No Man's Sky: A COMPREHENSIVE PRIMER BY SAMPRIMARY.

[Sky]

The alt-fire on it builds terrain, but it's limited to spheres and cubes...and the cubes are, ehm, special. Like sometimes they snap to each other, sometimes they don't. If you put a slab of ground down, it's lumpy. If you alt mode and remove it, it doesn't remove cleanly. If you try to fill it in again, it gets lumpier. So yeah.

I plan on keeping dumpster base for a long time, though. With the teleporter from any space station, it works well enough. Getting tired of working on it on my early planet, though.

[Reg]

Thanks for to terrain manipulater tips. You're right, it's total garbage but at least now I can fill in deep holes and let the structures flatten it out. Those damned access ramps are still driving me crazy though.

My last visit to an Atlas station told me that I was almost at the end. I have no idea what happens after that. Polo and Nada are expecting me to spend 20 days on extreme planets and at the rate I'm going it could take months. In the meantime my third quest has been nagging at me to get off my butt and reset the universe already. I refuse to do that while I still have a dozen sidequests wanting me to photograph an underwater creature dammit.

[Reg]

If anyone's still playing, I figured out a good way to flatten the land without using the terrain manipulator. Just place a wooden floor at the level you want to build your base. They flatten things beautifully and you can recover the old floor for free so you can do it until you have the area you want  at the level you like. For filling in holes the terrain manipulator is handy but inevitably you'll raise it a little too high and the floor trick can flatten it back down.

[Sky]

Ah, good idea!

[Jeff Kelly]

I wish the base building wasn't so half-assed.

Building something that doesn't look like it was smashed together by a hyperactive toddler is almost impossible. No grids, no alignment tools no way to work with terrain except that weird manipulator.

I like my bases neat and structured and aligned on a grid with meticulous precision (that's my German-ness) and NMS drives me up the wall.

[DevilsAdvocate25]

I realized last night that suit expansion can be purchased in what appears to be every space station. There is always the side of the station with three vendors: suit, ship, tool. The suit guy sells prints and upgrades, but right behind him is a floating backpack. Click and pay.

You can do this once per space station.

Also, if you check the tool guy, right next to him is a fold out that offers a tool for sale in every space station. Nothing from the ship guy though.

There is a guild rep in every space station that will give you free stuff once per space station as well. Usually just credits.

[Yegolev]

I thought that the found blueprints had been removed but turns out they are in the sealed factories where you anger the sentinels when you blast through the door.  I had been avoiding those buildings.