How to Find the Organics Deposit Area in The Alters

Careful of the radiation!

The Alters Cutscene 3
Screenshot by Prima Games

In The Alters’ prologue, you’ll encounter a task where you need to find an organic deposit area and start mining some resources. The task isn’t as straightforward as it seems because you’ll learn to use the Polygonal Scanner, which can be a bit tricky.

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Here’s the trick to using your Polygonal Scanner to find mining and organics deposits in The Alters.

How to Use the Polygonal Scanner Efficiently in The Alters

To find deposits like organic nodes, you must use a Polygonal Scanner on top of potential deposit nodes. Hold “Q” to bring up the radial wheel for your tools and look for the Polygonal Scanner. You can also press “2” to switch to it without using the wheel.

Next, you must find a deposit area. Potential deposit nodes typically have geysers on them, or you can check the map for icons to find the nodes.

Once you go to one deposit area, place your first Polygonal Scanner at one point. You’ll be able to place at least six scanners, and they can be around 5 meters from each other.

If you go beyond the distance, the scanners won’t be able to scan what’s underneath them.

The trick is to form triangles. Quickly spam the max distance of each scanner, carefully looking until it reaches “0.1” meters, and start drawing triangles with it. It doesn’t matter how many times you place them. After you place six, you can pick all the scanners up and put them somewhere else. The previous placements will always show what’s underneath them, so you can scan different parts of the area.

Keep spamming these scanners until you can scan the whole deposit node. Once the node has been found, you’ll automatically get all your Polygonal Scanners back, and you can now place a Mining Outpost on the exact deposit node to get your organics or metals.

When placing the Polygonal Scanners, you can also hold “F” to scan for vibration. You’ll see some sonar circles, signalling where the deposit node is coming from. You don’t lose any Polygonal Scanners when you are placing them down, so feel free to use them as often as possible to find the node quicker.

Once you get your organics, you are one step closer to getting Raw Food for your base.

Enzo Zalamea

Enzo is a staff writer at Prima Games. He began writing news, guides, and listicles related to games back in 2019. In 2024, he started writing at Prima Games covering the best new games and updates regardless of the genre. You can find him playing the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Path of Exile, Teamfight Tactics, and popular competitive shooters like Valorant, Apex Legends, and CS2. Enzo received his Bachelor's degree in Marketing Management in De La Salle University and multiple SEO certifications from the University of California, Davis.