Overview
A guide explaining the important parts of creating a 50 block bridge in Dig or Die, an extremely difficult feat
Blocks needed
Starting off, if you haven’t pretty much already gotten to the very end of the game, you may need to as the materials for building a massive bridge can take a long time for early game players. Also some of the images shown will show a character with all of the end game items, if you want to avoid spoilers for them don’t read the guide!
The minimum requirements for the bridge are as follows
100+ Composite metal supports
40+ Composite Walls
20+ Composite light walls
Still that’s being extremely generous, even I ended up using around 140 metal supports 60 walls and 30 light walls.
I also HIGHLY recommend the Eiffel glasses as they let you see what parts of the bridge are most stressed and why.
In addition, the jet-pack is also highly recommended, as it’s required to effectively build it.
As well as the following items, you need a good place to build the bridge
These two sky islands are separated by an expanse of about 50-60 blocks. This is a perfect place to build. Generally building on the ground is much more difficult as if any part of the bridge touches the ground or background that will not count towards the total block count. Also, your bridge is going to not fit on your screen, so just be aware.
Complicated systems of force
When building a large bridge, an understanding of the complicated force physics in the game is very much needed. You need to know how to equalize the distribution of horizontal force.
In this image you can see how the main problem with building bridges is horizontal force, however downward force is also present somewhat, and even more depending on how many tiers of supports you make below the bridge.
Block Strength: You likely already know the strengths and weaknesses of certain blocks, but Im listing them anyway.
Composite wall: Twice as heavy as light composite wall but twice as strong (9000 resistance, 560 weight)
Composite metal support: You can walk through them and they are the equal between light walls and walls (6000 resistance 350 weight)
Composite light wall: (4500 resistance 280 weight)
Composite walls are most useful for a strong starting foundation on a bridge and Composite metal supports are best for expanding from the starting foundation. Composite light walls are best for expanding outwards as far as possible.
Something important to remember : ANY BLOCK INSIDE A DIRT/STONE/ECT BACKGROUND CAN SUPPORT INFINITE FORCE AND WEIGHT
Often when making the bridge it’s a battle of spreading horizontal force across tiers of metal supports. Often looking like this:
As you can see, the horizontal force is spread evenly between all of the supports, however they are all maxed out… So you may be wondering “What now?” well there are a variety of solutions to this, try removing non important metal supports with composite light walls. In addition, try replacing any very stressed metal supports with composite walls. It’s all about experimenting and in all likelihood you will fail 50+ times. After you get the right/left half of the bridge to about 25 blocks start working on the other side if you haven’t already. You can worry about connecting them at the end.
Tips and Tricks
The first most important thing to remember is that the use of the three blocks given to you will crucial. It’s always better to use everything you have instead of just one of the types of blocks
Out of all of these 4 sideways pillars the most successful one used all three blocks and got a length of 13. Using composite light wall or composite wall only resulted in 8, and using composite metal supports resulted in 9.
It’s important to see the limits of your bridge
If I add a single block to this, it’ll collapse. So it’s clear I’ve hit a limit that can only be fixed through editing the tiers of metal supports.
Also in addition building in rain is hard, and sometimes will cause a collapse, though it’s often rare
Finally, measurements and counting; Boring stuff yeah? Well it’s important you might accidentally make a bridge too short!
Heres an example of one of my failed attempts, it was only 48 blocks long…
The final countdown!
So you’ve made about fifty attempts, and have about twenty saves of all various points of progress but after several hours, you managed to get the two halves to almost touch! Only a few blocks left and it seems victory is in sight. But sadly it isn’t as this is the most difficult and frustrating part!
There’s not exactly much advice that I can give you as to what to do when this happens, just keep fiddling around with it until you can get the two halves one block apart.
Afterwards: So now that the bridge is one block apart everything seems great, and that is because it is. Now just quickly place the remaining part between the two bridges and…
You did it… Ish… It collapsed immediately after very likely
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
Even if it collapses you will still get the achievement.. Unless.. It wasn’t 50 blocks long! Well rinse and repeat? Anyway, it’s very difficult to get the bridge to actually stay together for more then a few seconds, but don’t feel bad. You got the achievement!
Celebration (Also contains spoilers, be warned!)
Well you got the achievement..but how do you celebrate this wonderful occasion? Well you could go for the 70 block tower achievement
But.. I mean.. you’ve had enough already right? Don’t kill yourself with that one… (It requires like 200 of each kind of block)
So what else is there to do? Perhaps you should..
KILL WHAT IS NOT LIVING!
Or have a swim :3
Whatever you do is up to you!
End
Thanks for reading my guide and I hope this at least helped you.. Or perhaps made you laugh?
If you liked this guide I may make a guide for the 70 block tower challenge… Entirely up to you!
Credit!
Author : Me
Director : Me
Spellchecker : Me
Screenshots : Me