I followed the Ring across Minecraft’s Middle-earth

Today we take you on a tour through one of the most famous fictional worlds, built by what may be one of the oldest still-going building communities; MC Middle-Earth.

It started in October 2010, when q220 founded the server. The community started building on a vanilla generated server, where they had to terraform everything themselves. In 2013, that old seed was replaced with a custom map, built in WorldPainter. This new map is 29,000 blocks wide and 30,000 blocks long and is still being used today.

In those twelve years, a lot of the area has taken shape and is ready to be visited by anyone who would like to go on an adventure. We’ve prepared this guide to show you what kind of things you may see along the way.

Bag End, the home of Bilbo and later Frodo Baggins. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

The magic begins, fittingly, in Bag End. You can follow the footprints marked on the ground, or scour around at your own pace. There’s plenty to see – narrow hallways and storage spaces, several bedrooms, spacious hallways – but everything feels relatively small. Hobbit-small. Almost like you, the human, need to duck under every hanging lamp and squeeze through the doorways. In combination with the soothing music, it immediately sets the tone. This is home, and you are welcome.

When you find your way outside, you’re met with some of the most beautiful trees you’ll have seen in Minecraft. You can explore the outside of Bag End, see the rest of Hobbiton, or follow in Frodo’s footsteps. Literally. There are little footprints that will lead you through the Shire and all of Middle-earth, sending you on the same trip that our little friends took when they set off to destroy the One Ring.

Image of Bag End (right) and its surroundings. The Party Tree (left) is where Bilbo famously disappeared during his 111th birthday. On the bottom you can see the Gandalf Express. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

Every time you reach a location that played an important role in the books, you’ll be given a little bit of lore. It’s almost like you’re (re)reading the books, at your own pace and very interactively, but without the characters. Almost like a 4D visual novel. If you connect your Minecraft instance via your web browser to the MCME music source, a lot of areas will also be accompanied by fitting music, which changes as you travel.

The footprints lead you out of the Shire, via the Bucklebury Ferry and other familiar places. When you reach the Old Woods the music stops, and the sky changes. This is all to set the scene, and it does so well, because the huge trees feel more cramped than any house in the Shire did, and the trees feel like they’re trying to stop you from continuing your trip. It turns dark, barely light enough to see the footprints. But no worries, if things get too dark for you, you can always use the fullbright command that’s native to the server.

The Old Forest is dark and scary. Most Hobbits believed that the trees were awake and hostile, especially after some tried to cut down trees and burned them in a giant bonfire. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

The music starts again, quite whimsically so, when you leave the forest and find Tom Bombadil’s house, but it seamlessly turns more ominous when you travel through the Barrow-Downs. While it’s not a place from the canon universe, you may want to check out the Great Barrow. This is a maze (made by the user MaDReD) that will lead to the deepest cylindrical room.

Tom Bombadil’s house, which feels like it pops up out of nowhere within the Dark Forest. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

When you arrive at Bree, things feel a little more spacious, but also a little colder. This is not home, and while you’re not in danger, you also don’t feel all cosy. The music once again brings the scene together. In this town you’ll be able to find the Prancing Pony, the inn when Frodo and his friends first met Strider. Make sure to keep an eye out for small little secrets, like the Speedy Stop near the colourful market on the southern side of Bree.

Preceding the story of The Hobbit, The Prancing Pony was also the place where Gandalf the Grey met up with Thorin Oakenshield to talk about Smaug, the claim on the Throne, and the need of a burglar. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

You’ll find yourself traveling across the Midgewater Marshes, past Weathertop, and over the Last Bridge – thankfully all without Black Riders trying to stop you from advancing. You’ll pass by the Three Stone Trolls and will find yourself staring at the pink bushes of the Bruinen Ford. These are definitely the places to keep an eye on your chat, reading along with the story as you progress through Middle-earth.

The Bruinen Ford is a very pretty place, but make sure to cross quickly – you don’t want to be swept away by the water! Photo by Bluekwyrm.

If you keep following the footprints, you’ll find yourself torn in two directions. One road will only have footprints leading away from you, while the other path also has footprints that return. It is heavily recommended to follow the double trail, because that is what leads to the Elven Settlement Rivendell. There are many hidden details here as well, such as the Hall of Fire or the White Council meeting place. This latter one you may know from the Appendices or The Silmarillion – or from the Hobbit films, although it is called the Great Council there.

