A Compiled Archive of Competent Guides

Plague Inc: Evolved★ 5 · 228 ratings9.4k views707 favorites198 min readby BoblordUpdated 16 AprView on Steam ↗

Introduction

This is a guide of guides, to curate and organize strategies for various challenges and achievements. All guides have been hand verified by myself, and re-written here(with full credit to the original source/author) to preserve the guides for ease of access and future use.

I've verified that everything works on the current PC version of plague inc evolved and included a note on how the overall guide pans out in 2026. Some may need slight adjustments, some have additional notes to do frequent save loads, etc. This is designed to make your mileage not vary in your utilization of these guides. If a guide that's more consistent comes up, please feel free to let me know and I'll confirm/update.

I did not write a majority of the guides used below. I want to preserve their excellent work and bring it to a wider audience, and I am not trying to nor intending to steal credit from the original authors. I have done my best to credit the authors and link the original sources where applicable.

Included guides:

AS OF 3/31/2026 ONLY THE FIRST 6 SECTIONS LISTED BELOW ARE PUBLISHED

  • Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Scores- All Plagues
  • Speedrun 5 Biohazard Times- All Plagues
  • Scenarios Mega Brutal 3 Biohazard Scores- All Scenarios
  • Pirate Plague Normal 3 Biohazard Scores- All Plagues(Super Sparrow)
  • Volcanic Ash Normal 3 Biohazard Scores- All Plagues(Lava God)
  • Shut Down Everything Normal 3 Biohazard Scores- All Plagues(Mr. President)
  • Misc. difficult achievements or storylines that need real guides to complete
  • Cure Mode Mega Brutal- All Plagues

These take time to find/verify/transcribe/modify if need be. I'll periodically update with the additional sections over time. I'm also quite busy so things may take even more time, unfortunately.

Base Game- Mega Brutal Plague 5 Biohazard Score Guides

The following are a series of guides designed to achieve 5-biohazard scores on the main game mega brutal plagues. Also works for just beating said plagues on mega brutal, score is optional and doesn't really matter.

5 biohazard score threshold is 100k points iirc. Combination of time and cure, maybe some other things(?).

Current guides, sources and authors:

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Score- Bacteria

Boblord's notes: Remarkably simple to hit the 100k threshold on, only concerns here are caribbean and greenland getting infected. Some of the nordic countries might be on the slower side too. Thankfully bacteria is so simple that there really isn't any issues here and this guide works perfectly.

Original Author: Tatsur0 and Barry
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=288653571
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

ATP Boost
This allows us the head start we need to spread our bacteria and still accumulate DNA quickly.

Genetic Mimic
A gene that makes it harder to cure disease.

Aquacyte
Greenland can be a pain especially with random events and one of our top goals is to make sure to infect this Country before they close their ports!

Urbophile
Sweden and Canada can sometimes take their sweet time to spread the bacteria making this gene vital to our success.

Sympto-Stasis
Symptoms play an important role in this guide especially if we wish to hit a perfect score so making them cheaper is a no brainer.

Start in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is particularly vulnerable to these initial Symptoms and with these we'll gain ground and DNA early on.

Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Coughing
Pneumonia
Insomnia
Paranoia

Air 1
Water 1
Air 2
Water 2
Extreme Bio-Aerosol
It's important that we be able to spread by land but even more important is how quickly we spread by Air and Sea as Countries closing down ports before the Bacteria reaches them means the game is over and you might as well restart your game immediately.
Rodent 1

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1

Remember or goal isn't just to infect all of Humanity but to wipe them out! It's time we slow the progress of this cure by messing with their minds but breath death into our Bacteria so mankind will cease to be allowing mother nature another shot at it. Do not forget to pop the blue bubbles!

Seizures
Necrosis
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Total Organ Faillure
Insanity
Coma
Paralysis
Dysentery

Genetic Hardening 1
Genetic Hardening 2
Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3 (if you have the spare DNA by round end)
With Genetic Reshuffle we're able to confuse scientists as what they're researching changes it's structure and cuts down on the existing cure's progress/percentage which is how we get a perfect score.

Here we bring the cure's progress from around 35-40% down to 25-30% depending on what level of Genetic Reshuffle we evolve and how well we managed the spending of our DNA.

