Nightingale: How to destroy placed structures

Not every building you construct in Nightingale will go in just the right spot. Sometimes, you put it down and then realize it shouldn’t go there, or you want to make everything fit together perfectly and need to destroy a placed structure.

There are a few ways you can do this, even before you officially build it. I struggled with this when I first set up my base and scratched my head a few times about what I should be doing when I wanted to tear everything down. Thankfully, there are quick ways you can reorganize your base to make sure everything is exactly where you want it. Here’s what you need to know about destroying placed structures in Nightingale.

How to remove your placed structures in Nightingale

There are two ways you remove a placed structure in Nightingale. One of them is certainly more aggressive than the other.

The first is when you still have it in its highlighted form and have yet to put resources in. The second is if it’s already placed, which means you’ll be forced to destroy it to make room for other objects.

1) Delete a structure before it’s done

For the first, while a structure still has its outline, approach it and find the menu where you give it the required resources. The way you locate this icon might vary, especially on larger structures. For example, the Stick Tent had me at the front of it, and I had to look directly at the middle for the menu to pop up. At the very least, it was easier than splitting item stacks.

When you find this icon, instead of filling it with the resources, click and hold the E button on your keyboard, and you should bring up a new menu. One of these choices is to deconstruct the structure. The highlight of the in-progress building goes away, and you can place it somewhere else. Granted, you can ignore the highlight, but it never goes away, and it might look strange if there’s a highlighted structure overlapping a finished one. I know the visual bothers me, and it does for my friends during multiplayer games too.

2) Delete a structure after it’s been built

The second method to remove an already created structure is simply to destroy it. You can chop away at the structure with your axe and a health bar appears. When it hits zero, the structure is destroyed and the resources fall to the ground.

Thankfully, destroying the building won’t remove resources, making it much easier to move workbenches or chests you create around your Nightingale camp.