How to Survive Magnetic Storms in The Alters

Just when you think you’ve got a handle on managing your crew of clones, you’re all nice and happy, and avoiding the approaching sun on schedule, and then the game throws its most devastating curveball at you: Magnetic Storms. Forget the slow burn of global warming or ice caps melting, this is a full-blown planetary disaster that can wipe out your entire base if you’re unprepared.

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The Alters delivers addictive colony-management gameplay alongside equally captivating sci-fi storytelling.

Your first magnetic storm will hit like a freight train, and it will send you and what alter you have to scramble mode as you keep the base from falling apart while radiation floods every corner of your mobile home.

With that said, here’s the thing about magnetic storms: they’re as much an opportunity as they are a threat. Sure, these storms will test every ounce of your patience and resource management, not to mention it will push your alters to their absolute limit with round-the-clock repairs and extended work shifts, but Magnetic Storms supercharge resources and the rate at which you extract them. The key to making the most out of it is just being prepared so that you can actually profit from the chaos. Here’s how you can get the most out of every magnetic storm coming your way:

What Is a Magnetic Storm?

Before we dive into the survival how-tos, you need to understand exactly what you’re dealing with. In the game, Magnetic Storms are periodic planetary phenomena that happen halfway through each chapter or Act. As the sun approaches, you will get a notification that a Magnetic Storm is about to come. Here’s what happens during a Magnetic Storm:

The other side of the coin is that, since the radiation supercharges deposits, your mining speed increases for Rapidium and Organics during magnetic storms. The real threat posed by a magnetic storm is running out of Radiation Filters. During a magnetic storm, radiation filters are your only lifeline and these get rapidly consumed during this period. Once your stockpile of filters has run out, you’ll have around 5 hours or so to craft a new one. Now, this might seem like plenty of time, but if you’re tired or exhausted, these 5 hours can be a countdown to death.

How to Detect Magnetic Storms

When you’re hit by your first magnetic storm after creating Jan Scientist, he’ll come up with an idea to predict future magnetic storms, and it will be available as Magnetic Storm Analysis on the research screen.

In order to survive a magnetic storm, you need to stock Food, Radiation Filters, and Repair Kits. The radiation produced by a magnetic storm is enough to fry electronics and render a module inoperable. For example, if you’re dealing with a magnetic storm and the infirmary goes down, you will have no way to deal with sick or injured alters unless you repair the whole module.

How to Prepare and Survive Magnetic Storms

The best way to prepare for a magnetic storm is simply to get prepared. If you’re familiar with any 11 Bit Studios game, “weathering the storm” is one of the challenges that they like to challenge their players with. In Frostpunk, it’s the whiteout and in the Alters, it’s Magnetic Storms. What I truly loved about this game is its approach to the radiation mechanic. It’s not something that melts your character physically, not that you can’t get radiation sickness, you do, but the game tells you that the radiation is in the air, it’s in the whole planet, and you just have to adapt to it along with the social challenges and pressures that it might bring.

That said, to survive magnetic storms, all you need to do is stockpile enough amounts of food, radiation filters and repair kits, and the best way to do this is by setting an uphold production amount. Upholding production means that you can set the amount of any item you’d like to always have in stock. For example, if you uphold production of 5 Radiation Filters and 5 Repair Kits, that means that production of these items will always come first and whenever the amount falls below the threshold, that item will automatically be added to the production queue.

You can also set an Infinite Uphold, which means that the production will continue so long as there are available resources. This is best used for Mush or other food items so that you don’t run out of stock. Also, remember that each alter needs to eat 1 meal a day, so if you don’t have the Doctor alter created, you’ll need to keep up with cooking food in the kitchen as well.

The last thing to do before a magnetic storm hits is to assign the Technician and one other alter to Base Maintenance since they’re going to be your only defense in repairing base modules that are going to be damaged by the storm.

With all these preparations in place, and you in control of the chaos, you can now step outside and mine away to your heart’s content.

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The Alters

4.5/5

Released

June 13, 2025

ESRB

m

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

PC Release Date

June 13, 2025

Xbox Series X|S Release Date

June 13, 2025