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Cooking inThe Alterscan feel limited because the game doesn’t provide many different recipes for you to work with. Yet, it’s important to take cooking seriously, asit can directly impact the mood and happinessof the alters living in your base.
Keeping alters happy inThe Altersis a vital part of the game, since unhappy alters can get into fights and even decide not to work altogether. Since having an efficient base isvital for survival and making it to the end of the game,maintaining happiness inThe Altersshould be a priority.
Food is a part of that happiness. Players can feed their alters two main types of food:Mush and a Cooked Meal. Choosing the wrong type of food to cook and feed to the alters could handicap a player’s work productivity. If you want to keep their alters happy and ensure that everyone is working hard, they should follow thisbest cooking strategy inThe Alters.
How to Cook Quality Food in The Alters
Cooking quality food inThe Altersrequires the player to make aCooked Mealinstead of Mush. The advantage of cooking Mush is that it doesn’t take as long to make, but it is quite costly in the long run. Players should avoid falling into this trap since Mush seems, at first glance, to be the more efficient option.
That isn’t the case. Take a look at the following table to see just how Mush and a Cooked Meal compare to each other:
1 Raw Food
20 Minutes
The advantages of a Cooked Meal are pretty clear. It doesn’t drain a player’s organic resources, and it takes less time to make. Organics area vital resourceto maintain, so reducing their use as much as possible can help ensure that players have enough organics to create items like Radiation Filters, which are essential forprotecting the base from radiation damage.
Cooked Meals alsotake less time to make. That means the alter, or even the player, can make more food and ensure everyone has enough to eat. It also frees up more time, allowing the alter or player to do something else and increase overall productivity even further.
Clearly, players should focus on making Cooked Meals, and the following steps can ensure they make the cooking process inThe Altersas efficient as possible.
Focus on Making 10x Raw Food
Making 10x raw foodinThe Altersis going to bethe most efficient methodin the long run to gather enough resources to make Cooked Meals. Take a look below to see how the two different options differ from each other.
Now, at first glance, it may seem that making 1 Raw Food is going to be the better option. A bit of math shows that this isn’t the case. True, the time would be faster at 10 hours (1 hour x 10) compared to 16 hours, but the organic costwould be significantly higherat 100 organics (10 organics x 10).
Since players need to preserve organics as much as possible, making 1x Raw Food 10 times just doesn’t make sense. The good news is that there are methods players can useto reduce 10x Raw Food’s 16-hour work time.
The first method isto awaken the Botanist inThe Alters. Jan Botanist is100%+ efficient when working in the Greenhouse, where players will grow Raw Food. Once assigned to the greenhouse, Jan Botanist can significantly reduce the time it takes to make 10x Raw Food. Players should also have the Scientist researchEfficient Foodin the Research Lab. This upgrade alone will reduce the 16-hour creation time of 10x Raw Food to just 12 hours. Add in the Botanist, and 10x Raw Food becomes faster to grow and harvest without heavily depleting organic resources.
Assign the Doctor to the Kitchen and Make Cooked Meals
With Raw Food coming into the kitchen, it’s time to set up the cooking process. Much like the Botanist with the Greenhouse, there’s an alter who can speed up cooking time in the Kitchen. Considering that it takes 20 minutes to make a Cooked Meal, players will wantto make cooking more efficientto produce as much food as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Awakening theDoctoralter is the key to reducing that work time. Aside from being able to heal alters a lot faster, the Doctor also has+50% efficiency when cooking meals in the Kitchen. Assigning him to make Cooked Meals will reduce how long it takes and ensure that the alters are receiving high-quality food.
There’s one final step that players should take to fully set up their cooking process and make it automated and efficient. Once the Doctor is assigned,players should set an Uphold quantityin the cooking menu in the kitchen. To do so, press theMiddle Mouse buttonon the Cooked Meal option until the quantity is set at the number of Cooked Meals that players want in storage. If the number of Cooked Meals ever falls below that number, then the Doctor will make more, provided he has enough Raw Food resources to do so.
It’s ideal to have anywhere between10 and 25 Cooked Mealsin storage at one time. This ensures that if some sort of event happens and the alters need to eat more food, then they’ll have enough in storage to get by for a time. It also ensures that resources aren’t constantly being used, so players won’t have to build more storage depots, allowing themto set up their base more efficiently.
After setting up thiscooking strategy inThe Alters, players can automate cooking and ensure their alters receive positive buffs by eating the best food.
