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A DETAILED Guide to Building Halfling Burrows


NotEvilAtAll
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Entrances:

Every good burrow starts with an entrance! Here's two different entrance styles you can use, one for a normal door and another using trapdoors!

Normal Entrance:

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Start with this basic frame of full blocks.

 

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Two stairs on either side

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Upside down stairs going off of the two previous stairs

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Blocks on top of the stairs

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Stairs on top of the blocks, facing inwards

 

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Another set of upside down stairs, this time facing the other direction

 

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Slabs to top it all off. You can use more slabs or trapdoors to round things out further if you wish

 

One-Block Trapdoor Entrance

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Start with two blocks one block away from each other

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Put stairs in front of either block, facing away from center

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Slabs on top of the stairs and a third full block put above the gap between the other two. The block in the corner will be removed later

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Remove the excess block and put a slab up on the upper portion of the middle block

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Move around the back and put a trapdoor in the hole between the three blocks, making sure that the trapdoor flaps upwards towards the top block instead of downwards to the ground or off to the sides.

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Move to the front again and put slabs on either side of the entrance off of the top of the stairs.

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If you don't trust the LOTC crawling plugin, you can put another trapdoor on the front as pictured so that the entrance is usable even without any plugins. Simply sneak up into the entrance and flap the trapdoor down on top of yourself to enter crawling mode.

 

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Finished entrance should look something like this

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For the entrance room, I recommend you go down a block using stairs like so. It looks the best like this from the exterior since sinking the burrow's entrance down into the ground gives a better illusion of a much smaller burrow, and you don't have to worry about placing more trapdoors to enter crawling mode since the trapdoor placed earlier works just fine.

 

Planning your Burrow

Every good burrow needs a plan laid out before building begins! I personally use logs for this task (since I make use of the logs in the finished burrow itself), but you're free to use whatever blocks you wish for your own burrow building!

Start by laying out some shapes that will serve as rooms, connecting them either through hallways or by having the rooms directly share walls with one another. Circles, small squares, ovals, and any other shapes you wish to use will suffice.


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Here are some example shapes that you can use. Ovals make for good dining rooms, and squares make for good pantries, entrance rooms, guest bedrooms, and other rooms that don't need to be very large. Hallways are best when they move around a little bit instead of staying perfectly straight, so feel free to add little bends and shifts to any hallways you want in your burrow!

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Here are a few more examples of shapes you can include in your burrow. Larger shapes may not fulfill everything you need, so smaller circles, ovals, and squares, and hallways can also be used to fill in the gaps between larger shapes you're planning to include. You can also bend and warp shapes as you see fit. Pictured on the right of the above image is a circle that has been stretched out to better fit a dining table inside of it. Make the shapes bend to fit whatever furnishings you want to include, not the other way around!

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This is an example of a burrow plan. You can mark the different rooms with signs to get a better picture of the build, plan out any windows or important pieces of furniture, and decide where you want to have a fireplace or kitchen! There are no wrong choices when planning a burrow, but it's usually best to not build rooms you won't make good use of, for doing so is a waste of time, space, and resources. There is no shame in scrapping some ideas if they don't work out well. Plan twice, build once.

The Burrow Floor

Floors are easy to build in a halfling burrow, but there's a lot of extra things you can do to make the floor more interesting and challenging to build.


The materials of the floor should reflect the style of burrow you wish to build, as well as the room the floor is within. Kitchens can have more stone or brick in their floors, and living rooms can have most of their floor covered in carpets or wool.


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This image shows the differences between a half-slab floor and full block floor, as well as the difference between a single texture floor and checker pattern floor. You can put the floor of an entire room all on the same Y level or mix up the heights halfway through the room. Different rooms can be at different Y levels, and some rooms can be built with full block floors while other rooms have the floors set on slabs. Keep in mind that the style of furniture you can put in a room is greatly influenced by the floor itself. Furniture on full block floors pops out from the floor while furniture on slab floors is built into the floor itself. As a result of this, certain furnishings are easier to build on slab floors than full block floors and vice versa.

Experiment with building furniture on slab floors and full block floors to get a good idea for what rooms you want to put on slabs and what rooms you want to put on full blocks. If you don't want to use any slabs on the floor at all, that's perfectly fine. Doing fancy stuff with the floor is 100% optional. You can put the entire burrow on the same Y level if you want. As you build more burrows, you can start to experiment with varying heights between rooms and even within rooms as you grow more comfortable.

The Burrow Wall

Now that you've built the floors, it's time to build your burrow's walls. Walls are very simple.

 

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Add in some support beams in the corners of whatever room you're building the walls of. Traditionally, halfling burrow support beams are logs. For hallways (or if the room doesn't have any corner blocks, like a 3x3 square), you can put support beams randomly along their length, have a set standard for when and where you put the support beams, or just forgo supports altogether. Whatever you think looks good will do. It's not an exact science.

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After the supports are built, fill in the rest of the wall with whatever wall material you want to use. You could use planks, terracotta, wool, mushroom blocks, sandstone, bricks, leaves, dirt, etc. Traditionally, halfling burrow walls are made out of wooden planks because they're cheap and easy.

 

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This is what my burrow looked like after I built up its walls.

The Burrow Ceiling

Halfling burrow ceilings are rounded just like many of the shapes used in halfling rooms. The ceiling and any exposed walls are covered in dirt after construction is finished, so the exterior look of the burrow is largely defined by the ceiling inside of the burrow.

 

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Here you can see different halfling ceilings covered in dirt. These all have the exact same profile when covered in dirt, yet look different from the inside. Despite most halfling burrows using slabs for the entire ceiling, full-block exclusive textures such as logs or wool are also possible without changing the shape of the burrow's hill, and slabs can be replaced with stairs a lot of the time as well.

 

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Here are some different ceiling designs moving upwards. Some ceilings are steeper than others. The more your ceiling pops out, the taller your burrow's hill will be when you've covered the ceiling in dirt.

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Part of a ceiling made out of slabs that pushes the corner slab upwards to be straight with slabs up above. This design has a higher ceiling and is more steep.

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The same ceiling as before but with the corner slab pushed downwards. This design has a lower ceiling and is less steep.

As can be seen above, finer details about your ceiling can impact its overall look. Plan for how your ceiling design will wrap around corners so that you are not confused.

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An example of stairs used in a ceiling. By using stairs, a 2-block wide hallway can still have a rounded ceiling.

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A ceiling built on a single Y level using stairs and a trapdoor.

 

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Full blocks, stairs, slabs, and trapdoors all used in a single ceiling.

Covering your Burrow

Make sure you have enough dirt!

 

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Start by working your way around your burrow, covering up any exposed wall and ceiling material with dirt. If the dirt is too steep, add more dirt around it so that it's possible to climb up the burrow hill.

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When you have covered all of the exposed walls and ceiling with dirt, your burrow will still look a bit weird. You have some clean-up work to do.

 

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Fill in any weird holes, connect disconnected blobs of dirt, round out harsh corners, and do whatever else is needed to make your hill look more natural.

 

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Put something on top of your burrow! It's no good having a plain ol' boring grass hill! Put some farms up there, trees, a chimney, plants, a cottage, a tool shed, a chicken coop, animal pens, a whole 'nother burrow, bees, tons of flowers, anything you can think of! Make the hill a part of the world around it!

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A very well developed burrow hill.

 

All of my screenshots from building the burrow pictured above:

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There will be a part 2

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