If there’s one thing I love a bit more than
creating stuff, it’s gotta be fixing things. What a great feeling taking something old,
broken and unloved and bringing it back to life. Minecraft is a game about creation, but it
is also a game of destruction and that uglier side rears its head more often than you’d
hope. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just
get along, support one another and leave places better than we found them?! Unfortunately… Our little story doesn’t start quite so
peachy. I found myself on a server, PvP was enabled,
protections were limited and griefing… griefing was tolerated. It doesn’t take much to guess what kind
of player you might expect to find in a place like this. The good news was I’d found somewhere to
live! Well… I’d found somewhere to stay for the night… Alright, I’ll level with ya. I was squatting in the putrid basement of
a building that probably should have collapsed a few decades ago. But I was dry! I was happy! I was SimplySarc and I was gonna restore this
griefed old ruin back to its former glory. (oh, and subscribe if you like what you see!) Before we get into things, we need to have
a bit of the lay of the land and see what kind of project we have ahead of us. I don’t know when this place was built,
I don’t know who made it and I don’t even know exactly what this was originally supposed
to be. The build seems to be partially incomplete,
somewhat amateurishly planned out and most noticeably, has been griefed and vandalised
at some point in time. This place is in a sorry state and it might
not even be fair to say it’s seen much better days. Most of us would just walk past this sort
of unimpressive build, but we’re gonna stick around and show it some long overdue love. To get us off to a good start, we’ll need
to gather a healthy supply of resources and what better place to procure them than the
very dystopian world we find ourselves roaming?! As I’m sure you’d find quite unsurprising,
it’s not hard to find countless abandoned and derelict structures all over the landscape. Why not kill two birds with one stone, tidy
up these eyesores and harvest their materials to funnel back into our project? I set up some scaffolding for safety… and
we were ready to get started! The first thing we’re gonna do is we need
to update this staircase. It’s the first thing you see, or at least
touch and I think it should leave more of an impression. We’re gonna get rid of that cobblestone
and replace it with spruce, pretty much because I just like spruce and I think it’ll contrast
nicely with the stone. I then want to fortify the staircase, make
it more formidable. We’re gonna create this kind of tiered leveling
system, but you might be thinking it’s a little rectangular and I agree so we’re
gonna chisel some of it off to give it a rougher more worn out appearance. But I didn’t want to go overboard, I want
to retain those flat surfaces as much as possible. Meanwhile in the grounds we have this entrance
gate. If the staircase is the entrance to the building,
this is the entrance to the plot itself. Unfortunately it’s pretty weedy and non-descript. A good gate or fence should create a sense
of ‘inside and outside’, but I don’t think this does that at all. We need to amp things up a bit. Gatehouses are a great way to create a divide,
they’re basically just small buildings that act, as the name implies, as a gateway between
outside and inside. We’re going for a beefier look, so we’re
gonna create this node-based system for the fence. These are good for making it look strong,
but it’s also good if your fence needs to go up and down inclines, the nodes act as
a medium between the varying levels. If you just went for a continuous fence, it
looks pretty janky and unsatisfying. As for the gatehouse itself, we just went
for a simple little cobble arch with spruce roof and some lanterns to make it a bit cozier. I can only speculate, but I’m gonna imagine
the original creator wanted this build to be fairly open… or maybe they just couldn’t
figure out how to make windows. Either way, I’m going to destroy this glass
segment and try something else, but I’d like to retain that airy-open idea going forward. Instead of sealed windows, we’re gonna go
for a very breezy, open alternative. I never know what these are called… ‘Ramparts? ‘Buttresses?’. I don’t know, but they’re basically windows
with outcroppings. These look really good, but they’re also
going to help start break down that flat square shape the original building has. We’re gonna keep the front door wide open
too for that casual airy vibe, but I am going to line it with trapdoors for a bit of interest,
nothing too chunky though. So I don’t know about you, but this pathway
is pretty unfortunate. And that’s a shame because roads and pathways
are probably one of the easiest, cheapest and best ways of defining space. And they’re really not too hard. Now this path is very straight and direct,
like you’re not allowed to take a detour, just go right to your destination and don’t