If you followed this guide step by step and managed time so you lost no DNA or let a blue bubble get through then you should have a score similar to the one below having completed Mega Brutal with a perfect score and if you do so in under 365 days (much easier on easier difficulties and the same guide) you'll obtain the "Insane Bolt" Steam Achievement!

Of course Greenland still poses a problem on rare occasions but this cannot be avoided unless you settle in Greenland, Canada, or Iceland but then you're unlikely to win.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Score- Virus

Boblord's notes: Only worries here is slow infectivity in something like greenland or sweden. Beyond that this works great. Obviously a little rng in the mutations but with enough mutations we can mitigate that.

Original Author: Tatsur0
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=288790362
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Instead of leashing our Virus we use the extra DNA from this gene to set it free to be even more destructive and out of control. Freedom! ...wait is there a lesson here? Nah!

Genetic Mimic
A gene that makes it harder to cure disease.

Aquacyte
We have to be very wary of Greenland in this campaign so we need as much help infecting our Islands so this is a must have gene.

Urbophile
Sweden likes to close down it's borders and ports before our Virus can sneak in so with this and what we spend DNA on there won't be any neutral ground this time.

Sympto-Stasis
While our Virus loves to mutate and we of course encourage this there are still important Symptoms we need to speed up the destruction which is explained further on in the guide.

Start in Saudi Arabia

Viral Instability 1
Viral Instability 2
Viral Instability 3
This ability only takes an unstable and dangerous virus and increases it's erratic behavior with mutations sprouting out left and right allowing us to focus elsewhere for the time being.

Water 1
Air 1
Water 2
Not only is Water 1 & 2 a great way to spread the virus but a must for shipping overseas to open ports (before they can close)

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
We've prepped Water 2 but Greenland is cold so we need to make sure our virus is ready for the weather! This is where we seal the deal and can stop worrying about the largest Island on the planet barring our way!
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1

Air 2
Extreme Bio-Aerosol
Rodent 1
Should help spread through Urban areas speeding up the end!
Bird 1

Now our Virus has mutated numerous symptoms but we have spare DNA to further infect but more importantly disrupt research and kill off all those who would try to stop us, their friends, families, and everyone else for that matter!

Focus on the following symptoms if they haven't already mutated:

Necrosis
Dysentery
Total Organ Failure
Any other symptoms that boosts fatality rates that you can afford

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Score- Fungus

Boblord's notes: This is one of the first 5 bio score challenges where you need to play the rng, as detailed in the guide. More specifically getting the right mutations when it matters, getting enough country infections that you can clean house with spore bursts, and avoiding the negative events that boost cure speed.

Otherwise, this is pretty straightfoward.

Summer 2025 update:
Suppression patch significantly slows this down but it's still possible, you're just reliant on getting good european/south american infections off of either your initial spore burst set or before land borders shut. Otherwise this still works fine.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g2cl02/fungus_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

Metabolic Jump

Darwinist

Suppression teracyte, suppression was patched

Extremophile

Patho-stasis

Start in India.

Keep it on the slowest speed at first, every day matters. Evolve spore bursts 1-6, one at a time, and then spore eruption.

While you are evolving those, get rash, sweating, and skin lesions as soon as you have enough DNA to have 1 left over for the next spore burst.

Hopefully you got a good spread across the globe. If you didn't get any in North America or South America you might need to restart.

We'll save the other spore bursts/eruption for much later.

Transmissions:

Evolve Bird 1 and 2, and Livestock 1.

Save your game before 4 months have passed.

You should get a mutation around now, at about 4 months in.

This needs to be a good one, preferably Necrosis but coughing is okay. If you don't get coughing, or necrosis then reload your save. You'll get a second mutation soon, that one has to be necrosis if you didn't get it the first time.

Evolve Rodent 1, Livestock 2, Rodent 2, Extreme Zoonosis.

That's it for transmissions.

Time for abilities:

Evolve Drug 1 and 2

Evolve Cold 1 and 2

Genetic Hardening 1

Time for symptoms:

You need to get down to Dysentery.

Coughing, pneumonia, pulmonary edema, diarrhea, dysentery.

