The Armory · Minecraft Mods
JRH Dwarven Outpost
Don’t build your fortress. Commission it.
Hire a Crew Instead of Laying Bricks
You know the feeling. You have a picture in your head of the fortress you want, you know roughly how many thousand blocks it will take, and you know you are not going to place all of them. So the picture stays in your head and you build another dirt hut.
JRH Dwarven Outpost hands that job to somebody else. You gather materials; a crew of dwarves raises the building block by block while you watch, and when it’s finished it comes staffed — a shop with its shopkeeper already behind the counter, a guard tower with its garrison already on the wall. Your job is the gathering and the choosing. Theirs is the masonry.
It Starts With One Craftable Block
The Deed Office is the only building in the mod you place yourself. Craft it, set it down, and your Architect moves in — the dwarf who sells you almost everything else.
How you buy: sneak-click the Architect to page through what he’s selling. Put the materials in the chests in his office, then right-click twice to purchase. He debits the chests and the crew gets to work.
The recipe: an emerald block, a gold block and a diamond block across the top; two books flanking a chest; three smithing tables along the bottom.
An Honest Price for Everything
There is no invented currency here and no exchange rate to learn. Every building costs exactly what its materials cost to build. A guard post is cheap because a guard post is small. The castle is enormous because the castle is enormous. Prices are quoted in seventeen ordinary materials — stone bricks, cobblestone, logs, glass, wool, iron and emerald blocks and the rest — always in whole blocks, so a price still means something on a server that has been running for two years.
The practical effect is that your gathering has direction. You aren’t grinding an abstract currency; you’re quarrying the actual stone that will become your actual wall.
Watch It Go Up
Buy a deed and the build starts in front of you, one block at a time, rather than appearing all at once. It is oddly good to watch — a foundation, then walls, then a roof, then the dwarves who will live in it.
Bigger commissions take real time. The fortress and the castle are projects you walk away from and come back to.
The Fortress
Sold by the Engineer
A proper stronghold: curtain walls, corner towers, an inner keep and a courtyard, garrisoned by warrior dwarves with sword, crossbow and shield. One of three great works the Engineer handles — you reach him by commissioning his Engineering Bay from the Architect first.
Six Trades of Dwarf
Every dwarf is hand-painted to his trade — iron war-helms, brass goggles, leather aprons, crimson tabards, scholar’s spectacles. No two look alike.
Architect — sells most of the settlement from the Deed Office.
Engineer — sells the great works: Fortress, Large Guard Tower, Castle.
Recruiter — hires more dwarves to your cause.
Warrior — garrisons your defences.
Builder — raises the structures, pickaxe in hand.
Trader — thirteen specialists, blacksmith through cleric, each trading their craft.
Recruiting: once you have a Recruiter, a warrior costs 24 emerald blocks and any profession dwarf 16. The Architect and Engineer can’t be bought — you earn them by building their offices.
Twenty Things to Commission
- ◆Thirteen profession shops — blacksmith, armorer, weaponsmith, fletcher, farmer, mason, fisherman, butcher, librarian, shepherd, cartographer, cleric, leatherworker. Each arrives with its trader.
- ◆Stable — for your mounts.
- ◆Guard Post and Large Guard Tower — defensive works, garrisoned on completion.
- ◆Engineering Bay — your gateway to the great works. Buy it early if you’re aiming big.
- ◆Recruitment Office — available from either vendor.
- ◆Fortress — a major stronghold.
- ◆Castle — see below.
The Castle — A Town in a Single Deed
The endgame purchase, and the reason to keep quarrying. One deed raises an entire walled town with all thirteen profession shops and a Recruitment Office inside it, garrisoned and staffed the moment the last block lands.
It is the most expensive thing in the mod by a wide margin, and it is meant to be. Save for it.
Wagon and Ship
Two vehicles carry both riders and cargo: a Covered Wagon for the road and an Ocean Ship for open water.
Buy either from the Architect, or craft them yourself. Crafting is noticeably cheaper if you can spare a diamond block — the vendor price is a convenience premium.
Where to Start
Craft the Deed Office
Place it and meet your Architect. Everything else flows from here.
Commission one small shop
A profession shop is cheap and teaches you the whole loop — stock the vault, buy the deed, watch the crew work. Do this before committing to anything large.
Buy the Engineering Bay
It unlocks the Fortress, the Large Guard Tower and the Castle. If your ambitions are big, get this early and gather toward it.
Requirements
What you need
- ◆Minecraft Java 26.2 with Fabric and Fabric API
- ◆Java 25, on both client and server
- ◆Plays alongside the rest of the JRH family with no hard dependency in any direction
This is a Playtest
Found a bug? Got an idea? Just want to say what you think? The whole point is your feedback — bring it to the realm.
Tell us in the Discord