ask questions! Straight symmetrical roads can totally work,
but because we’re going for something more casual I don’t think it’d do this space
any favors. Your go-to block might be path blocks and
these are good for, again, straight, wide lines, but they’re terrible for anything
organic and scattered because their shading is pretty off. For organics, just meander to your destination. It doesn’t have to be 100% direct, you can
veer off here and there. Remember to round curves and angles, use varying
thicknesses and scatter blocks for better blending. Also remember where people have been walking,
higher footfall means more erosion. I actually even went as far as severing the
path here to indicate that. But don’t go nuts, too much of any technique
can make it lose its purpose. We arrive at the roof. You’ve probably noticed that this is one
of the bigger casualties of the griefing event, the entire thing is just… gone. From the looks of the pattern I’d say someone
had a little flint and steel spree and let the game take it from there. I decided to just scrap the roof completely,
from the remnants, the design didn’t look that great to begin with. We’re also gonna do away with the birch…
largely because I just hate birch, but I also don’t think it works well for roofs in general
even in the best of times. Instead we’ll go for a combo of spruce planks
and stripped dark oak. I find dark oak matches better than stripped
spruce because it doesn’t have that weird green tinge to it. We went for a fairly sporadic design, but
roofs are tricky so you need to mix things up frequently incase the pattern becomes monotonous
and I think I did a decent job for its size. What kinda tipped the scale for me when deciding
to pick this build or not… was these things. I… I don’t actually know what they’re supposed
to be. Like maybe it was an outer wall that was just
never completed… or maybe an aqueduct? I don’t know, but I thought they were an
interesting feature. I made the executive decision that they were
gonna be arches. So there’s actually a lot of negative space
in this area and it’s a big part of why it looks so empty. The new pathway helps a little, but we need
to add more features to fill the area even more and I thought these arches would be a
good way to do it. Currently they’re a bit too cuboid in nature,
so I decided to erode and chisel them a little. A mixture of stairs and slabs helps mellow
the shapes out a lot and I mixed in some andesite too to throw off that continuous texture they’d
have otherwise. I even crumbled part of this arch to give
it extra age. I then installed even more arches around the
area to fill the aforementioned blank space. This one even intersects the pathway to make
them a bit more interactive. If we come back inside you’ll see that the
interior was also not spared when the fire nation decided to attack. From what’s left we can see there was probably
a donut shaped ring here alongside a bannister rail and a ladder down to the lower level. So I’m pretty anti-birch, but we’ll try
and keep that theme alive in here at least. I wanted to redo the ring idea, but with a
slightly different approach. We’re going to create a suspended platform
that is held up by chains. I didn’t want to use birch logs because
they’re horrendous, but I also didn’t like birch planks because they’re overly
processed. Stripped birch is a good compromise, it’s
a little processed but is earthier and more organic than planks. To make things a little scary, we’re gonna
leave a three-block gap between the wall and the platform. I was looking for a good chain design and
settled with this. We use a grindstone to hook the platform to
the wall and two fence gates to create a gravity effect with the chain. Fencegates attached to wall blocks render
slightly lower than regular fencegates so you get this nice little subtle effect. Even though we’re trying to restore this
build, it’s undeniable we’ve also taken charge of things. As such, it no longer makes sense to adorn
the sigils of the former occupant. I took the banners outside and washed away
the markings to replace them with something better. To welcome in the new era of prosperity I
adorned the building with these new sigils inside and out. Praise me, long shall I reign. On a slightly less conquer-y note, we also
needed to fix the walls some more. I created these ledges and went for some circular
open windows to stick to that earlier airy idea. I wanted to create this sort of slalom effect
where if you wanted to walk through each window, you’d need to snake inside and out. I built these dividing support pillars inside
and some ledges outside all made out of spruce. To help with lighting, I made these little
rope lanterns attached to the ceiling and offset their heights for a bit of variety. Lecterns are actually a really great block
to add some more interest and detailing for a socket. You may have noticed this little bit of fencing
over here. Obviously I can’t say for sure, but this
must have been an animal pen at some point. Only problem is… there are no animals. And there were definitely no animals when