By now you should have infected most of the world.

Time for the second set of spore bursts. If you use up all your spore bursts and still have countries left to infect, reload a save.

Now to slow down the cure with symptoms

Insanity, seizures, inflammation, paralysis, coma.

You need paralysis or coma to mutate, so make a save shortly before you get to paralysis, and reload until you get one of those.

If all has gone well, time to make another save. The final mutation you will need will be Total Organ Failure.

Use your DNA on Genetic Reshuffles, if something other than Total Organ Failure mutates, reload.

This took me a lot of work, and a lot of luck. If you get an Awareness day or get put on the Watch List before most countries have been infected then just reload, you'll never get the cure low enough.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Score- Parasite

Boblord's notes: Works pretty straightfoward and well, although the cure is juuuuust on the edge of 30% at a lot of times. Might take a few reload iterations to get it to play nice between cure speed, getting all countries quickly, and infection speed.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g3c7fx/parasite_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

ATP Boost

Darwinist

Aquacyte

Xerophile

Sympto-Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia

I recommend playing on a slower speed for a lot of this, every day counts.

Rash, Sweating, Nausea, Skin Lesions, Vomiting, Diarrhea

Air 1

Water 1

Water 2

Drug 1 & 2

Your month 4 mutation must be Dysentery.

Cold 1 & 2

Heat 1

Coughing, Pneumonia, Cysts, Hyper-Sensitivity

Insomnia, Paranoia

Wait for Greenland to be infected.

Necrosis, Abscesses, Systemic Infection, Coma, Paralysis, Seizures, Insanity.

After last country infected get Total Organ Failure, if it is a rural country (usually Morocco), wait for it to have 1,000 people infected.

Genetic Reshuffles as you get the DNA

At the end, get Anemia, Haemophilia, Internal Haemorrhaging, to finish off and get better score.

Should take less than a year, less than 30% cure progress, and plenty of symptom combos adding to your score as well.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Score- Prion

Boblord's notes: This plague comes down to 2 things: random mutations and genetic shifts.

Genetic shifts drive up the cost like all hell for some of the more expensive symptoms and abilities in the lategame when cure research is in full force. As such, you need to hit good mutations on things like necrosis or dysentary or coma or total organ failure. Don't need them all but when you get close to a mutation, save/load a few times until you get a desirable expensive symptom.

Otherwise you should be fine. Just need to be careful as this plague is slow to kill and as such slow to collapse governments, both impacting cure and time, the two main score factors.

Original Author: AllHailSpicy
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2014/04/plague-inc-prion-mega-brutal-guide.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

First off, Gene setup:

ATP Boost
Aquacyte
Sympto-Stasis
Genetic Mimic
Extremophile

1. Start in China

2. Evolve the following symptoms: (order does not matter)
Rash
Nausea
Coughing
Cysts
Anaemia
Haemophilia
Hyper Sensitivity
Abscesses
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Sweating
Vomiting
Diarrhoea
Skin Lesions

  1. Evolve Water and Insect 1 then Water and Insect 2
  2. Evolve Drug Resistance 1 and 2, then Cold and Heat Resistance 1 and 2
  3. Evolve the following symptoms:(order doesn't matter, but is recommended)
    Insomnia
    Paranoia
    Seizures
    Insanity
    Paralysis
    Coma
  4. Evolve Neural Atrophy 1, 2, and 3, Then Genetic Hardening 1 and 2
  5. Evolve Total Organ Failure if it has not mutated yet.
    (This is optional but you could choose to evolve Necrosis if Total Organ Failure has already mutated.)
  6. Remaining DNA is best put to evolve Genetic Re-Shuffles to lower cure progress which increase high score

Now just wait until your Prion plague eradicates humanity. I hope this guide has helped you beat Prion in mega-brutal difficulty. In my experience, better high scores are obtained if you're lucky enough to mutate certain symptoms. In this strategy's case, mutating Necrosis, Dysentery, and Total Organ Failure would save you a lot of DNA and would infect and kill people faster.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Score- Nano-Virus

Boblord's notes: This plague's all about speed and stalling out a quickly progressing cure. Purpose built for getting a high score here. Works as advertised.

