How to Deconstruct structures in Nightingale – move, and destroy buildings

When planning out your perfect base, knowing how to deconstruct and remove structures in Nightingale will be helpful to your planning and expansion.

Setting up a base is fine and easy, but what happens if you build something in the wrong place? Do you get to keep the resources if you scrap them? We’ll explore all the woes and joys of how to do this further down.

For more Nightingale, read our guides covering how to farm Essence and everything about Augmentations. Now, let’s look at Nightingale deconstructing and removing structures.

How to move and deconstruct structures in Nightingale

There are two ways to deconstruct and move structures in Nightingale. The option you get to choose depends on whether you’ve simply placed the blueprint for where you want something to go or if you’ve used the materials to build the structure and you can interact with it.

If you have a template of a structure placed somewhere – indicated by it being see-through – you can go up to it and hold down E to bring up a radial menu. Within this menu, there is an option to ‘Deconstruct’. You can only select this on structures you haven’t fully built by placing all the materials to make it.

Within the same menu, you can choose to Move or Copy the structure you’ve selected. This lets you change where you want to build it and place several blueprints of it at once respectively. If you choose to deconstruct a building you’ve not yet made, any resources you put into it will be dropped on the floor.

If you have a structure you’ve fully built – not simply an outline of a structure – the process is a little different. Go up to the structure and press the X key, this will show controls at the bottom of the screen. While near the structure, you can Move, Copy, and Remove.

Selecting Remove on a built structure will destroy it and dump the materials you used on the ground. You can also hit a built structure to reduce its HP to zero and this will destroy it. Hitting it until it breaks will not give you the materials back, so bear this in mind.

Likewise, Move and Copy lets you customise its position and lets you place down the blueprints for another structure without fiddling through the menu. These options are incredibly useful for customising a base you’ve already laid out, meaning you don’t have to break everything to get it looking nice.

That’s it for how to deconstruct and remove structures in Nightingale. For more, read our guides covering how to get started in multiplayer and how to toggle third-person view mode.

Nightingale deconstruct and move FAQs

Do I lose resources from deconstructing?

Nope, the only way you can lose the items you’ve used to build something is if you destroy it by hitting it instead of doing so through the menu.

How do I remove a placed blueprint?

Go up to the structure and hold down E to bring up a radial menu. Select ‘Deconstruct’ to remove the planned placement.