Dig Station Idle Clicker Game Guide & Walkthrough

Dig Station Guide

Dig Station is a short but fun Idle/Clicker game that has a proper ending (unlike most) and almost no push for advertising and no IAP. It’s also got a lovely, grim atmosphere and fittingly gritty pixel art. You’ll likely be done with it in a few days at the very most, but it’s a fun break.

Note this guide is for App Version 8, there are many resources out there for older versions of the game.

In Dig Station you take the role of a small drilling drone sent to an alien planet. Falling deep into the ocean, you must drill up all the Resources you can to augment your production capacity and go on Adventures™!

Here you’ll find a brief walkthrough of the main mechanics and how to make the most of what the game gives you. As always, feel free to comment with any questions!

Game Info

Platform: Android
Developer: C6H6
Price: Free with optional ads
Genre: Idle/Clicker
Length: Short (hours to days)

Dig Unit

The Dig Unit is where most of the game is played, and Machines gather Resources for you every second. Each Machine displays it’s per-second Earning rate, and Resources are all generated per-second rather than by tapping like in many other games.

Resources are only generated while the app is open. For this reason it can help a lot to leave the game open on your phone while doing something else and check in every 5-20 minutes depending on how long before your next Resource goal.

Machines

For lack of an ingame term, Machines are your income producers, and they all (as of the latest update) generate materials idly instead of by clicking a lot. Instead you’ll be spending your clicks upgrading machines.

Generally speaking each Machine should be upgraded as many times as possible once first unlocked. Since each Machine is much better than the last, you should also stop upgrading older Machines as soon as a new one is unlocked. If upgrades are too expensive on the latest machine it’s fine to upgrade the second best machine sometimes.

As you unlock Machines you’ll unlock more of the game in three stages: Rank 1, where you only have the Drill, Rank 2 where you have more earning options, and Rank 3 where you unlock the Reactor and many more earning options.

Each Machine has a base cost and base earning rate. Upgrade Cost usually starts at around 10% of Base Cost and increases a bit each upgrade. This means early upgrades are significantly more effective and later upgrades deliver diminishing returns.

Higher level Machines have higher Upgrade costs relative to their Base Cost, but they’re still worth upgrading and beat lower level Machines in efficiency. A Good trick is to upgrade lower Machines until you notice your resource count actually going down. If your earning rate per second is higher than the cost of the upgrade it’s pretty much always worth it.

Earning rate is simpler, and increases by the base rate every level.

  • Rank 1
    • Machines:
      • Core Drill
        • Cost: 30
        • Rate: 2
  • Rank 2
    • Cost: 2,000. Level 25 Core Drill should be able to do it. Unlocks Multiplier.
    • Machines:
      • Outer Casing
        • Cost: 3,000
        • Rate: 15
      • Hydraulics
        • Cost: 9,000
        • Rate: 30
      • Pilars
        • Cost: 60,000
        • Rate: 75
  • Rank 3
    • Cost: 300,000. Unlocks the Reactor and Overdriver too.
    • Machines:
      • Manipulators
        • Cost: 300,000
        • Rate: 200
      • Servos
        • Cost: 1,000,000
        • Rate: 444
      • Smeltery
        • Cost: 10,000,000
        • Rate: (?)
      • Fuel Refiner
        • Cost: 200,000,000
        • Rate: 33,333 Resources
      • Electronics
        • Cost: 1,000,000,000
          • Electronics’ upgrade cost is 10x higher than most Machines upgrade cost
        • Rate: (?)

Make sure you spend your first billion Resources on Electronics, not upgrading the Reactor; this will help you get future upgrades faster.

The total of all your Machines’ Dig Rate is shown at the top of the Dig Unit menu at the top of the icon grid of Machines.

Multiplier

After unlocking Rank 2 Machines you’ll get access to the Multiplier, which permanently multiplies the Resources your Machines earn.

Multiplier adds a multiplication factor of 0.01 every level, and costs just a couple taps to start with. Every level adds 2 taps, so by level 100 it’s hundreds of taps per level.

Tapping with two fingers alternating works best; it won’t register multitouch and too fast of taps will actually register as less taps.

The Multiplier has no max level that I could find (with an autoclicker I racked up a 10x multiplier at level 999!), in practice your fingers will probably melt before you go much beyond 2x. I’d make sure you upgrade to at least 1.25 to 1.5x since it adds up and the early upgrades are the quickest.

Overdriver

After unlocking Rank 3 Machines you’ll get the Overdriver.

The Overdriver is a simple maximum x2 multiplier on top of the Multipler’s bonus. There’s no upgrading the Overdriver, only charging it, 2 is always the max.

Tap the square to increase the Overdriver factor, and you can keep tapping after it’s hit 2x to extend the duration by a few moments each tap. If you’re merely waiting for the Resources count to hit a certain value it’s a good idea to tap on the Overdriver until you hit it just to speed things along.

Your total multiplication factor (Overdriver x Multiplier) is shown on the main Dig Unit page in the middle right over the Multiplier icon. You can see your Dig Rate after factoring in the multipliers at the bottom where it says Total Dig rate.

As with Multiplier, tapping works best with two alternating fingers.

Reactor

The real goal of the game is to fuel the Reactor, which costs 300,000 Resources after unlocking Rank 2 Machines.

Reactor energy doesn’t affect the Machines or Resources at all, but getting 42 Energy is necessary to beat the game. Resources help you make Energy, not the other way around.

Neither the Multiplier nor Overdriver affect the Reactor.

Reactor Cores

To fuel the Reactor there are three Cores. All three Cores provide the same amount of energy per second, and ideally you’ll want all active at all times to fuel the Reactor as fast as possible.

The first Reactor is reactivated by tapping 100 times, the second by tapping 100 times or watching an ad, and the third is only activated by watching an ad. They all drain and must be reactivated after the same amount of time.

Upgrading the Reactor

When the Reactor is full you’ll get a seemingly cryptic message: “Random.Range (lvl/2,lvl)”. What that means is you’ll get a random amount of Energy from a range between your current level and one half of your current level. So if the creator is level 10 you’ll get between 5 and 10 units of energy.

You can beat the game without upgrading the Reactor at all, but it’ll be slower and there’s no real reason to avoid it.

To upgrade your reactor you’ll need to spend an (initially) eye-watering 1 billion Resources, with the cost increasing linearly by about 1 billion each time. You’ll probably be able to get it to level 10-20 before getting all the energy to beat the game. You’ll want Electronics before you start upgrading the Reactor to speed up the upgrades a lot.

Adventures

Once the Reactor generates 42 units of Energy, you can go on Adventures. Merely tap the button 300 times for…adventure. Enjoy the ending!

And yep, that’s it, Dig Station has a definitive ending and no “prestige”, but from the developer’s Twitter it sounds like Dig Station 2 might be on the way. If you need something else to play, check out the other Idle Games I have guides for!

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Author: SerTapTap

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