It takes a lot of equipment to maintain a giant mobile base on an exoplanet that’s hostile to human life. In The Alters, you have to keep all of that gear in good working order by yourself (and yourself, and yourself, and yourself). When resources get tight, you may find that you have to go without some items to make sure that other, mission-critical materiel is always available.
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The game offers a lot of different things to craft, and you need to be smart about what you build. Always start by making sure you have plenty of these essentials.
Use Uphold Production to set your minimum stock to the quantities recommended below, and the game will automatically queue up crafting to make sure you stay at that level.
Mining Outposts
Recommended Stock: 1
Mining Outposts are your main way of getting resources in the large quantities you’ll need in order to complete your mission. From drilling for Organics to fuel the Base to extracting Rapidium for transport back to Earth, you’ll need to deploy and operate these modular machines all over the map.
Mining Outposts aren’t very expensive, but they take up a fair amount of space in storage, so you don’t want to have too many cluttering up your inventory. Have one at the ready so that you can easily exploit any deep deposits that you find, then start work on another one while you search for the next.
You can also pack and redeploy Mining Outposts instead of crafting new ones, saving resources at the expense of time.
At the end of each Act, you’ll have the opportunity to automatically retrieve as many Outposts and Pylons as you can fit in storage. Grab what you can, but don’t go building extra storage to take absolutely everything with you; the extra rooms will add mass to the Base, potentially causing you to need more fuel before you can leave, slowing your overall progress.
Drill Cartridges
Recommended Stock: 2
The Vertara Drill uses these disposable cartridges to melt rocks blocking your path while exploring, making them necessary to reach every part of the map. Like Mining Outposts, you don’t need to have many on hand at once; unlike Mining Outposts, you can’t recycle them, so once you use one you should move the replacement up the queue so that you aren’t stuck waiting around if you run into more boulders.
Raw Food
Recommended Stock: 2 Per Character
The Greenhouse lets you convert Organics into Raw Food, which you can then craft into Cooked Meals in the Kitchen. As tempting as it might be to move the crew’s diet entirely to delicious, home-grown veggies, that’s too expensive and resource-intensive to be viable.
Instead, keep a small stock of Raw Food on-hand so that you can whip up a set of Cooked Meals for the crew on short notice. A few days of decent meals can do wonders for the Alters’ moods; save it for when they’re feeling particularly gloomy or rebellious.
Food is consumed at the start of each day, so try to anticipate when the Alters’ moods are getting sour and make the Cooked Meals before things get really ugly.
Pylon Components
Recommended Stock: 5
Pylon Components are crafted in packs of three, and different Pylon types require different amounts in order to build. If you need to construct additional Pylons, you can usually get away with just building the basic kind, which only cost one Component each.
Starting in Act 2, you may need to rely on the more expensive Travel Pylons and Hub Pylons, which cost more. Having a minimum stock of 5 Components means you’ll always be able to build whichever type you need in a hurry, though you’ll need to replenish your stock afterward.
Like Mining Outposts, Pylons can be retrieved and their Components returned to storage. If you disassemble an Outpost, it’s a good idea to grab any Pylons it was using as well so that they can be put to better use elsewhere.
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Suit Batteries
Recommended Stock: 1 Per Act
All of Jan’s tools are powered by his suit’s internal battery while he’s in the field. You can recharge the battery at Outposts and Travel Stations, but running back and forth wastes a lot of time. It’s much better to have spare batteries that you can swap out to refill on the go.
This is especially true once you get the Luminator midway through Act 1, which drains the battery faster than any other tool.
As the game’s challenges get more and more complex, you’ll find yourself using more and more of the suit’s power. You can research upgrades to enhance its overall capacity, but at the end of the day, the real solution is to carry more batteries. Try carrying spare batteries equal to the number of the Act you’re currently in, and you should be able to handle most situations without running dry too often.
Repair Kit
Recommended Stock: 2
Even with constant maintenance by the Technician, something with break inside the Base eventually. It’s not a matter of if, but of when. If a module malfunctions, either you or an Alter will need to use a Repair Kit and several hours of work to fix it.
If you don’t have a Repair Kit on hand, you’ll need to craft one before anything can be done about the malfunction. Having at least two in storage at all times means that you can always get straight to fixing things, and still have a spare in case something else breaks in the meantime (as is likely during crises like Magnetic Storms).
Mush
Recommended Stock: 2 Per Character
Everybody in the Base needs to eat, even if it’s just flavorless nutrient paste. Mush is crafted in the Kitchen from your precious supply of Organics, and it’s a necessity for keeping the crew fed.
Eating Mush doesn’t affect anyone’s mood (positively or negatively), but missing a meal altogether certainly does. Always have at least two days’ worth of food on hand for the entire crew; that way, there’s still an extra meal ready in case something goes wrong and cooking isn’t possible for a day.
Don’t forget that Jan Prime needs to eat, too, or he gets tired more easily.
Radiation Filters
Recommended Stock: 3
Nothing in The Alters will cause your problems to cascade quite like letting the Base’s radiation shield fail. Going without a Radiation Filter puts you at risk of getting the crew sick, rooms malfunctioning and failing, and general chaos getting unleashed at a rate that might be too fast for you to fix. You should not, under any circumstances, let that happen.
As soon as the game lets you, turn on auto-replacement for depleted Radiation Filters and never turn it off.
Under normal circumstances, one Radiation Filter lasts for 24 hours, but during a Magnetic Storm they burn out much faster. Having three in stock at all times means you have one for today, one for tomorrow, and a backup just in case.
During Radiation Storms, always check your stock of Radiation Shields before going to bed at the end of the day. If there isn’t at least one in storage to swap out overnight, stay up late to craft one, even if it means becoming Exhausted.
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