One note, the final broadcast interceptor overload should be set off a few days after the "x plague to eradicate humanity" message occurs, not right on it. Otherwise you'll just miss it as it ends the day you eradicate everyone(reflected only in score, not in cure %).

Original Author: Tatsur0
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=291014984
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost
We're going to want to setup our initial symptoms quick boosting the severity of our virus which is good if you're in need of DNA.

Genetic Mimic
From the very beginning the Nano-Virus Cure progress has already begun. We can obtain all the DNA we need via other means and have plenty to spare but we need to slow the cure down if we're to achieve a perfect score and win this!

Aquacyte
Greenland can be a pain especially with random events and one of our top goals is to make sure to infect this Country before they close their ports!

Urbophile
Sweden and Canada can sometimes take their sweet time to spread the bacteria making this gene vital to our success.

Sympto-Stasis
With the Nano-Virus we need to spread it fast and hard as well as making it just fatal enough not to kill off a portion of the population and saving the rest. There is a plan to this madness and this gene allows for it.

Saudi Arabia start

These initial symptoms are how we begin this guide and build up the severity of our virus (bonus DNA woo!) and of course those that would normally hit progression of the cure hardest are free of any DNA cost.... Why not?

Nausea
Rash
Cysts
Hyper Sensitivity
Paralysis
Coma
Insomnia
Paranoia
Seizures

Code Fragment Interception

I prefer to sort out my Symptoms early to speed things along but we want to prevent the signal transmitting the cure by evolving this ability (explains why the cure is already progressing before the public knows anything about it and can join in) but you can start with this at the beginning if you prefer as to not forget and evolve it right away.

Abscesses
Sweating
Coughing
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Skin Lesions

Air 1
Water 1
Air 2
Water 2
Extreme Bioaerosol

Radical Elements Stabilized
This basically messes with the signal and cuts progress down considerably allowing us to focus on spreading our virus and doing some significant damage as quickly as possible.

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Drug Immunity
Like Drug Resistance, Drug Immunity helps prevent modern medicine from doing it's job which is great in wealthy Countries.

At this point return to the World Map and collect up DNA that will be sprouting up all over the globe rapidly (again manage the speed of the game so you don't go and miss a bubble) and quickly switch back to evolving more Abilities.

Code Segment Interception
Think of it as Code Fragment Interception 2 again intended to mess with the kill switch signal.

Replication Factory Overload
Messes with the virus replicators for a period of time boosting infectivity. Unfortunately once used it damages the viruses ability to infect (minor) which is why this has been put off till now.

Jump back to the World Map and grab additional DNA that should sprout up after setting off RPO which we just mentioned above and then back to Abilities!

Genetic Hardening 1
Genetic Hardening 2
Encryption Breached
Once again we're disrupting the signal which again cuts the broadcast cure progress down significantly!

Alright, most of the world is infected and dying but not fast enough yet we need to be careful because if we make the virus too fatal at this point we risk killing off hosts too quickly saving portions of the population in other Countries.

We're going to go ahead and avoid Total Organ Failure because as I mentioned above we need them to die fast but too fast can lead to tears. The list below are Symptoms that should be immediately evolved and the focus for just how lethal our virus will be. But don't let that stop you from increasing it by evolving other Symptoms BUT SAVE ENOUGH FOR OUR 'Broadcast Interceptor Overload' ABILITY as it will be required for a perfect score.

Insanity
Dysentery
Necrosis
Hemorrhagic Shock

Again we want to speed things along so you can purchase symptoms as the population of Earth dies our DNA points will go up but not forever and people will be dying rapidly. Just don't get carried away or waste on Total Organ Failure as we need those points for the final Ability we just mentioned in CAPS! This ability must be timed right and if you kill everyone off before you can use it cause you used up all your DNA then you won't earn a perfect score.

So we've infected and pretty much decimated the world. You can wait for the pop-up declaring humanity lost to help you time this final ability.

Try to wait it out till around 50,000 to 150,000 people are left, then it's time to set off our final ability and go for the perfect score!

