5 Best Mods for The Alters

The Alters is a fantastic base-building and resource management game that really challenges players to juggle multiple different tasks at any given time. It’s also got a deep and engaging story with themes of self-reflection wrapped up in a sci-fi skin. While the gameplay’s challenging elements can be great fun for some players, other aspects might rub players the wrong way. To help with that, the community has already been creating numerous The Alters mods, so fans can fine-tune the gameplay experience to their liking.

In this guide, I’ll explain how to install mods and which are the best mods players should install.

All of these mods require an account on Nexus Mods to download.

The Alters: Trophy/Achievement Guide

There are a total of fifty-six achievements or trophies in The Alters, and some of them are not easy to complete without a bit of help.

Longer Days

Downloads: 5,299

This is a great mod because it doesn’t completely break the balance of the game to the point that there’s no challenge in the gameplay at all. Longer Days does exactly what it sounds like it does: players can choose to make the passage of time slower in the game. There are currently three different options that players can choose from: x1.5, x2, or x3 slower than the ‘vanilla’ speed that time passes in the game.

The slower passage of time doesn’t apply when players are extracting resources or crafting something around the base, and so it doesn’t break the in-game economy by allowing you to make more of these in the same amount of time. Instead, this mod slows time when players are managing things around their base and exploring the planet. Now players can take in the views of the planet, and also have a bit of extra time to plan their next moves each day without feeling quite so rushed.

Better Mining

Downloads: 3,771

extracting rapidium with a mining outpost in the alters

One of the most frustrating and stressful elements of The Alters is trying to get several different resources as quickly as possible in the limited amount of hours players have each day before the night brings its harmful radiation to force Jan and his team inside. It’s a core part of the game’s economic balance, but the amount of resources that players gather per ’round’ of mining is tiny. This makes gathering huge amounts of resources required for later upgrades, modules, and consumables feel like a repetitive and slightly unenjoyable grind.

The Better Mining mod from Caites aims to fix that. It doubles the amount of materials gathered from shallow deposits, both in-game and from real-time mining, and also from using mining outposts on deep deposits.

The mod’s creator, Caites, has explained that any deep deposits that players have already discovered might not provide double the resources they typically would consistently. However, any undiscovered deposits will always consistently provide double the materials compared to the vanilla game. As such, it’s recommended that this mod be used on a new save for the best results.

Larger Scan Area

Downloads: 1,997

Before players can place a mining outpost, they need to find the exact location of the deep deposit within a larger area. It’s a fun part of the game, but when the sun is getting close, spending a couple of in-game hours doing this can be a huge waste of time.

The Larger Scan Area mod fixes this problem by increasing the polygonal scan distance up to a huge 90m compared to the vanilla 6m. Players will also be able to place 25 probes from the beginning (used to map out the scan area) as opposed to the standard six. These two changes combined massively speed up the polygonal scanning process, so players can get to mining those resources much faster.

Combining this mod with the Better Mining mod above can make the mining and resource elements of The Alters considerably easier but also a lot less stressful, especially after a magnetic storm.

Storage Tweaks

Downloads: 9,946

In the vanilla game, storage modules will constantly be taking up precious space in a player’s base. Storage is needed to hold all the various resources and materials needed to craft new modules, consumables, and mission-objective items (such as bridge anchors). If players don’t optimize the layout of their bases correctly, storage can quickly become a real issue and make the layout of their base a pretty huge mess.

The Storage Tweaks mod has five different elements to it. First, it allows players to build all types of storage modules from the first day in the game (as long as they have enough resources). It also makes resources take up half as much space, meaning players can fit more resources in the same amount of storage capacity. Players’ organics storage is also doubled for every base tier, and each storage module can be increased by either x2 or x5 (depending on the version of the mod installed).

Finally, players can remove vanilla storage modules without reducing the storage capacity of their base. This can be used to remove the four small storage modules at the beginning of the game, so they can be replaced with the upgraded versions that this mod provides.

Players will need to start a new game or upgrade their base level if they wish to reap the benefits of the upgraded organics tanks.

Instant Research

Downloads: 566

how to get bridge anchor blueprints in the alters

This is a more controversial mod, as it can essentially break the research progression and balance systems in The Alters. Instant Research will make all research tasks take less than one in-game minute for Jan Scientist to complete. Due to how the passage of time in-game compares to real-life time, this is instantaneous.

As such, the Instant Research mod is a bit of a cheat, but it can be particularly useful if players need another pair of hands to help with other things around their base, such as repairing modules, making food, or extracting resources out on the planet. I’d advise not combining this with mods like Better Mining or Storage Tweaks unless players want a very easy and relaxed experience playing through The Alters.

How to Install Mods in The Alters

Installing mods requires players to download the mod files and then place them in a newly created folder called ‘~mods’ within the game files. When playing on Steam, the file path that I created this ~mods folder was as follows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Alters\TheAlters\Content\Paks\~mods

It’s worth noting that the file path may be slightly different if players are playing through the Xbox app/ Game Pass. This will be:

C:\XboxGames\The Alters\TheAlters\Content\Paks\~mods

Once players have found the ‘Paks’ folder at this file path, create the ‘~mods’ folder and then simply copy and paste the mod files that they’ve downloaded into it.

Most mods will work with existing save files. However, in some cases, certain elements of the mod won’t work with existing save files immediately. They may need some sort of in-game progression to occur, or for players to start an entirely new save to function properly.