Above you'll see the efforts of Enshrouded players working collaboratively to recreate an iconic location from The Lord of the Rings. Erebor, the dwarven city built under Lonely Mountain, has been brought to life in the early access survival sandbox from Keen Games—and all it took was 33 players working for a staggering 10,000 hours over 74 days.
That's a lot of effort: 220,000,000 blocks mined and over 15 million blocks placed to bring the dwarven city to life.
Erebor, if you haven't tucked into The Lord of the Rings in a while, is where the dragon Smaug brought the smackdown, sacking both the city and the nearby town of Dale before making Lonely Mountain his lair and hoarding all its treasure. In the events of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and Thorin's party snuck into Erebor through a secret door and discovered Smaug's weakness, which led to the defeat of the dragon and reclamation of the city.
I never made it through the Hobbit movies so I'm not sure how accurate the recreation of Erebor is in Enshrouded—but who even cares? It looks magnificent in the video above, truly an underground city with massive carved canyons flanked with walkways, windows, staircases, and lanterns.
You can even walk through Smaug's hoard, a massive cathedral filled with treasure and an earthwork carved to look like the mighty dragon itself. This replica of Erebor is an astounding creation I doubt even the developers of Enshrouded could have anticipated.
I dug myself a small basement under my cabin in Enshrouded. It felt like it took forever and when I was done it just looked like a hole. BRB, gonna find 32 other players who have a couple months to spare so I can at least make it presentable.