Broadcast Interceptor Overload

Like the abilities 'Radical Elements Stabilized' & 'Encryption Breached' this will overload the broadcast signal cutting down the overall cure progress %, but unlike before it's temporary and the reason we waited till the last second to set it off otherwise after a short time it would return to the original progress % and that perfect score would be out of reach and you'd have to start from the beginning if that is what you were hoping to achieve.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Guide- Bio-Weapon

Boblord's notes: Very very easy with how fast this kills and can spread. Just need to hit the one required mutation, otherwise it should be smooth sailing.

I recommend save/loading for the insanity mutation where marked. No reason not to if you have the capabilities to do so.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g1k5i1/bio_weapon_mega_brutal_5_biohazards/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

The problem with all the guides for bio-weapon is that severity struggles to be high enough for a good score.

Genes:

ATP Boost

Darwinist

Aquacyte

Urbophile

Sympto-Stasis

Start in India.

Nausea

Vomiting

Diarrhea

Dysentery

You should get your first mutation soon. Hopefully it is Insanity.
Keep moving through the next upgrades until it triggers though.

Water 1

Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Water 2

Air 1

Seizures

Cold 1

Cold 2

Drug 1

Drug 2

Cysts

Hyper Sensitivity

Paralysis

Coma

Heat 1 and 2

Environmental Hardening

Genetic Hardening 1 and 2

If any islands closed their borders then restart.

Otherwise, use Genetic Reshuffles to keep the cure low, and then get Total Organ Failure and other lethal symptoms to kill everyone quickly.

This works more often than not. Takes less than one year, cure should be less than 20%, easily 5 biohazards.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Guide- Neurax Worm

Boblord's notes: This is one you should get innately comfortable with as it is probably the easiest to do at all times. Planes and Transcendence win condition remove most of the usual challenges.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/1fmhanc/neurax_worm_mega_brutal_5_biohazards/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

There are a few old Neurax Worm Mega Brutal 5 bio guides out there but I found they all had severe problems, and even if they did manage to get 5 biohazards it was only just barely and required a lot of luck.

This guide should help you get a score around 200k if you're lucky, or 125k if you're unlucky, easily getting those 5 biohazards in either situation.

The key to a high score in Neurax is severity/complexity, but that’s also what makes it difficult because high severity increases research speed.

This strategy aims to have a balance that gives you high severity to get enough DNA, but by the time the wealthy countries start to focus on the cure you’ve got Transcendence which makes them not work on the cure.

Time really doesn’t matter much, my best score of 206k took 418 days, my lowest score was 111k at 287 days.

Cure % matters, but not as much as severity. My 336 day at 36% cure was 131k while my 287 day 31% cure run was only 111k because it had lower severity/lethality.

When you start sending out planes your focus should be wealthy islands first, as well as wealthy countries which can be slow to infect, like Sweden. Because time doesn’t matter much it doesn’t really matter if there are some lagging poor islands since they don’t contribute much to cure research, and the increased time means you’re more likely to get some lethal mutations to improve your score.

Genetic Code:

Metabolic Jump (time doesn’t matter so no need for ATP boost, we need more DNA later)

Genetic Mimic

Aerocyte

Extremophile

Trans-stasis (transmissions provide severity in Neurax, this pairs well with metabolic jump)

Start in Saudi Arabia

Eggs 1&2

Concertina locomotion

Undulatory locomotion

Air 1 & 2

Bird 1

Water 1, 2 & 3

Drug 1

Cold 1

Drug 2

Cold 2

Air 3

Trojan planes 1

Genetic swap

Mutative regeneration 1 & 2

Neural breach

Cerebral tendrils

Frontal mesh

Immaturity

Mania

Obsession

Devotion

For the highest score you need Transcendence to mutate, so if that’s what you’re going for then save your game now if on desktop.

You can still win and easily get 5 biohazards by evolving Transcendence now instead of it mutating, but your score won’t be as high as if it mutates on the first mutation which will happen very soon.

Either way, it's essential that you get Transcendence at this stage because that's what will slow down wealthy countries from working on the cure.

Confusion

Memory loss

Corpse feeder 1 & 2

Aneurysm

Aphasia

Coma

Genetic reshuffle 1, 2, 3

Don't worry if you have to wait a bit for a Trojan plane for some poor straggler islands, the increased time is more likely to help you than hurt you as long as all your wealthy countries are fully infected and therefore not working on the cure.

