In The Alters, you can collect resources from surface pickups, mine deposits, and turn waste into organics with a Recycler. For deep deposits, the core loop is: scan with Polygonal Scanners, locate the deposit, build a Mining Outpost on it, then connect the outpost to your base with powered pylons. Prepare the outpost and pylons in the Workshop before leaving base; carrying the materials saves a return trip.
Which resources can you collect?
The guides available name metal, minerals, organics, and rapidium as resources found in surface pickups or deposits. GameSpot also refers to “enhanced items” among deep-deposit targets, but does not identify them as a specific resource type or list what they include.
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- Metal: found in surface pickups and deposits.
- Minerals: found in surface pickups and deposits.
- Organics: found in surface pickups and deposits; a Recycler can also produce them from waste.
- Rapidium: found in surface pickups and deposits.
This is not a complete catalogue of every resource or act-specific item in the game. The sources cited here do not enumerate all such items.
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- Prepare at base. Use the Workshop to gather the materials needed for a Mining Outpost and pylons before setting out. Epic Games Store’s guide recommends doing this in advance because retracing your route costs time.
- Search with Polygonal Scanners. Place scanners to outline an area and check for signs of a deep deposit. Use the scan-wave feature to identify its relative direction.
- Reveal the deposit core. Follow the scan-wave indication until you locate the core.
- Build a Mining Outpost. Place it on the revealed deposit using the building interface.
- Connect power. Run pylons from the outpost toward your base to establish the power connection it needs to operate. GameSpot describes this connection as necessary for extraction.
- Start gathering. Use the outpost’s central terminal to have Jan or an Alter collect from the deposit. Epic’s guide recommends assigning a clone to mining when possible, leaving Jan free for other work.
Epic Games Store’s guide describes Mining Outposts as a core way to produce resources used for food, facilities, and tools. Its contributor Francisco Dominguez explains that outposts need power from cable pylons connected between them and the base: Epic Games Store’s beginner’s guide.
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Other ways to collect resources
Surface pickups
Collect visible resources as you explore. These are useful for getting started without first building a powered outpost. A Steam Community guide by beautifulblade, labeled Patch 1.4 and published in August 2025, reports examples of 3 metal, 8 organics, 3 rapidium, and 3 minerals per listed pickup. These are the author’s playthrough measurements, not official rates, and the guide does not establish that they apply to every version, difficulty, or pickup.
Shallow deposits
Beautifulblade’s same Patch 1.4 guide reports these example gathering times for shallow deposits:
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| Resource | Player-reported example |
|---|---|
| Metal | 60 in 1.5 hours |
| Organics | 60 in 1.5 hours |
| Rapidium | 60 in 2 hours |
| Minerals | 30 in 3 hours |
These are player-reported figures from the author’s playthrough, not official yield statistics; they are not established as universal across builds, upgrades, or difficulty settings. See the Steam Community resource-collection guide for the guide’s Patch 1.4 context.
Recycler
The Recycler converts waste into organics, and Epic Games Store’s guide says its output scales with crew size. It is a supplemental organic-production route rather than a general-purpose source for every resource. The mechanic is described in the Epic Games Store guide.
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Choosing a collection route
| Route | What it provides | Setup |
|---|---|---|
| Surface pickup | Metal, organics, rapidium, and minerals, as listed by the Steam Community guide | Collect while exploring |
| Shallow deposit | Player-reported examples cover metal, organics, rapidium, and minerals | Gather from the deposit; the cited source does not establish a complete setup procedure |
| Deep-deposit Mining Outpost | Named targets include metals, minerals, organics, rapidium, and unspecified “enhanced items” | Scan for the core, build an outpost, and connect it to base power with pylons |
| Recycler | Organics from waste | Build and use the Recycler; output scales with crew size according to Epic’s guide |
The sources do not establish a complete efficiency ranking across collection routes, deposits, upgrades, difficulty settings, and acts. Treat the Steam guide’s rates as examples for its stated Patch 1.4 context, not as a basis for declaring one route always best.
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