Part of the Base Building series:

Base Building Guide Hub: Start here.

Base Building Guide for Beginners: Place your first base.

Quick Answer

Most base building parts are locked until you buy them at the Construction Research Station aboard the Space Anomaly, paying in Salvaged Data.
Salvaged Data comes from buried technology modules: mounds of ground detected with your Analysis Visor (ideally with the Survey Device upgrade) and dug out with the Terrain Manipulator.
Unlocks are permanent for that save file and cost no nanites or units, only Salvaged Data.
A handful of parts arrive through story and mission progress instead, including the Base Computer, specialist terminals from Overseer missions, and Exocraft geobays.
Recommended order: basic structure sets → power and wiring → storage and teleporter → advanced glass, alloy, and decorative sets → automation (refiners, extractors, supply depots).
Build-part blueprints are not the same as crafted-technology blueprints. Ship, multi-tool, and exosuit tech comes from nanites, Manufacturing Facilities, and Operations Centres.
Crashed freighter debris fields are the densest Salvaged Data source in the game. One site can cover several unlock tiers.

Overview

Fresh saves start with a thin build menu: a base computer, a few cuboid rooms, some wooden parts, and not much else. Everything that makes a base worth living in, prefab rooms, glass corridors, power infrastructure, refiners, and the entire decorative catalogue, sits behind a paywall denominated in Salvaged Data. The currency is deliberately cheap to earn and tedious to earn in bulk, so the real skill is deciding what to buy first.

The system is centralised. Rather than hunting individual blueprints across the galaxy, you visit one terminal on the Space Anomaly and work through grouped tabs of parts. Purchases are permanent and carry across every base on that save, which makes early spending low-risk but still worth sequencing properly. A base without power or storage is a diorama.

Where Base Blueprints Actually Unlock

The Construction Research Station

Summon the Space Anomaly from your quick menu anywhere in space, dock, and head into the main hall. The Construction Research Station sits alongside the other research and upgrade terminals. Interacting with it opens a grid of base parts sorted into groups: structures, power, lighting, furniture, decoration, technology, and so on.

Each entry shows its Salvaged Data cost. Confirm the purchase and the part appears in your build menu immediately, on every base you own. There is no research timer and no way to refund a purchase, so browse the whole list once before spending.

Some groups unlock in sequence: buying the first entries in a category reveals later, pricier entries in the same family. The cheap starter parts in each tab are worth clearing early even if you have no immediate use for them.

The Blueprint Analyser

If you would rather not fly back to the Anomaly every time you accumulate a stack of data, build a Blueprint Analyser in your own base. It performs the same function, converting Salvaged Data into base building blueprints from a terminal you own. Practical for anyone doing long planetside sessions.

Story and Mission Unlocks

Not everything is purchasable. Several parts arrive as mission rewards:

The Base Computer and the first construction tutorials come from early story progression.
Specialist terminals (Construction, Farming, Science, Weapons, Exocraft) unlock by recruiting NPCs and completing their mission chains, starting with the Overseer.
Exocraft geobays come through the Overseer's build requests rather than the Anomaly.
Freighter-specific rooms and expedition-exclusive decorations follow their own tracks.

If a part refuses to appear at the Construction Research Station, it is almost always gated behind a mission rather than missing from your save.

Farming Salvaged Data

Salvaged Data is extracted from buried technology, small caches sunk a metre or two under the surface on almost any planet.

The basic loop:

Equip the Analysis Visor and scan. Buried technology shows as a dedicated icon with a distance readout.
Walk to the marker. The icon sits directly above the cache.
Switch to your Terrain Manipulator and dig straight down until the container is exposed.
Interact to collect the Salvaged Data inside.

The Survey Device upgrade for the Analysis Visor, bought from Iteration: Eos on the Space Anomaly for nanites, transforms this. It adds a directional scanning mode that points you at the nearest buried technology continuously, turning a random walk into a straight line. Install it before any serious farming run.

Best locations:

Crashed freighter sites are the single best source. Each debris field is littered with buried technology in a tight radius, letting you clear dozens of caches without flying anywhere. Locate them with a Cargo Drop Emergency Signal Locator or by scanning from low altitude.
Flat, open terrain beats mountains and forests. Less digging, better visibility, fewer obstacles between markers.
Dead or barren planets are ideal since there is nothing shooting at you while you dig.

Bring extra Deuterium or Di-hydrogen for Terrain Manipulator fuel. For a deeper breakdown of routes and yields, see the Salvaged Data farming guide.