I first got here either. This may look like an innocent little scene,
but it could very well have beared witness to a great tragedy. We’re not gonna overcomplicate things, but
I’d like to make this pen a little fancier and make it match the surroundings a bit better
too. I’ve tried to make something of a celtic
theme here, with these big spiralling rune-like stone formations breaking up the regular fencing. The only thing that was missing was the livestock,
so I went out and found some free sheep and made them not so free anymore. I also dyed them an appropriate blue and yellow
to better match our colours. Round the back of the building there’s actually
a fairly dismal little patch of farmland. Perhaps it was once productive, but it's now
barren of any crops and seems to have been plundered and trampled. This looked like it was a pretty small-scale
setup, so I decided to stick with that. I thought a peaceful little garden would be
appropriate. Nothing massive, just a modest source of food. I made micro-plots of various crops and a
battered old fence along with some coarse dirt for extra age. For decoration I made these stylish vases
with glazed terracotta, flower pots and er… a sea pickle. I think they look surprisingly good. I also made these planters to line the wall. I repeated this idea at the front of the property
on those tiered steps we created earlier. On the buildings left side, there’s a bit
of a problem. The wall has been blown out! Now you might think, well… just fix it. But I think we’d be losing something if
we just built something new here, this damage is now part of the building's history and
should be remembered. So instead of erasing this scar, we’re going
to only partially repair it so that we can remember what took place. So I installed some matching support pillars
from the opposite wall, but we’re going to leave this wall open to the elements. Structurally, we’re gonna add these oak
beams to fill in the void that’s been left in the wall. This all has consequences… down in the basement. This part of the project was actually very
empty and incomplete, so I don’t really have much to go on. The only thing I can gather is this might
have been a storage room because of the few leftover chests, but the fire from above could
very well have reached these lower levels and completed wiped everything out. Because of that, I kind of had to make my
own decision on what should go here. I like the idea of nature taking over, so
went along the line of thought that the destroyed wall would have let the elements in and nature
has seeped down into the foundations. I thought a WIP style camp could be a fun
idea, so I built up some utilities like furnaces and also added some barrels to stay inline
with the potential storage room origin. The birch ladder had to go, so I replaced
it with stripped dark oak pillar and also opted for a spiral staircase because I figured
the profile was too spindly and feeble when you just had that skinny little pole. If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll
see that I haven’t actually finished the roof. This is intentional because using that same
philosophy of the ruined wall, I wanted to maintain some of the damage and the roof was
heavily affected. What I wanted to do was raise the buildings
profile and leave the interior open to the heavens. This sticks with the lore, is gonna look cool
and also has the big benefit of flooding the inside with lots of light which is very handy
especially down in that dark basement. I’ve created these bits of clawed rubble
where the supposed ceiling would have been and also added these spruce beams to enhance
the effect. I don’t know about you, but I thought a
giant banner would be appropriate too! Before we get to the completed showcase, I
wanted to make a few final adjustments. But in the meantime you can actually help
me out! If you enjoy this kind of video and would
like to see more, I’m gonna need some more projects to work on. So if you have any builds, bases or worlds
of your own that you reckon could do with a makeover, do let me know! Hit me up on Twitter, “@SimplySarc”, post
a few screenshots of the world and if I see something that’d make a cool project you
might see it featured in the future! But anyway, let's take a few before and after
shots of this project to see how the build has changed! Now I don’t claim to be the best builder
around, but I’m pretty happy with how things turned out. It was surprisingly quite enjoyable, sort
of indirectly collaborating with someone else. Considering decisions they made, contributing
your own ideas and getting this weird mix you probably wouldn’t have come up with
just by yourself. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did guys,
it was fun! But that’s pretty much it, project complete! I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts. But guys, like I said, thanks very much for
watching I’ve been your one and only SimplySarc and I will catch you in
the next one.
