I played for a few minutes today and got the habitat builder. However, I have no complete blueprints for even a multipurpose room or any other room. I presume those are the default type rooms to begin with.
As I recall, resources don’t respawn (unless they come from fish/plants) so once you pick up a lump of copper, it’s yours and won’t reappear in a few days like in many other games. So the ability to reuse resources by breaking things down is quite helpful.
An extremely minor spoiler, and a bigger spoiler. You can avoid the minor spoiler just by futzing around with the habitat builder and seeing what you can do.
Extremely Minor:
When you first start building, you can build a base that’s nothing but corridors, and it’s good enough to get started with. It’ll be cramped, but solve your storage problems.
Significant spoiler:
There are a couple of islands that you can swim to. The multipurpose room can be scanned on one of those.
Yeah, I remember that bit. I just can’t help but think my little swimmer dude should be smart enough to just MacGyver an improvised spear chucker with all the resources available, blueprints or not. Or at the very least, stick that very useful knife on a long titanium shaft giving me a bit more range as I thrash wildly and ineffectually.
…or maybe I’m just used to being able to murder-hobo my way through most games and am having a bit of time adapting…
And a later game note about base construction:
Once you make your full-sized sub, you can build some of the base parts inside it - like battery or power cell chargers, a radio (for plot developments), a fabricator, a plant bed for food for long expeditions, and most especially storage closets.
It’s definitely an adaptation, but it’s one of my favorite things about the game, that it’s very rarely the right approach to be aggro.
That said, losing my shit with the occasional mid-sized predator and stabbing it to death with my chef’s knife was pretty therapeutic.
My son and I just had a huge “whaaaaat???” moment.
I told him I would try to swim out to where our rescue ship(Sunbeam?) is going to arrive and explore the waters in that area.
Shimmering in the distance was a full-blown island. We could not believe it. I screenshotted it before we got to it. We got to it and found a full-blown base/lab type building. I scanned a purple tablet to create and found out that diamonds and ion cubes are a thing.
I currently have it paused with 1 minute in the countdown timer so my daughter(who is facetiming a friend) can come and watch the final minute tickdown. No, none of us believe the ship will actually successfully land and rescue us…
OK, we watched our rescue come.
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I knew they wouldn’t actually arrive. I mean, come on.
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My son was the one who said, “The building is moving!” It took me a moment to realize…he’s right, the building is like a laser gun.
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I could not resist taking a picture when the ship blew up. And is it bad that I yelled to me kids, “Watch where its debris goes! We might be able to get stuff from it!”?
Kids loved it. I dove a bit in the water, but a very aggressive animal attacked us. Like, it almost came on land to kill us.
One of the things they patched in during early access was, if you progressed through the plot quickly enough, you could turn off the cannon, and save the Sunbeam. They still don’t land, though.
I was worried you were gonna get spoiled about the island and/or the Sunbeam. Sounds like you got those moments exactly as intended!
I am guessing they have made it impossible to get a purple tablet to enter the facility before that moment. I found the broken one before the gun went off, but it requires ion cubes and diamonds. I just found 1 diamond, have zero ion cubes.
I’m sure you’ll find another one somewhere. 
Oh, no doubt. I have found most things.
I think we will head out to Lifepod 17 at this point. They sent a “snake attacked us by a cave” message a long time ago.
I should probably go salvage their stuff…I mean, see if they are OK.
Spoiler, they’re alive, and you’re gonna become besties with them! Part two of the game is 100% yacht parties.
I did just get there and got their datalog. I also went into the cave nearby and drowned due to my own incompetence of not knowing how to get out. One of my few actual deaths in the game so far. Lost some stuff(almost all the gems/resources I collected).
Anyway, I have some thoughts about what to do past this point. Deep sea exploration in some new areas.
Got a weird alien translation message as well. Both my kids thought it was creepy.
I feel a bit like I have hit a small wall of progression:
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I have blueprints for SeaMoth plans and have all the ingredients to make one. I can’t and saw online I have to get a Mobile Base room to make it or store it. I do NOT have those blueprints. Online says in Kelp forest on the floor is a plan, but I have not see one.
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I would like a battery recharger(I have a one room base). I have never seen a recharger plan and my batteries are running low. I made more to swap out…
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I’m so weak to damage. Even those little floater guys that guard the sulfur plants kill me if there are a bunch of them. I’d like to be able to “go deeper”, but often find that either I get lost(is that pathfinder thing worth it?) or am so weak even minor things kill me.
I haven’t received a radio message in a bit. I think the game expects me to progress some. I think the SeaMoth would help go deeper. I have a re-breather.
The weakness is just a thing in the game, unfortunately. You’ll eventually get around it, but you’ll not get much stronger. Your battle cry should be “RETREAT!”
I occasionally used the Pathfinder; try it out to see if you like it!
At the point you’re at, making extra batteries is pretty standard. FWIW, later on, you’ll have a use for your excess batteries.
Definitely hunt for the Mobile Vehicle Bay plans. That’s an excellent next move!
One other very non-spoilery bit of advice: check out every single tool/equipment you’re allowed to build right now, and work on getting them all made. Some of them will let you progress further.
Nope - you can actually get through all that - the trick is never fixing or listening to the radio before you’re cured. If the timer has started, it’ll get shot down, even if you’ve turned off the gun, because bugs.
The rest of the escape plot continues as normal.
The good news is, if you can figure out where you drowned, the stuff will all still be there (well…directly below, because gravity)
Also, you can carry multiple air tanks, and swap them out as necessary - you do have to charge them individually, and it takes a lot of inventory space.