How to Collect Organics & Materials with Mining Outposts in The Alters

Mining outposts are the main way that players can get organics and other materials used to upgrade their base and craft equipment in The Alters. While shallow deposits can give a good amount of their particular resource, they can only be used once. Deep deposits, which require mining outposts to reach, provide an infinite amount of their given resource. However, they can’t be extracted by hand. That’s where mining outposts come into play.

In this guide, I’ll be explaining the whole process of collecting organics and other materials with mining outposts in The Alters, so players can get their reserves of all the materials in the game up as fast as possible. Organics, metals, Rapidium, and other materials that can be extracted in The Alters are used for crafting new facilities in their base, as well as gear and other useful consumables. As such, players will constantly need a health supply of these if they’re going to purchase the various bits and pieces they’ll need to complete their mission.

How to Collect Organics and Materials with Mining Outposts in The Alters

There are a few steps to the process: finding the deep deposit, placing the mining outpost, connecting the outpost to the home base, and then extracting the organics or other material from the mining outpost. I’ve broken down each stage below.

Using the Polygonal Scanner to Find the Deep Deposit

First, players need to find exactly where the deep deposit is within the general area that the game outlines. This requires players to use their Polygonal Scanner, which can be accessed by selecting it from the equipment wheel, opened with LB/L1. Once selected, players can place six probes on the ground.

The probes all need to be within 2.5 meters of another probe, and should all connect together to form a perimeter around a section of the floor. If done correctly, players should be able to see what’s underneath the ground. Contour lines will appear when the probes have been placed, and pressing X/ Square will release a scan wave (as long as players have the suit energy to do so), which indicates the direction of the deep deposit from the player’s initial probe.

A probe can only be placed once the exact spot of the deep deposit has been located. Once it has, players can press LB/L1 again, go to the Building Mode option at the bottom of the wheel, and place a mining outpost on the circle outlined on the ground.

Connecting the Mining Outpost to the Base

Next, players need to use pylons to connect their outpost to their home base. This is done by selecting them from the Building Mode option again and then walking back towards their base. Each pylon can be placed 40 meters away from the next pylon, or whatever they’re connecting to, such as an outpost or a player’s base.

Players should then begin making their way back towards their base, placing a pylon whenever the number above its outline reaches the low single digits. Once the last pylon is connected to the home base, players can begin extracting the material from the deep deposit that they’ve found.

Extracting Organics and Other Materials from the Mining Outpost in The Alters

With everything connected, players now need to return to the mining outpost and interact with the screen on the front of it to begin extracting the material from underground. The game doesn’t make this explicitly clear, and I had thought that the outpost would automatically extract the material and add it to my base’s inventory, so players should avoid making the same mistake that I did.

Material is only collected once a cycle of that action is complete. When interacting with the mining outpost, a small pink circle will begin filling up, and a timer will rapidly start counting down. Once these both reset, players will get a small amount of the material they’re extracting from the outpost.

The Alters

10/10

Released

June 13, 2025

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

PC Release Date

June 13, 2025

Xbox Series X|S Release Date

June 13, 2025

PS5 Release Date

June 13, 2025