video where we’re going to build up

The walls and the roofs of the castle so enjoy so even though i haven’t decided on a specific design for the grounds of the castle yet i decided to just lay out some cobblestone there for now and we can work on that later now moving on to the gatehouse of the

Castle and the tower alongside it i think we’ve come up with a pretty cool design for the roof of this tower with sort of a two-tiered peaked roof which is pretty cool and then moving on to the gatehouse roof now i don’t really like the look of this

Initially and i definitely come back and change it later on and that kind of happens a lot during this process because a big part of it is sort of just experimenting and seeing what looks good with the castle and what doesn’t now doing the walls of these structures to

The left of the castle now and here is where i change up the roof of the gatehouse to incorporate some towers and i think that we come up with something that looks a lot better here now adding in the roofs of these structures now and really just keeping it

Pretty simple with this one here and then after that moving on to the tower alongside it and after a little bit of experimentation we just decide on a peaked roof that fits in well with the rest of the castle towers here and then moving on to another very

Simple structure that is going to connect up to the great hall now the great hall is going to be a very large structure with a pretty large roof now we can always detail this out later on to break it up a little bit but for now it is going to be completely fine

And then i considered adding in another structure that would connect up to the great hall next to it but i didn’t really like the way that the roofs intersected so i decided to just make it a platform or a walkway and it that’s completely okay it’s good

To have sections of the castle where people could peer out or defend it from intruders now after that i decided to just add in another shorter tower here with another very simple roof and then it was time to get the keep started and this is obviously another very

Large structure and i really like the different style of roof that we came up with here mixing in some turret style towers with some of the more typical style towers on the other sides here as you can see now having a different style of roof like this definitely draws attention to

It and it is the most important structure of the castle so i really really like what we came up with now finishing up these last few structures on the opposite side of the castle here we once again just add in some pretty simple roof designs for all of them and

After finishing up those roofs we move on to finishing up that last bit of the wall behind these structures and also that square tower in the middle there that you can see in the corner is not quite finished now those sections took a while to get right

So i believe that i finished it off camera after this time lapse and we can go ahead and take a look at that now okay so with the walls and the roofs all built up now this thing is really starting to feel like a grand medieval castle and we definitely still

Have a ways to go but let’s take a look at what we did after the time lapse ended the first of which you can see pretty easily right here this central tower and we added in sort of a new roof style to it but i like it i think it works well with

The square shaped tower and then back here we also added in this section of the wall with two different sized turret towers here and i think that looks pretty nice as well so this thing is really starting to come together but like i said we still have a lot to get

Done because even though we have the overall shape of the castle figured out now it’s really only made up of two or three types of blocks which doesn’t look that great on its own so it’s time to move on to the final step which is going to be

The detailing and so the first thing that we’re gonna want to do as part of this detailing phase is the texture variation of the castle and this is the part where these other types of blocks and like the other variations of stones that we’ve laid out as part of the block palette

Are really going to come into play and i’m gonna be honest doing this texture variation is not going to be fun to watch even in the form of a time lapse so why don’t i just do some world edit wizardry and have it done right now and boom the castle now has

Some very nice texture variation and this step helps out a lot in terms of the overall look of the castle now if we take a look closer here we can see the gradients that i was mentioning earlier now for texture variation you don’t have to do a gradient you could just do

A mix of textures but i chose to use a pattern here where we shift from more stone mixed in with the stone bricks to more and the site mixed in with the stone bricks as we move upwards so you can definitely see that in full effect on some of the taller

Structures like this tower here and yeah with this step done the castle is starting to look a bit more finished but it definitely lacks a lot of detail and finishing touches so why don’t we go ahead and take a look at the next steps now oh and

I did just want to mention that if you were building a castle in survival mode you would probably want to do the texture variation as you fill in the walls luckily i didn’t really have to worry about that since i’m doing it in creative

With world edit but if you were to be in survival that would probably save you a lot of time and in terms of what’s next there are only a few things left decoration nature terraforming and life and all these really just involve going around the castle and working on a little bit

Of detail here and there so a time lapse really won’t be good for this phase so what i think i’m gonna do is just start to finish this stuff up around the castle and bring you guys in at a few points to give you some examples of these different elements of detailing

So i’ve been working on a bunch of decoration bits around the castle that i wanted to show you all and we have quite a few things to cover here so let’s take a closer look first of all you can probably tell we added in these little

Accent bits on some of the towers where we switched to using bone blocks instead of the stone blocks that we were using at the bottoms now i didn’t do this all over the place i think in total we use it on these one two three four towers here

So it’s used very sparingly i didn’t want to include it on all of the structures but i think having it here and there is a great way to break up the solid gray textures from the rest of the castle i was going to use light gray wool and concrete powder for this but

When i looked at it from a distance that just didn’t really have that much of a difference in color from the gray that we already had so i decided to use bone blocks which i think looks really great so next up windows now i added windows all over the place

And for my choice i decided to use not glass but iron bars which i don’t know how much sense that really makes but i think that these just look a lot better in this castle i really like the look of the iron bars in the windows and then wherever we

