Master The Alters with our beginner tips and tricks guide. Learn about base building, resource management, crafting, and keeping your Alters happy to ensure your survival and escape.
There are a lot of moving parts in The Alters, from time management to resource gathering and crafting, each of which is crucial to your success. While the game does provide in-game tutorials, it is easy to become overwhelmed or get lost when trying to figure out what to do next.
Your main goal in The Alters is to escape the Sun before it rises, as you must evacuate the planet in time or you’ll burn to death from both the sun's rays and intense radiation. You will be given tasks to complete to successfully evacuate, but you have to manage your time wisely to complete each task without becoming exhausted.
The evacuation procedures are pretty straightforward – Refuel your base, manufacture the necessary equipment, and secure enough rations and food supplies to ensure a safe trip.
Let’s discuss some of the most crucial elements and features of the game to get you started on the right foot.
Base Building Tips
Base Building in The Alters is truly unique and a bit complicated when starting. You can access the base building menu by heading to the terminal within the ship's Command Center. You will see all of the available modules (Modules are just different compartments you can add to your base) to build within this menu and how many resources you must gather to be able to craft the new module.
Every module must be placed next to an existing one so you have access to it, and the game will not allow you to leave the base building menu until you have successfully placed each module in a proper position. Luckily, the areas where you can place a new module successfully will be highlighted in bright green lights, making it easy to construct your base. The issue lies in ensuring you have enough storage space to store materials and fuel, and ensuring that you are not adding too much mass to the base, or it will not be able to travel to the next objective.
You can move and edit the positioning of your modules at any time while within the Base Building menu by hovering over the module you’d like to move and pressing the LMB. You can then move it to the spot of choice and even swap module placement with another existing module. You can delete any module you’d like by hovering over it and pressing the RMB down instead, but certain modules cannot be moved or removed.
Base Mass
Each module you build makes your base heavier, which means you will need more Fuel (organics) to move the base. The cost of your journey to another timeline can exceed the capacity of your Organics Tank, and you will not be able to take a journey without the proper fuel capacity.
To fix this, you will need to not only upgrade your base's storage capacity but also increase the Organics Tank limit to ensure you can take the next journey through time and space. Finding a plethora of Organics isn’t always easy, and you will need to use your Scanner to locate the best deposits nearby, then connect them to your base with both a Mining Outpost and Pylons to streamline the fueling process.
Tiredness and Exhaustion
Everything you do in The Alters will use energy, whether it's making food or gathering resources. Energy runs out VERY quickly, and you must be careful with what you spend your energy on, a you have not only a limited time during the day to complete tasks, but limited days to complete tasks and successfully evacuate the planet. If you aren’t careful, you will end up unable to evacuate, and you will die, as radiation fills the surface of the planet.
Your Energy Bar at the bottom left corner of your screen will indicate how many hours you have left before you get tired. Once your character is tired, tasks will take much longer to complete, meaning more time wasted, and eventually, you will become exhausted. When you become Exhausted, your time you spend completing tasks will bleed into the next day, meaning you will have less time the following day to be awake and not in a tired state.
Time management is the single most important thing in this game, so be sure to complete tasks very carefully and deem what is 100% necessary and what isn't before starting the day.
Crafting
Crafting in The Alters is also pretty cut and dry, as you will first need to schedule the work to be done in the Workshop Queue, which can be accessed by hitting the “TAB” key and selecting the “Production” option at the top of the screen. Once in this menu, you will see a Sub-Menu under the main menu at the top that shows all of your crafting workshops. Select the one you want to use, such as Workshop or Kitchen, then select the item you wish to craft to add it to the queue.
From there, you will need to go to the designated room for that workshop, such as the Kitchen, to use the Workbench actually to craft the item. Walk up to the Workbench and use the interact key, “E”, to begin crafting. Crafting does use up a lot of energy, though, so make sure to be careful and pay close attention to the energy bar at the bottom left of your screen.
Here are the recipes we have found thus far:
Workshop
| Item | Materials | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Mining Outpost | x30 Metals | Place this on a resource deposit to extract the resource below. Must be connected to the base using Pylons. |
| Pylon Component Package x3 | x30 Metals | Used to build various types of Pylons that connect outposts to the main. |
| Suit Battery | x40 Organics | Used to recharge your suit while exploring. Each battery can only be used once. |
| Drill Cartridge | x20 Metals | A Cartridge for the Drill that is used to melt rock formations. It will use one cartridge per rock formation each time you use the Drill. |
| Repair Kit | x10 Metals | Used to repair the base when something malfunctions. Must be in stock for Base Maintanance workers to fix malfunctions for you. |
| Radiation Filter | x10 Metals, x40 Organics | Used to power the Radiation Barrier of the home base. One Radiation Filter will last one day. Once depleted, the ship will begin filling with Radiation from the outside. |
| Qbit Chip | x20 Metals, x20 Minerals, x1 Damaged Chip | A Chip used to upgrade the Quantum Computer. Allows more Alters and research to be done. |
Kitchen
| Item | Materials | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Mush | x5 Organics | Cheap, basic meal that is not tasty but provides nutrition. |
| Cooked Meal | x1 Raw Food | High Quality nutritious meal that actually tastes good. Must have a Greenhouse to provide Raw Food. |
Greenhouse
| Item | Materials | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Raw Food | x10 Organics | Used to prepare high-quality meals in the Kitchen. |
| Raw Food Package x10 | x50 Organics | Used to prepare high-quality meals in the Kitchen. Takes longer to grow than the Raw Food, but uses half as much Organics. |
Refinery
| Item | Materials | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Metals and Organics | x5 Enriched Metals | Refine Enriched Metals into Metals and Organics. If the Organics tank is full, the surplus will be lost. |
Alters Are Key!
When you begin, you will be completely alone. As you make progress, you will gain access to the bread and butter of the game -- The Alters. Alters are different versions of yourself, as they chose a different life-path and are you, but -- either more successful or more keen on different types of work.
The most important thing, and easily the most difficult, is keeping Alters happy and thriving in the base. Each Alter will have their own tab in the Alters tab that shows you their mood, how they are feeling, what issues they have with their health, and an event log that tells you what is going on in their mind. Being able to read and understand their feelings and thoughts is crucial, because when Alters get too sad or angry... They can end up killing you, your other Alters, and themselves.
The entire game is a careful balancing act of ensuring the main base runs smoothly, but also keeping Alters from making a horrific choice. Make sure you get High-Quality Meals as soon as possible to boost their mood, and also build the Social Room the moment you have enough space and resources. Play Beerbong with each Alter often, and sit down to watch a movie on the couch whenever you have downtime to ensure they are not just "okay", but that they are as happy as possible. You can learn all there is to know about Alters in our The Alters and Their Features guide!
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