Following double trails will lead you to some of the most amazing builds, like the one of Rivendell. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

If you’ve seen enough of the city between the mountains, you can continue to follow the path. Keep an eye out for falling rocks, though, because they may cause you to reroute towards Moria, beneath the Misty Mountains. You will need to remember (or Google, there’s no shame in that) the password before you may enter through the West Gate, but once you do, you will find yourself in one of the many lengthy hallways of the mithril mines.

The Great Mines are impossible to do justice in a photograph. The scene stretches on and on, and even with maximal render distance it is almost impossible to see both ends. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

Be very careful, because it is easy to get lost. Even when you follow the footprint-path, you may very well spend around an hour just traversing the long and windy cave systems. Using your ability to fly through the grey depths still takes quite a while. And that is all to give you the same experience the Fellowship had when they traversed these mines; they travelled through these depths for four days.

April signifies the 10-year anniversary since the start of the building of these hallways on the renewed map. You can visit this specific temple via /warp chamber of light. Extra kudos to whoever can find the water slide in this hall! Photo by Bluekwyrm.

Fortunately, we can make use of the warp command. Make sure to check out sights like the Movie Cave, the Crumbling Stairs, First Deep, and mostly the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Halls. This is also where you’ll start to see more and more evidence of the map not being complete, with coloured blocks as placeholders, and signs with notes and instructions. At Durin’s Crossroads, the ambition is to allow you to choose between the film-path (left) as well as the book-path (right). At the time of writing, only the film-path has been finished, and it may be a while before the plan to create the book-path gets revisited.

The Balrog guards the passage from the Second Hall to the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

If you follow the path past the Balrog, you’ll end up at the East gate which leads outside. Your resource pack may need some time to reload, but once it does, you’ll find some of the most vibrant colours on the map. You’ll travel past the Nimrodel and Celebrant Rivers to Caras Galadhon, where the music will start to swell once more. You can find some stunning sights here, and also lore about some more differences between the books and the films.

The Mirror of Galadriel, which shows “things that were, and things that are, and things that yet might be.” Photo by Bluekwyrm.

Once you’ve explored everything in the chief city of Lothlórien, you set off towards the docks. Here you can choose to follow alongside the river, or use the given warp command. If you decide to follow the river, make sure you head in the south-east direction. There are no footprints that will lead you here, but you will get to your destination if you keep following the river downstream.

The Argonath, or the Pillars of Kings, mark the northern border of Gondor. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

Once you get to The Argonath, however, you have reached what’s currently the end of Frodo’s path. You can continue exploring by following Aragorn’s path, through Rohan and Gondor, and while this path is more developed, there are quite a few elements that are currently being retouched or need to be rebuilt. Besides completing these two paths, the building team is also working on the Mordor project, small settlements like Agar and Udul on the Enedhwaith coastline, and Moria always has something that needs to be done.

Dol Amroth is nicknamed Lag Amroth by long-term server members, because in early stages the custom models were placed on the map via armour stands, which caused the whole area to lag out. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

Apart from following the path, there are various other cities and sights that are worth exploring. The White City, or Minas Tirith, is an amazing site to behold and it actually has a section of the footprints for you to follow. Dol Amroth is one of the biggest cities you’ll find on the server. The ruins of Lond Daer provide some beautiful overgrown terrain that looks like it would make for a great school trip. While it may not be completely done yet, Linhir is definitely worth exploring if you want to marvel over intricate interior design. Or visit Pelargir, a colourful city inspired by Venice. The server is linked to an interactive map that you can use to find places to warp to, or to figure out where in the virtual world you find yourself.

You may also find some odd sights like this one. These are job cages; a place where you get put when you join a building job, so the job host knows who will be joining. Photo by Bluekwyrm.

And if you really have no clue where to go, you can always join a tour guide, who will show you around and talk about how some of the places relate to the literary version of Middle-earth. These tours mostly take place on Tuesdays, but guides can start them whenever they want. Considering the majority of the server is European, the tours mostly take place during European-friendly hours.

If you’re looking for some more action, you can gather your friends and battle it out at the arena. Sometimes guides host events that involve PvP, races or quizzes. If you want to join in one of those, keep an eye out on messages from the tour guides (they have a teal role-colour) or you can set up notifications from the alerts channel in their Discord server.

You can find more information about the server on their website or on their forum, where you can find the link to their newest digital magazine, the MCME Times. Make sure to also check out their YouTube and Twitter/X.

I’d like to thank Wyattrox03 for the extra information given, both personally as well as via the Moria 10 year anniversary tour. Also, I may have gotten a little sneak peek of the Mordor Resource Pack and Barad-dûr (the tower holding the Eye of Mordor), and it is gonna be epic!