Hopefully some deadly symptoms mutated for a higher score.

Use extra DNA to grab lethal symptoms

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Guide- Necroa Virus

Boblord's notes: This is a little bit harder than the others because it's hard to get enough severity. Hordes can add up cost-wise and symptoms are hard to come by in lategame.

You need to use just enough hordes. You don't need as many as you think. When you start using hordes, focus on getting the severe symptoms over spamming hordes. Just save an extra 3 dna for the next horde, and no more.

Cure doesn't matter, and time doesn't matter terribly either, but still more than cure. What is important is ramping up severity as described above, and that will make or break 5 biohazards here.

My modifications to the original guide are marked with a *

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic, slightly modified by Boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/gk53vy/necroa_virus_mega_brutal_beat_the_cure/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genes:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic (Darwinist if you just want to win)

Suppression

Urbophile

Spliced Activation

Start in Saudi Arabia

Blood 1, Air 1 & 2

Now some symptoms, all the way to zombie creation.

Hyper Salivation, Polyphagia, Gastroenteritis, Cannibalism, Cytopathic Reanimation

Blood 2, Air 3

Now to make our zombies buffed out (Don’t worry about Z COM, they won’t be a problem).

Anaerobic Resuscitation, Enhanced Motor Control, Peptide Surge, Acidic Reflux, Naja Mortis, Autothysis.

Horde Instinct, Structured Travel, Drifting Fermentation, Dyskinetic Movement, Echopraxia, Engorged Quadriceps, Horde Mentality, Horde Vocalisation, Horde Pheromones

Now comes the hard part. I recommend playing on the slowest speed.

Z COM will be all over the place. They aren’t hard to kill, your hordes will be millions strong. But if you’re going to beat the cure then you need to be fast.

* While working on cleaning up zcom, evolve the following symptoms. Make sure you always have 3 dna to use a horde though, just in case you get stuck.

* Masticatory Tension
* Anabolic Boost
* Lumbrical Hypertrophy
* Adrenal Surge
* You may or may not have enough dna to afford everything by the time you finish consuming everything. If you have extra, get the most severe symptoms you can. The severity from these extra symptoms makes or breaks 5 biohazards.

When you’re moving hordes make sure you move them from countries with a lot of zombies, otherwise your hordes will be small.

Your hordes will travel fast over water, so don’t be afraid to send hordes from Brazil to Greenland and Iceland, or from Madagascar to Australia.

You want to roast all the rich countries first (especially Canada, just about the only way you can lose with this strategy is if Z COM sets up in Canada), as well as any places with Z COM. Usually just one horde will be enough to destroy a Z COM base, especially if they are in a low population country.

Sometimes a base is resistant. In those instances you want to find a nearby country with a huge population of zombies, and send a bunch of hordes all at once.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Guide- Simian Flu

Boblord's notes: The score here is absolutely insane. You can easily score 6 times the 100k score threshold for 5 biohazards.

Only counter to that is some ridiculous genetic shift that serves to balance the fat bank you make from ape colonies. No huge RNG here, just maxing mutation chance to save some DNA when symptoms regularly cost 100-160 DNA points

Time isn't too important, and if you do it right the cure should never get off the ground.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/1fihbqg/simian_flu_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of this guide is to not just help you win, but also understand Simian flu and how it works, especially the ways it’s different from other plagues.

Genes:

ATP Boost (quick start)

Cortisol Sensitivity (reduces research speed, very important)

Teracyte (ape to ape spread in the beginning)

Extremophile

Together Strong

The challenging part of this plague is making sure it spreads fast enough within countries once you decide to infect the world. Pretty much the only way to lose is to kill off the population before it’s fully infected.

A big part of this strategy is mutations, but you don’t need to rely on any specific mutation. Getting some good mutations will improve your score, my best is ~800k, but no matter what you should get 5 biohazards on mega brutal.

The other difficult part is stuff gets extremely expensive before you start killing off the population, which is why we focus on making sure we have a high mutation rate

Country Colony Priority Order:
Your first 4 colonies will be East Africa, Sudan, Central Africa, West Africa. These are chosen because they have the most apes in them. Central Africa has the most, but we start in East Africa to get Saudi Arabia infected quickly.

