If you watched the Lighthouse video tour from my last Minecraft build on the new multi-player freebuild survival server (HavenTerrace – haventerrace.protectedby.ch), you might remember that I already had an idea of what my next build in Cloud Cuckoo Land 2 was going to be. If you didn’t watch it… WTF DUDE! I THOUGHT YOU WERE COOL?! I WATCHED ALL THAT WEIRD SHIT YOU’VE BEEN UPLOADING! JEEZ, SOME PEOPLE! Ahem, sorry… where was I?

Yeah, yeah, the build. As you can probably guess from the thumbnails below (click on them for larger images), the new construction is a Galleon! I’ve tried my hand at sea-going craft before with my much, much, much  smaller vessel, the Clipper ship (and does the Fish count?) but I’ve always wanted to give a larger, less fairground-ride-escapee looking ship a go.

This isn’t the first time I’d made plans to build something like this. On the old dead server, I had actually started building a dock, much like the one you can see running alongside the ship in this screenshot. To be honest, I’m rather glad nothing came of that. I don’t build in the quite same way now as I did in the past and something of this scale would have had me climbing the walls without the necessary preparation.

Instead, it just felt like putting together the world’s biggest jigsaw made of planks and wool. Speaking of planks, tallying everything up I figured out that the whole thing needed over 13,000 planks in total. I thank Notch that the server has a shop setup as I’m sure I would have had to spend a couple of weeks deforesting half the server just for the wood alone. Let’s not mention the poor sheepies going cold without their sail-worthy wool.

So I might have gone a little over the top on the detail here and there. I admit – if I never have to place another upside-down staircase again in my life, I’d be fine with that. If you didn’t notice before, you probably have now – the Galleon isn’t sat in the ocean like it’s typical water-based brethren. As with all Cloud Cuckoo Land 2 structures, this one is far, far above the land/sea, floating in the clouds. It certainly made building the hull a lot easier, now that I think about it, not worrying about drowning every couple of minutes and only being able to see a few feet in front of my face.

The obligatory (I just like them, all right?!) balcony at the back of the ship leads to the Captain’s private quarters and just above that is his dining room where all the posh guests get to eat. Gold plates, plush carpet and fancy marble (uh… quartz) pillars, yeah, this is the life.

Don’t be too impressed by the meal of cake that is being served – for some reason all the crew eat cake on this ship but I guess the one placed before the Captain might have slightly fewer weevils in it than the rest of them (or more, I don’t know what he’s into).

Speaking of cooking – the ship’s Cook has a lovely large galley in which to prepare that endless supply of infested baked goods. A huge oven takes centre stage, with a boiling cauldron over the rather poor choice of flowing lava as a heat source. If the ship ever burns to ashes, look no further.

Cupboards and two supply rooms make use of those new carpets added in the recent Minecraft update, stacked on top of each other to pass as shelves. The shelves are bare, however. I guess that’s why they’ve come to dock at CCL2 – to restock. Three tons of flour, two tons of sugar, fifty barrels of milk, twenty crates of eggs and a barrel of weevils (add to taste).

Now the crew can either take their meals in the crew mess hall or on the bottom deck in their communal bunk areas. It’s a bit cramped down here and the stench could kill a weevil but it’s a little square of ship they get to call their own.

The plates aren’t quite as valuable as at the Captain’s table but he has provided them with bookcases in the hopes that they better themselves (between re-reading the ship’s only copy of 50 Shades of Grey or something, I guess). Pamphlets on how a life-jacket won’t help if you fall overboard or explaining why if all we eat is cake, what are all those blood stains in the galley about? That sort of thing.

The old Clipper ship had one and my new base has one so here is the Galleon’s hold where they keep all their valuables. Unfortunately, it’s looking a little empty at the moment but I’m sure once they’re back out exploring the great unknown, this area will soon fill up with blocks of gold, diamond and maybe even the odd block of emeralds.

I guess they must have divvied up all the loot as the ship is completely devoid of people. No doubt the crew are all off either drinking away their share or burying it on some desert island somewhere with a ridiculously obvious ‘X’ marking the spot. Before long, their pockets will be empty again and they’ll all come crawling back.

The last shot is of the front of the ship where there’s more storage and some more cramped crew quarters. Those little things you can see poking out from the side of the ship are the cannons. There’s forty in all and due to a little shipment order typo, they’re full of arrows rather than cannon balls. Still quite lethal but more in a pointy way than a crushy way.

The Galleon is something I’ve wanted to build since making the smaller Clipper. It’s still not very authentic or accurate in terms of real ships but it looks more the part. Planning took ages and I had to make sure that it didn’t encroach on anyone else’s ground level build… and then a world-resizing and CCL2 relocation made all that irrelevant.

I plan to make a video tour of this build quite soon so if you’re interested in seeing a little bit more of this ship, keep an eye out for that.