Unlock Priority Table

Unlock group	Source	Priority
Base Computer, starter cuboid and wooden parts	Story progression	Automatic
Prefab structures (cylindrical rooms, corridors, viewports, doors, ladders)	Construction Research Station	1 - Highest
Power and wiring (solar panels, batteries, biofuel reactor, electrical wiring)	Construction Research Station	2 - High
Storage containers and Teleport Chamber	Construction Research Station	3 - High
Electromagnetic generator and Survey Device support	Construction Research Station + nanite purchase	4 - Medium-high
Advanced sets (glass, alloy, timber, stone, large prefab halls)	Construction Research Station	5 - Medium
Decorative, lighting, furniture, posters, paint	Construction Research Station	6 - Low
Automation (refiners, hydroponics trays, mineral and gas extractors, supply depots)	Construction Research Station	7 - Situational but high value
Specialist terminals and Exocraft geobays	Overseer and NPC missions	Mission-gated

The Order That Actually Works

1. Basic Structure First

Buy the prefab structure family before anything else. Cylindrical rooms, corridors, and doors give you a sealed, hazard-proof shelter that also conducts power internally, which saves you hundreds of wire segments later. Everything else you unlock has to be housed somewhere.

Wooden and metal building sets are cheap and flexible, but prefabs are faster to place and snap together cleanly. Get both eventually; get prefabs now.

2. Power and Wiring

Nothing beyond lights and doors works without a grid. Solar panels, a battery, and electrical wiring form the minimum viable setup, and wiring itself costs no resources to place. Unlock the biofuel reactor only as a stopgap. The electromagnetic generator is the real target once you can find power hotspots. Our base power and wiring guide covers output rates and grid layout in detail.

3. Storage and Transport

Storage containers solve the inventory crunch that defines the early game, and the Teleport Chamber ties your base into the station and Anomaly network. Both pay for themselves within an hour of play.

4. Advanced and Decorative Sets

Glass, alloy, and large prefab pieces are where bases stop looking like starter shacks. These are also the most expensive tiers, so they belong after your base is functional. Decorative items, lighting, and furniture are pure aesthetics with zero mechanical benefit. Fun, but last.

5. Automation

Refiners, hydroponic trays, mineral extractors, gas extractors, and supply depots turn a base into an income engine. They demand serious power, which is why they sit behind the power tier. Once running, they generate resources while you are offline. See the extractors and industrial power guide for sizing a grid around them.

Build Parts vs Crafted Technology

Two blueprint systems run in parallel and they are easy to confuse.

Build-part blueprints are unlocked with Salvaged Data at the Construction Research Station or Blueprint Analyser. They appear in the build menu, are placed in the world, and are constructed from raw or refined resources such as Ferrite Dust, Carbon, Chromatic Metal, and Glass. They cannot be installed in your ship, exosuit, or multi-tool.

Crafted-technology blueprints cover ship engines, multi-tool weapons, exosuit upgrades, and portable devices. Those come from Manufacturing Facility and Operations Centre puzzle rewards, nanite purchases at space station technology merchants, and the Anomaly's Iteration terminals. Salvaged Data buys none of them.

The overlap that trips people up: base-placed technology like refiners and extractors uses Salvaged Data (build parts), while the portable refiner in your inventory is crafted technology. If you are unclear on the resource side of either, the crafting and refining basics guide explains the material chains.

FAQ

How much Salvaged Data does a full unlock take?

Costs scale by tier, with cheap starter parts and much steeper prices for advanced structural sets and automation. Clearing the entire catalogue is a long-term project measured in hundreds of caches. Prioritising by the order above gets you a fully functional base for a small fraction of that.

Is Salvaged Data the same as a Salvaged Frigate Module?

No. Salvaged Frigate Modules are used to upgrade freighter rooms and frigates, and they come from derelict freighters and frigate expeditions. Salvaged Data only buys base building blueprints. The similar names cause a lot of wasted searching.

Do my unlocks carry over to a new save or a new galaxy?

Blueprints are tied to the save file, not the account, so a fresh save starts from scratch. Travelling to a new galaxy within the same save keeps everything.

Can I get Salvaged Data without digging?

Digging buried technology is the primary and most reliable route. Small quantities also turn up in expedition milestone rewards and occasional container loot, but no farming method comes close to a crashed freighter debris field.

Why is a part greyed out even though I have enough Salvaged Data?

Either it belongs to a group whose earlier entries you have not purchased yet, or it is mission-gated. Buy the preceding parts in that category first, and check whether an Overseer or story mission covers it.

Key Takeaways

Treat Salvaged Data as a budget, not a collectible. Spending it on decoration before power is the single most common early mistake, and the parts are non-refundable.
One good crashed freighter site with the Survey Device installed outperforms hours of opportunistic digging. Farm in concentrated bursts rather than picking up caches as you travel.
Structure, power, storage, then everything else. A base that cannot keep the lights on or hold your inventory is not a base yet.
Automation tiers are worth saving for, but only after the grid exists. Unlocking extractors with no electromagnetic generator to feed them leaves expensive parts sitting idle.
If a blueprint is missing from the Construction Research Station, stop farming and check your mission log. Overseer chains and story steps gate a meaningful slice of the catalogue and no amount of Salvaged Data substitutes for them.
Build the Blueprint Analyser once you have a settled base. Removing the round trip to the Anomaly makes incremental spending far more likely to happen.

No Man's Sky Base Blueprints Guide: Unlocking Build Parts with Salvaged Data