Your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th colony locations will depend on which of those has intelligent apes in it.

Start in East Africa

Simian Neuro-Genesis

We don’t want Neuro-Enhancement to mutate, so devolve it if it does, but everything else is cool, we want as many of those mutations as possible.

Ape Colonies

Start a colony at the north end of East Africa

Inter-Genus Dissemination 1 (mutations, but also helps ape to ape transmission while traveling)

Cognitive Shift

Start a 2nd colony (if you have intelligent apes in it, if not skip until you have intelligent apes

Education

Organized Travel

You need to get smart apes in every country EXCEPT GREENLAND. There is no need to take out Greenland to beat Simian so don’t waste your time on it. If it gets infected by a boat later then fine, but it doesn’t matter.To get smart apes in every other country simply send apes from a country that ***hasn’t fully infected the apes in it*** to other countries, they’ll infect the apes in every country they pass through so plan routes that go through lots of other countries along the way.

If you send apes from a country that has fully infected all the apes in it then you’ll no longer have smart apes in that country.

I like to send apes to Japan from Saudi Arabia, and to Iceland from Egypt, both in a line that passes through as many countries as possible.

The specific order of the rest of this doesn’t matter that much. I like to improve movement speed early on to spread my apes quickly, but sometimes I just evolve what I want. The important part is the main gist.Colonies generate lots of DNA, and you need transmissions/abilities which will allow for quick infection of cold & wealthy countries after you evolve hominidae.

Start a 3rd colony while you’re sending apes all over the world.

Logistics

Seafaring

Inter-Genus Dissemination 2

Start a 4th colony

Make sure you get to Indonesia asap and start a 5th colony there at some point before getting Hominidae.

Drug Resistance 1

Cold 1

They’ll detect you soon depending on what has mutated, but we don’t really care until they put up a lab.

Drug 2

Cold 2

At this point you should have intelligent apes in every country except Greenland. Use the World Screen and switch to the Apes panel to verify you have intelligent apes everywhere.

Hominidae Bridge - pause the game to pop the massive swarm of red bubbles, which should be enough DNA for all your transmissions. I pause a lot and get the transmissions as soon as I can, but I don’t know that it matters.

Fomites 1, 2, 3

Blood 1, 2

Extreme Haemoaerosol

Ape Rampage

If you have any straggler countries just do Ape Rampage and you’ll infect it. If you didn’t have intelligent apes in every country, then just send the apes from another country where the humans have already been infected. Although this can cause problems if they set up a lab in a country without intelligent apes.

Look out for those labs, destroy them quickly to keep the cure down.

They're going to use drones to target your colonies, just move the colony out of the drone circle (it will turn blue), you don't need to send it out of the country entirely

Time to grab some symptoms, hopefully you’ve had some good mutations.

Focus on high infectivity symptoms first

Important ones are pharyngitis, sneezing, epistaxis, coughing, pneumonia, haemoptysis, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dysentery

As long as you have decent infectivity everywhere you can start picking up lethal symptoms

Once all countries are fully infected you can safely go with the most lethal symptoms, hopefully some of those mutate since stuff will be expensive until you've killed a lot of the population

You’ll want to make sure you get meningitis and coma, hopefully they mutate on their own.

*If you have some spare DNA if things are looking positive, throw them into genetic reshuffle

With practice you can beat it in 800-900 days, but time really doesn’t matter with Simian, you should easily get 5 biohazards.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Guide- Shadow Plague

Boblord's notes: Another absolute joke of a 5 biohazard run. You'll easily achieve 3-7x the score needed, don't worry too much.

Time absolutely does NOT matter. Feel free to take 8 years and youll still be fine.

Some slight modifications to the original flight path were needed just to make the guide a little better quality. Removals have strikethroughs and additions are marked with a *

Original Author: u/xvblue
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/8w7v63/plague_inc_shadow_plague_five_biohazard_strategy/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

Mad Scientist

Teracyte

Healthy Eater (DNA will not be a problem with this strategy, but vampire health will be crucial early on)

Socially Awkward Bat

Extremophile

Phase One Strategy:

Start anywhere. I prefer northern Africa so I can jump around a lot early on.
*Start Greenland. This eliminates an otherwise pointless backtracking.

