Home » Walkthroughs » Nightingale: How to move or remove Estate Cairns and other structures

Nightingale: How to move or remove Estate Cairns and other structures

Nightingale Guide

• A Nightingale beginner's guide for getting started in the Fae Realms
• Cooking and sleeping to manage hunger and stamina
• Multiplayer options for playing in private and public parties
• How to move or remove Estate Cairns and other structures
• Realm Cards explained - How to find and use them
• How to upgrade your carrying capacity
• Gear Score - What is it and how do you increase yours?

We’ve all been there in survival games. Thinking we’ve got everything figured out before promptly realising everything needs to be torn down. Nightingale does a somewhat poor job of telling you how to move things like Estate Cairns, crafting benches, or Bed Rolls. That’s why Into Indie Games is here to help.

Enter build mode

When you create a structure you will access build mode by pressing ‘B’ on the keyboard. However, that requires you to select and move around the silhouette of a structure. Once placed another appears once you’ve chosen your initial spot.

When you want to modify what you have, that isn’t ideal. So, once you’ve chosen somewhere, exit that menu and hit ‘X’ to open build mode. Now you won’t have another silhouette floating around and getting in the way. You will know you’ve done this correctly if your on-hand items in the bottom middle of the screen are replaced with a new set of options, including Copy, Move, and Remove. It also lets you know your structure limits, if that’s something you’re interested in.

From there, all you have to do is approach the Estate Cairn – or other structure – you want to move and press ‘R’. A silhouette of your structure will appear so you can move it to a new home. 

There are two other handy options available in build mode. If you want to copy something, you can hit ‘Q’, which is useful for mass placement of things like storage boxes. Alternatively, you can press ‘V’ to demolish a structure you no longer need. Alas poor Campfire, I knew it well.

Unfinished structures get a radial menu

When you choose a place for a new structure to go, it creates a silhouette of it on the ground. This allows you to add materials whenever you have any spare. Before being built, you’re free to use the controls above to move or remove the structure before the poor thing has a chance to be real.

However, you can also hold ‘E’ next to it to bring up a radial menu. It gives you the same options in terms of Copying, Moving, or Removing the structure, so I’m not entirely sure why it exists. But, hey, perhaps you love a radial menu. I won’t judge you, I have fond memories of the one in BioShock. 

Don’t demolish your structures with weapons

Everything you make has a health bar in Nightingale. So it might be tempting to take a Maul to anything you’ve built and no longer require. And, while it’s inarguably more fun than going into the building menu, you will get back less of the materials initially used. Whereas if you Remove something using build mode, you get back everything. Less fun, yes, but far more sensible. However, it is worth doing with existing structures if you don’t need them. At that point, it’s just free resources.

Why would I move my Estate Cairn in Nightingale?

An Estate Cairn is a key structure in Nightingale. They act as a respawn point when you die – if you perish in that Realm – or a Fast Travel location, which you can return to any time by pulling up the Map – ‘M’ on the keyboard – and clicking ‘Travel to Respite’.

The catch is you can only have one Estate Cairn active at a time and they must be in an Abeyance Realm. So, there’s a very good chance you will want to set it up at your main base of operations. However, as you visit other Realms or simply explore the one you started in, you might find that your Estate Cairn would work better somewhere else.

Now, you have a few options here. You can build more than one Estate Cairn. It’s just that only one can be active at a time. So you can dot them around the place and activate them as your Respite point whenever necessary. Alternatively, you could remove your Estate Cairn using build mode to guarantee you have the materials to create a new one. It saves you from rummaging around for Rocks over and over.

And that’s everything worth knowing about moving and removing structures like the Estate Cairn in Nightingale. Whether you want to plonk your Estate Cairn somewhere else or move your Bed Roll into a more sheltered location, you now know! Nightingale is available now on Steam where it’s in Early Access. Alternatively, if you’re looking for more help, check out our Nightingale cooking guide.