To bypass the raised drawbridge in Outbound, you cannot swim across; you must repair one of the broken side bridges located north or south of the main crossing. Fixing a single broken bridge requires exactly 10 Everwood Planks. You secure these by gathering 20 Everwood logs from the surrounding area, unlocking the Sawmill blueprint, building the station inside your camper van, and refining the raw logs into planks.
The Sawmill is Your Real Objective, Not the Bridge
Players hit the raised drawbridge in Outbound and often assume they missed a hidden lever or a secret path. You didn't. The drawbridge is a hard progression lock designed to force your first major mobile base upgrade. Outbound presents itself as a cozy camper road trip, but its core loop relies heavily on stationary resource refinement. You need exactly 10 Everwood Planks to fix a broken bridge. Since the conversion rate requires two logs per plank, you are hunting for a total of 20 raw Everwood logs.
The mistake most new players make is hoarding raw materials without processing them. Raw Everwood clutters your limited early-game inventory. By immediately focusing on unlocking the Sawmill blueprint and placing it inside your van, you compress your inventory footprint. The game uses this broken bridge sequence as a mandatory tutorial for mobile manufacturing. If you spend time wandering the riverbank looking for a swimming route, you are wasting daylight. Water traversal simply isn't an option here. You have to engage with the crafting economy. Build the Sawmill, dump the 20 logs in, and let the refinement process run.
The spatial puzzle of your camper van matters just as much as the resource gathering. When you build the Sawmill, you must place it strategically. You are living in a confined space. Dropping crafting stations haphazardly creates navigation friction every time you enter the vehicle to check on a queue. Treat the Sawmill as the anchor of your early-game industrial zone. This bridge repair sequence effectively acts as the game's gatekeeper, ensuring you understand how to convert raw forage into structural components before the map opens up. The developers use the broken bridges flanking the main drawbridge—found by driving slightly north or south—as a gentle nudge. You are learning that progress requires stopping, setting up a temporary camp, and running your machines.
Navigating the Everwood Economy and Next Steps
Once you cross the river, the resource demands scale up quickly. The 20 Everwood logs you gathered for this initial crossing are just a baseline. You face a choice between immediate progression and long-term preparation. You can craft exactly 10 planks, fix the bridge, and drive on. Or, you can stay parked near the dense Everwood spawns, chop a massive surplus, and pre-craft 30 or 40 planks. The asymmetry here is clear. Time spent over-preparing at this early bottleneck pays massive dividends later. Future van upgrades and tool unlocks—specifically the Axe and Pickaxe—will require refined materials. If you cross the bridge with an empty inventory, you will immediately hit another progression wall.
Drive your van directly to the densest cluster of trees near the broken bridge. Minimize the walking distance between the resource node and your Sawmill. Every second spent running back and forth is wasted efficiency. Load the Sawmill to its maximum queue. While it processes the Everwood Planks, scout the immediate perimeter for secondary resources. You are optimizing for uptime. The drawbridge lowering isn't just a scenic event. It marks the transition from the tutorial phase into the mid-game exploration loop.
The mechanics of the crossing itself also trick completionists. The main drawbridge is impassable from your starting side. Driving north or south reveals the broken wooden side bridges. Each side bridge operates as a distinct repair project requiring its own set of 10 planks. You only need to fix one to get your van across the water. Do not fix the second one. Repairing a second side bridge offers zero immediate progression value and drains your hard-earned material supply. Cross the first bridge you repair, loop back to the drawbridge mechanism on the opposite bank, and lower it permanently. This creates a centralized crossing point for future backtracking, rendering the side bridges completely obsolete. Conserve your refined materials for your camper.
The Final Takeaway
Do not stop gathering Everwood once you hit the 20 logs required for the initial bridge repair. Treat this first major roadblock as an excuse to stockpile refined planks. Over-crafting now ensures you won't have to halt your road trip later when the game demands advanced van upgrades, keeping your momentum steady as you explore deeper into the map.
