My first PC-based Minecraft World came after I found Minecraft on the console. Console MC is great, but the space and functionality is limited. At that time the console world only spanned 1 map and I wanted to really stretch out and explore. I might eventually share some of my early PC world creations which include a forest cabin, an upscale and underground subway/metro system, nether rail hubs, an entire village that I fenced off and grew, a desert mod house, many different mob grinders, mines, elaborate storage systems, etc. But for now I wanted to share the piece de resistance which was the focus of months of work: the wizard towers.

I jumped into creative mode to fly across the ocean and after traveling for a long time the first thing I saw was a giant mountain and what looked like a spire or peak next to it. The above picture was from that moment I found it, with the sun setting over the ocean I just flew across. I was inspired! Over the course of the next month or two things started taking shape.

You know the Jimi Hendrix song Voodoo Child? In it he sings “Well, I stand up next to a mountain and I chop it down with the edge of my hand. Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island, might even raise a little sand.” That’s how I felt for the months I worked on the wizard towers. I chopped and whittled it down one block at a time (with my hand!).

In the first progress picture (above), you can see that the mountain peak was turned into a full fledged wizard spire. If you look closely you can see the attached stairway leading to a floating platform, all of which was part of the mountain before I sculpted it. The tree on the platform was original to that mountain area, so I shaped around it and kept it on the platform. All the water and lava flows are original to the area as well. I hollowed out a 4×4 column for the inside of the main spire shaft and put “circular” stairs in the shaft. They ran to the top room and down to level 11, where they came to rest next to giant lava pools and my strip mines. There is also a surface level exit door on the back side of the shaft (not pictured), so that I could go and get more wood every single day. So much wood.

Once the spire was completed, I started work on transforming the mountain itself into a giant castle. This is an early in-progress photo, where I was building the enormous bridge into the main castle entry. At this time the bridge connected to the top of another mountain, where I had a nether portal connected to my nether railway. While it is less resource intensive to chop a mountain into a castle, it doesn’t mean that you still won’t spend a million hours transporting yourself between bases to get supplies.

Work continued on building the castle vertically. Eventually I reached above cloud level, where I put my enchanting room and sky observation area. This is a pulled back photo showing the entire castle. I chose to build an exposed staircase centered around a 2×2 column. It has a few rooms and platforms on the way to the top, and is one of my favorite parts of the wizard towers.

Finally, a completed project picture. While this was the finished state of the wizard towers, we continued to develop the entire area into Kingdom Mindy. This is no longer a world I can visit, sadly, but I am extremely proud of the work I put into it, and finished outcome. It was what I imagined in my mind, and I chopped that mountain into exactly what I wanted.

Full disclosure, some of the exterior shaping work was done in creative mode. All pictures were taken in creative mode. Interior work and exterior finishing was all done in survival though, which is part of the reason it took so long. 🙂

Before and After

From start to finish, the wizard spire and towers are one of my biggest and most epic creations, but every part of it was inspired by the existing structure I found that day coming across the ocean. Isn’t Minecraft awesome?