Episode 98 opens on a dark Basket Castle. Basket stayed logged in overnight, so there are more mobs around than usual, and the creepers are the worry: "they would ruin my day." After a quick look at the barracks, the keep and the gatehouse, Basket lays out the plan. The tops of the walls need real battlements. Basket is the only player in the game; the in-game chat shows only Basket's own lines.
Crenels and merlons
Before building anything, Basket loads the hotbar with cobblestone, cracked stone and some mossy stone, and looks up real castle designs. The words come together along the way: crenellations are the whole pattern, the crenel is the gap, and the merlons are the solid parts "that protect you." Basket wants the new tops to stick out a little from the wall, with an arrow slit in some sections and solid stone in others.
A detour for wood and repairs
There's a problem right away. "Apparently I lost them all," Basket says about the crafting tables, and there's no wood to make one. The mending gear is worn too. Killing a few cows doesn't give enough experience, so Basket takes a shortcut to the end and stands in the experience farm there with Basket's Silk Pickaxe and a diamond axe until both are fixed. Then it's back through spawn and the nether hub to Basketopia, where the axe makes quick work of a birch grove. "Choppin' wood and Minecraft music."
Too much overhang
The first design on the wall is a three-wide template that hangs out over the edge, with an opening below where "water can go" or something could be dropped "on people that are coming." From the ground it doesn't work. "It does definitely need some sort of support on the side," and with that much sticking out, "it looks funny." Basket adds supports more often and keeps an opening on every other section. From below, "that looks better than before, more supported."
Next the blocks change. The whole test goes to cobblestone, and the big reveal from the ground is "not as bad as I thought it was going to be."
Slabs, fences and a torch
Slabs go in behind the merlons, which still leaves room for rainwater, or for dumping things down, and only the full blocks can turn mossy, since "you can't have currently mossy slabs or stairs." Fences come up as another idea. A torch won't go on the side of a fence, but it will sit on top of one, which gives a new spot for a torch Basket didn't like: "I really hate where the torch is." From the ground the torch reads as a small glow and the fence barely shows. From the top of a tower the new section "doesn't stand out as much, but it doesn't look bad."
Around the corner
The pattern then has to run across a longer stretch where the wall slopes. Every third piece gets a slab, one spot is left open for water, and stairs keep a path through so the walkway still works. "None of this is spawnable anyway." From below the corner "looks broken," so after a suggestion of a fence or a slab in the open middle, Basket tries a fence. "Oh, the fence worked out pretty well." Another slab becomes a fence too.
The view from far away
To finish, Basket backs off and compares the test with the rest of the castle. "From here you can't even tell it's cobblestone, but the shadows and the slope on those bottom parts I think really, really help." The next step is to put the design on the main castle's straight walls, and later to add similar shadows to more of the build. The credits run to the end with no gameplay after them.
