The EpicQuestz Newsletter
ISSUE 68 - 18 August 2025
Hello to all of our readers! After a 7 month break without any newsletter, allow me to take over to help you catch up with the latest news in the community.
Exceptionally in this edition, we’ll go through some of the projects we have built for our Castle Siege server, Emprie War.
-@LimeeFox
Despite this project moving to the bottom of the priority list, we still managed to complete many new houses in the third and fifth districts (along the south-western Anduin riverbank). As a reminder, the fifth district is supposed to be filled with workshops and family craftsman businesses. We attempted to make new textures for the district, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to achieve something that was satisfying. We will keep trying. The goal is to avoid making the city completely grey.
- Project Leader, @LimeeFox
Significant progress on the interiors! Dozens of interiors were decorated thanks to the dedication of the builders, in particular @Rio and @Grissum1 among others. We’ve now climbed down to only approximately 65 houses left to decorate. About 80% of the houses that are still standing undecorated now have a job created for them, so builders can claim them anytime. We’ve slowed down progress on the exteriors because my computer died, so I am waiting to buy a new one to resume recording our work for a huge timelapse of us building Bree. Build sessions continue to happen from time to time, allowing us to get closer and closer to the finish line, including those organized by the Builders themselves (thanks to @Rio).
- Project Co-Leader @LimeeFox
Progress on Cirith Ungol has been slow and intermittent, as we have been encouraging builders to focus on our larger projects. Regardless, we have made significant headway on the project, primarily with the various wooden scaffolding structures around the build. I am hoping to lead a build session for the project sometime this month, but I have yet to decide a date. In the meantime, several dedicated builders have been doing excellent work, primarily @Grissum1 and @redbommer.
- Project Leader, @Battle_Hippie
After 8 months of work, we completed a revamp of the Eastern Osgiliath riverbank!
While preserving a few of the older buildings (after slightly revamping them), we thought it was important to raise the aesthetics of the map to the highest building standards. The bridge design is completely new, however the overall shape and disposition of the broken bits (namely the ‘holes’) have not changed. They are the same as on Empire War v1 and v2. As we wave goodbye to the beautiful Dome of Stars built by Only_God in 2014, let us welcome a smaller but more movie-accurate version built by the_pharaohs_cat a few years back, and revamped to match today’s building standards. Along with that, the citadel has also been redone, becoming a home of many new little eastereggs Smile 
Returning to the mainland, we wiped almost all of the legacy buildings, with the exception of a handful of them, and removed one of the two rivers running through the city.
We will likely make a separate post on our forums describing each of these maps in detail, with many screenshots and anecdotes from the building process.
- Project Co-Leader, @LimeeFox
Redone for the third time now, Black Gate was actually pretty easy to revamp, because most of it was already pretty good looking since our last visit to it back in summer 2023.
I must express a huge thanks to @Rio in particular, along with @Grissum1, Redbommer and @Stavrdaf for standing out on this project. Thanks also to the other builders who helped!
Some parts of the map remained untouched, namely the ones that are no longer meant to be playable. As for the rest, we’ve done the following changes:
We completely removed the camp and trenches that belonged to the free men of Middle-Earth, outside in the fields. The old fortress behind the Black Gate, to the west of the map, has been completely redone. Gothmog’s tent received a well deserved revamp with a new tent design and expanded tunnels for more fun.
On the other side of the ravine, we have added a Mining Camp flag, which is a brand new one in the Black Gate map series. Finally, the map ends with a revamped Easterling Camp, adjusted to be a mini-fortress.
- Project Leader, @LimeeFox
One of the most fun maps we’ve built is the special Easter event map for Empire War. It was completed over two to three build sessions that we called “build sprints”. In just two weeks, the map was ready to be played on Empire War on the occasion of the Easter break.
The map was built on the bones, joints flesh and skin of all kinds of builds found on EpicQuestz. We reused terrain from Weathertop, planes from the Great Builder Civil War of EpicQuestz, castles from various builders and artists on the server, mushrooms from personal builder’s plots, trees from the assets warp and abandoned architectural concepts from Grimslade to shape this incredible map. Of course, some of the things were built exclusively for the map, such as the eggs and a few of the mushroom houses.
If you happen to be on Empire War, feel free to ask a staff member to put this map on, as it’s an exclusive event map that is out of the classic map rotation!
- Project Leader, @LimeeFox
The Resource-Pack has been updated once again with new textures and little fixes. Learn more about it here!
The assets warp (/warp assets) has been updated with many new assets, including many camping tents and an entire camp! Other little things, such as carts and trees, have also been added. We’re working on cleaning up the plant section, and we are looking into adding interior decoration assets for you to use. If you need access to the plot, simply hit me up, or reply down here in this newsletter with your in-game name. You are more than welcome to use the assets for your personal builds!
At /spawn, we’ve updated the Donor Hall and we’ve added a new portal warp to Moria (2024) that we built for Empire War.
The server has been updated to 1.21.4! This is quite old news, but this is the first time since the update that we’ve had the chance to tell about it in a newsletter. We will try to update the server to an even newer version later this month.
I would like to use this occasion to remind everyone about the online map of the server that you can visit any time, to observe the various building worlds that we have! Visit it here
I am very excited about this section! We have many promotions to announce.
Congratulations to @marcoiscool on being the first person to be promoted to Builder in 2025!
Congratulations to Redbommer on his promotion to Builder!
Congratulations to Scosher on his promotion to Builder!
Congratulations to @Curse on his promotion to Builder!
Today, I would like to feature a multitude of builds built by members of the community throughout the past couple of months.
First, let us take a look at two of DenPater’s (formerly WillFrostStorm) newer plots
The image above is one of his nature plots. If you happen to fly above it in the small plots world, you will be able to recognize it by it’s delicate streams and paths stomped out by the wildlife. The flora too grows very softly in this field.
The images below are from a place known only to the more curious tier of the community members, as it’s a building directly from the Silmarillion! Can you recognize it? It’s the home of the petty-dwarves… This is Amon Rûdh! Learn more about it on the Tolkien Gateway Article
NEMO_CZ has been working on a Celtic broth! He carefully followed the archeological reconstructions found online, and has a high standard of attention to detail.
I would also like to share my own little build scene I built very quickly.
Finally, here is Crusgrade, a town and fortress built by @agentzer09467
Quite an eventful newsletter that was! A lot has now been communicated, and more interesting things are being worked on that I haven’t spoken about yet. Hopefully, in the next newsletter you will learn more about it
In the meantime, keep practicing folks! Building is like a sport - you have to train to become good at it. Remember to explore outside of your comfort zone, as it is the only way you can truly improve, and try to draw inspiration from real life. Always do your research and learn how and why things have been made the way they were, and this will help you understand how to build fantastic builds. See you soon!
BI-WEEKLY QUIZ:
Question for the fans of the Silmarillion: Whom did Túrin Turambar seize Amon-Rûdh from? What was their name?
