To make a drawbridge, you must specify a direction for it to raise. If a bridge is built outside over a channel, anything under the bridge counts as inside for the purpose of preventing cave adaptation (but not for the 'stay inside' order), regardless of whether or not the bridge is actually covering the area. Conveniently, the materials used to construct the floor will be left on top of the bridge, rather than being dropped down below it. Interestingly, building a bridge over a constructed floor will allow dwarves to deconstruct the floor through the bridge without disrupting the path across said floor (especially if the floor is being used to bridge an area). The game will allow the structure to be placed, but as soon as it is built, a cave-in occurs and the unfortunate dwarf constructing it falls to his death ( bug 000436). However, the same cannot be said of other structures such as floors. Unlike raising bridges, which require an area of solid ground, retractable bridges can be built using existing bridges as their sole means of support. The material required for a bridge is less than the material required for building an equivalent area of floor tiles (1 + area/4, rounded down), and when a bridge is deconstructed the materials are deposited on the ground next to where the bridge stood rather than falling down into the open space it spanned. A bridge will require both architecture and masonry (or carpentry or metalsmithing if wood or metal is used) to complete. You'll need to change the size to suit your needs with the k, h, u, and m keys the bridge's dimensions can be set anywhere up to 10 tiles on a side ( including an anchoring tile at one end on solid ground or other constructions). Bridges are built from the build menu, under brid ge.Ī bridge defaults to a single tile in size. A bridge is a building (not a construction) that spans multiple tiles allowing dwarves to go across water, magma, and other obstructions.

Dwarf fortress bridge length