5/11/14

Plague Inc.: Mega Brutal High Score Guide: Virus

blogger Hello, I am a guy who has played a lot of Plague Inc. and is helping out on AllHailSpicy's blog. I will be mostly focusing on guides getting high scores and speed runs instead of scenarios.
Sorry for the bad formatting.



Important Notes: In case you didn't know, getting severity will increase the dna you get from bubbles.
If I tell you evolve a symptom/transmission and it has already mutated, skip that instruction.
If Greenland/Iceland or some other island country's ports close, quit the game and restart this. I estimate this guide has a 70% success chance.

The thing that makes virus different from the other diseases is the high mutation rate and the cost to devolve. We want to utilize the pros of each plague and try to reduce the cons of the plague. We will do this by using the base oxidization gene (THIS IS ESSENTIAL.) The base oxidization gene lets you mutate transmissions in addition to symptoms and makes it easier to cure. I find this an extremely fair trade-off for getting a ton of free transmissions. The best thing about base oxidization is that mutating transmissions increases mutation chance (well most of them.) We want the ATP boost for a head start. The environment genes is your choice, though I prefer extremophile. In virus, we want to evolve a lot of symptoms. We don't need to focus on transmissions because we will mutate
them. The symptostasis gene lets us evolve symptoms without increasing their cost (normally whenever you evolve a transmission/symptom/ability, the cost of all the other transmissions/symptoms/abilities increase.) This will let us evolve a lot of symptoms (SYMPTOSTASIS IS ALSO ESSENTIAL.) Last but not least, we want the aquacyte gene. This will help with reaching the troublesome, cold countries as we will be starting in India. We might end up with unwanted symptoms. If you mutate total organ failure or hemohragic shock, devolve it. Otherwise you shouldn't.


We start with cysts, abscesses and hyper sensitivity. This gives us a good early boost. Then we get rash and sweating into skin lesions which gives us a huge spike in infectivity. Then we get coughing,
sneezing, pneumonia, nausea, vomiting, insomnia, paranoia, anaemia, haemophilia, diarrhea, pulmonary odema/fibrosis for the infectivity and severity. Don't worry if your disease gets discovered early, it should.

I am aware of the fact that you are getting lethality. In mega brutal, they added
genetic shift which increases the DNA costs of transmissions/symptoms/abilities bass on how many
people are infected. The more infected, the higher the cost. In fact, at the whole population infected, total organ failure costs 60 DNA! This is clearly unacceptable. We will need to get lethality earlier.

Then we get water 1/2, drug resistance 1, cold resist 1 and viral instability 1. Then we get air 1/2, cold 2, extreme bioaersol, genetic hardening 2 and drug resistance 2. At this point this starts getting a bit risky. We evolve necrosis, dysentery, insanity and systemic infection for the infectivity, severity
and lethality. At this point we wait for every country to become infected. If your DNA total gets
above 125, evolve a transmission of your choice. Once every country is fully infected or close to full, evolve total organ failure,  hemohragic shock and internal hemorrhage. Once the world population
gets below 1,000,000,000 evolve genetic hardening 1/2/3 for reducing the cure percentage and increasing your score. Use your remaining DNA to evolve some symptoms to speed up the demise of the world. You should end up winning in about 300-350 days and about 10% cure. This should result in about 400,000 points.

I hope this guide helped you. :)

5 comments :

  1. I tried your build a few times and while very effective at first I found out that the high lethality rate tends to make key countries close their borders before being infected. However, if I tried the same build enough times, I'll probably manage to get lucky on the random mutations to get it through smoothly. I am not really sure about the 70% success rate you mention ;)
    If I use some of your build but jam it up a little to integrate some patterns I like, I manage to make around 220k (344 days, 19% cure).
    If I use my own current build however, I can get up to 311k.

    Here is the way I do it if you are interested:

    First of all, a low cure percentage is more important than a fast victory.

    Genes combo:
    - metabolic jump
    - aquacyte
    - symptostasis
    - genetic mimic
    - extremophile

    Start in China.

    If at the early stage, two consecutive mutations bring lethality, the games becomes much less likely to give a very good score. It might be possible to pull it off still, but I advise against it and you should reset the game right away. If you have no more than 1 minor lethal symptom to devolve, devolve it before it kills and gets detected yet.

    Opening:
    1: Symptoms -> rash, sweat, skin lesions, coughing, sneezing
    2: Transmission -> water 1, birds 1, water 2, birds 2
    3: Abilities -> heat 1, cold 1 / drug resistance 1. Choose the mutation which boost the virus in the largest number of infected countries.

    Middle game:
    The Cure should have started but it takes quite some time before you get to 1%. When you reach this moment, focus on evolving drug resistance 1 (if you have not evolved it yet), genetic hardening 1 and 2. If during this phase a lethal symptom evolves, you keep it.
    1: If the virus is already spread in many countries including countries with the first rank ability you have not yet done, do it.
    2: Livestock 1 and 2.
    3: Do now the final first rank ability if you have not done it already.
    4: The cure should now have reach 1%, go to genetic hardening 2.

    End game:
    1: Evolve drug resistance 2, heat 2/blood 1. Africa often gets infected among the last and both options helps the virus to thrive in there. Blood 1 might be a little better as it is less expensive and will not increase the price of genetic hardening.
    2: Evolve every level 1 and 2 remaining symptoms, seizures and insanity.
    3: Wait for all countries to get infected while accumulating DNA points and letting random mutations enhance your virus. At this stage you should only devolve organ failure and hemorrhagic shock.

    Finish:
    When all countries are infected, the cure should be around 12-15%. And you have between 130 and 180 DNA points depending on how lethal you virus is.
    1: Evolve necrosis, diarrhea, internal hemorrhaging, immune suppression
    2: You should then evolve the high lethality symptoms (organ failure, hemorrhagic shock and dysentery also if you have enough) but keeping at least 95-100 DNA points.
    3: Until you get close to 200.000 infected people remaining, continue evolving symptoms that add lethality. You generally aim here for middle range cost symptoms with lethality. You keep the 95-100 DNA points necessary for the final move.
    4: Evolve genetic hardening 1, 2 and 3.

    My best finish is 328 days 14% cure for a score of 311k.
    The cure finishes between 14 and 17% depending on luck about the random symptom mutations.

    ReplyDelete
  2. EDIT:
    For the 311k victory, the cure was at 11%.
    I also just made a new personal high score of 348k in 308 days with 11% cure using my own build.

    What is your highest score Lamteehee?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I finally managed to get a big score with a mix of your strategy and mine.
    295 days, 7% cure
    Score -> 519260
    :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Managed to get it done in 287 with score of 512260 and cure at 14%

    ReplyDelete