A 1:1 scale recreation of the Duchal Palace from Baldur's Gate, where the Grand Dukes of Baldur's Gate hold court, and site of the penultimate confrontations with Sarevok.

Project will be updated as I add in interiors.

When importing with MCEdit: Make sure "Copy Air" is checked or the basement will flood with blocks.

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Making Of

I knew, even before I finished uploading the Iron Throne project, that I was onto something. I'd observed the mixed success of various projects aiming at recreating Baldur's Gate in Minecraft before, and decided that while I would not commit to trying to reproduce the city - which struck me as insanity, even in creative mode - but that I would try to start reproducing landmarks and major buildings, and if, eventually, I had a city's worth of work I could jigsaw together, all the better.

I really had to up my game for this project, though. I was able to piece together the Iron Throne with vanilla creative and nothing more easily enough, but I soon realized that the sheer size of the Duchal Palace was much, much greater; by my estimate, you could slide two Iron Throne towers into the courtyard. I enlisted the help of good old MCEdit as well as upgraded my game with the More Creative mod, and set to work.

Despite some mysterious crashes, I was able to build it relatively quickly - I built half the front wall and one of the side walls in creative, then used MCEdit to duplicate their parts to form the rest of the walls, then switched back to creative to check the work. I then switched back to MCEdit to make any necessary tweaks that would be grueling in creative, and into creative to do detail work that would be cumbersome to do in MCEdit. The result I think tops the Iron Throne in grandeur and is a fully functional castle to the point it's possible to walk the walls and go inside the various towers without flight mod.

Finishing the interior was a different challenge from the Iron Throne. Interiors in Baldur's Gate follow Mary Poppins rules - they are as big as they need to be, not as big as they should be considering the building they are in. In the Iron Throne's case, I had to compress the details of the interiors, but in the case of the Duchal Palace, I had too much room to work with, which allowed me to get lavish with some of the details, in particular, the sprawling stairwell used in the keep.

Additional Notes

For best results, load with 1.2.4/1.2.5 Minecraft. Schematic makes use of half-blocks attached to undersides.

Redistributing it as is, without credit, is a no-no, but if anyone wanting to make a Baldur's Gate themed adventure map would be interested in using it, contact me. I would gladly like to aid such a worthy cause.

The texture pack is naturally my own Baldur's Craft texture pack, in [32x] and [16x].