Didn’t use iron bars in the windows it is probably a smaller window like one of these where it’s just like a little slit with some shutters on the end here using the trapdoor and speaking of the trapdoors we also included a lot of spruce to sort of

Uh decorate the windows and add some detail to the structures as well and some of these more elaborate window designs like this one were very inspired by stuff i found online most notably a tutorial on windows by mythical sausage i used that to draw some inspiration from because windows are not something

That i’m super good with so that video was super helpful and i will leave a link to it in the description below if you need some ideas for windows as well and for the detailing of the roofs on some of the smaller ones i just added these bits of minor detail

But on this big roof of the great hall i really went all out and first of all i added in this extension here so that the roof is now pointing in four directions rather than just two which makes it feel a lot less flat and i really like that and

Then next we have these parts sticking up on the edges of the roof which just makes the building feel so much more grand so just throwing in some walls fences and chains really added to the effect of the great hall and i really like what we did there and

Then on some of the roofs like this that are a bit smaller we just added in some polished andesite slabs here and there as you can see and speaking of polished andesite on some of the structures i added in the full blocks of polished andesite just to make it feel

More solid and supported not all of the structures have it and not all of the structures even need it but i really like having it on some of the more grand structures like the keep and the great hall as we can see here and walking into the courtyard we can

See that we now have a nice texture variation on the ground here the most frequent block is still cobblestone but we now have some accents of gravel stone and stone brick just to have that added detail to the ground and i also added in the start of a

Stables here because that is something that you would definitely want to have in a medieval castle but we are going to have to finish detailing this thing out later and for the final bits of decoration here we first off have these hanging banner patterns which i really like and

Are a great way to add some accents of color in throughout the castle so i think we in total have four of them hanging from different walls and connecting up to other ones and i just really like this added detail and then also we added in some lanterns here and there

Because even though i’m not playing in survival we want to have some light if i was playing in survival i’d have to have a lot more light in this area that’s for sure to stop mobs spawning but since we’re in creative we don’t have to worry as much

About that so we just added in uh lanterns here and there and by the way using hoppers to connect chains to is actually a super cool method of detail that i have absolutely loved using to hang the lanterns from but now i think it’s time to work on those last few

Elements of detail and then give a full tour of our finished castle and after a while spent adding some extra bits of detail and finishing touches to our castle i think we are finally ready to call this thing finished and for the final tour of it

Here i thought it would be pretty cool to bring in some shaders this is the bsl shader pack if you guys were wondering and i’m sorry if the fps suffers a little bit here my pc is a bit old at this point so it doesn’t always handle shaders perfectly

But hopefully it’s good enough to run pretty smoothly throughout this tour and first off since we had originally removed all of the trees and grass around our castle to get started building i decided to bring all of that greenery back in around here and now this place feels a lot more

Natural and walking up to the castle now we can see that there’s now a nice path design it’s really simple just using the path blocks and bordered with some course dirt and podzol which occasionally leaks into the path design and then as we get closer it starts to

Blend together with the textures of the castle grounds and then walking through the gatehouse here i have added in a portcullis which is a perfect addition to any medieval entrance in the courtyard now and one of the main goals of the final step of detailing is to make the castle

Feel just truly alive and lived in and i think that we did a pretty good job of that by incorporating our elements of decoration life and nature throughout the castle here so let’s take a closer look so taking a look at the stables here first of all which is now

Completely finished complete with some actual horses which obviously really helps this place feel alive and i really like what we did here and then next we’ve got this small detail towards the entrance where we have this dirt being tracked into the castle which sort of gives the

Idea that there have been carts coming in and out of here and just adds a really cool effect and speaking of carts we have a couple one of them is right here and it’s filled with melons and pumpkins so that it would sort of be providing

Food to the residents of the castle and then behind this we have some storage units scattered around and a small little custom tree here and then of course the centerpiece of this place is a fountain nothing too fancy but i think that it ties this area together

And then behind the fountain we added this little nook back here where the soldiers or the guards of the castle could practice their archery skills and i absolutely love this feature and then we also have some staircases going up to this upper section here where you could peer over the wall but there’s

Also a staircase going down here and we don’t have any interiors but this is where maybe like the dungeon of the castle would be so it’s a great nice little added detail to have in here so heading back into this area now i absolutely love the bits of detail with

The flowers and the bushes and back in the corner here we have a small cart tucked away and by the way this cart design along with the one in the front are both from a video by flip where he gives some examples of cart designs and there are some

Really great ones in there so i will have a link to that in the description if you guys want to check it out and then in our last area here we have a lowered section that provides an entrance to this building right here and then we have this little fenced off section

That has a nice custom tree hanging over a small table with some chairs and with all these details added in i am now extremely happy with how the castle looks from both the inside and the outside so there you have it folks a full castle build from start to finish i

Hope you guys enjoyed this video and please be sure to let me know what you think of this build and also if you guys would be interested in seeing more of this type of content with the sort of creative builds and tutorials because that is definitely

Something that i might do more of in the future but without further ado please hit that like button if you enjoyed and subscribe if you’re new it is probably obvious that a ton of work went into this video but guys this has been bodhi and i will see you all

In the next one You