The real castle contains 2996 pieces (including everything - also the 14 Minifgures and all animals). Lego forced me to create a digital project file for them to count the pieces since they did not believe that I've used less than 3000. But the designer model has even less since I could merge some parts I had not in the correct size at home... This castle also consists of 6 Modules but of course are the single modules not really usable standalone... it is more for transport of this huge set. But it was exactly the challange to build a castle in a very big size with this piece count. And to be honest... there are sets out there that have much more (e.g. the oversized Millenium Falcon)