This will be important, because you don't want Templar Industries to take effect until you have fully-evolved Blood Rage, or have at least come close to fully evolving it.

Evolve Blood Rage followed by Adrenal Surge.

Evolve Therianthropy. Start moving around from country to country (I usually move around Europe and then over to the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific Islands). Do not linger in any one country for longer than 7-8 seconds (count meticulously in your head), and avoid stopping in the same country more than once. This is vital and will keep you from getting noticed. You could evolve Night Wraith to help with that, but I see it as a waste of precious DNA. You won't need it if you follow this strategy. You want to maximize blood rage and flight abilities as quickly as possible.

As you compile DNA while moving around, evolve Dark Infiltration and Shadow Blades.

As long as you have continued to move around without lingering, then Templar Industries should not yet exist. If it does, it's not the end of the world though. You can still get five biohazards.

Evolve Demonic Fury and then Travel Speed 1.

Sit in S.E. Asia and wait to be detected. I've noticed that if I wait somewhere in East Asia, the Templar Industries bases are likely to be concentrated in one region (usually Europe and northern Africa).

Evolve Dark Ritual 1 and Dark Ritual 2.

Templar Industries should exist by now.

Evolve Travel Speed 2 as soon as possible (this may happen before or after you start attacking Templar bases, just get it evolved ASAP).

Notice we do not have a lair yet. This is the strategy that made all the difference for me in terms of my score. If there is no lair, then Templar Industries has nothing to attack. As long as you have Dark Ritual 1 and 2 evolved, you don't need a lair to regain your health while attacking the bases, you just need to travel to a country without a Templar base and regain your health through blood rage.

Begin attacking the Templar Bases as quickly as possible. Once a base is destroyed, start blood rage in that country to regain your health rapidly. If your health runs out before you destroy a base, fly to a neighboring country, wait to regain your health, and then attack again. Do this until all of the bases are destroyed.

The faster you destroy Templar Industries, the higher your final score.

Phase Two Strategy:

The hard part is over. Now the fun begins.

All you need to concentrate on now is compiling DNA and building lairs. Don't worry about time--when I scored over a million points on mega brutal it took 2424 days to complete.

During this phase, you compile DNA through blood rages on various countries.

Evolve Lair and build your first lairs in Central America and Canada.

Fly to Greenland and Iceland and kill their entire populations through blood rage. This will prevent research organizations from forming bases there later on. During this time you will compile around 100-150 DNA.

Build a lair in France. It always ends up harder to destroy at the end if I don't have a lair there.

Build lairs in Central Africa and the Philippines. The goal is to be able to teleport quickly across the map when you need to infect continents and attack research facilities in phase three.

Kill the entire population of New Zealand.

Evolve Shadow Portal.

Travel to another country and blood rage until you have 700 DNA points.

Phase Three Strategy:

Evolve Shadow Blessing.

Evolve the following abilities: Cold Tolerance, Anti-Biotic Tolerance, Heat Tolerance, Blood Gift, Dark Cloud, Shadow Trail, and Corrupted Air.

Evolve all transmissions.

Evolve the following symptoms: Vampiric Awakening, Nocturnal, Anaemia, Pallor, Weeping Sores, Hyperdontia, Jugular Bite, Shadow Slaves, Blood Sacrifice 1, Blood Sacrifice 2, Muscular Hypotrophy, Masticatory Tension, Malignant Pigmentation.

Teleport to all of your lairs so you can instantly infect those countries and their neighbors. At this point, the Mad Scientist gene will be helpful, because all of the bubbles will automatically be popped for you.

Evolve as many symptoms as possible as you accrue DNA points.

Your new vampire should awaken by this point. Focus on destroying research facilities, evolving all remaining symptoms as your DNA compiles, and evolving more vampires every time the option is available. To maximize your score, you want to have four vampires by the time you finish.

Check to see which countries are not yet infected and fly to them.

At this point, it's all about micromanaging. Destroy research facilities and make sure your vampires don't starve by flying them to lairs or to countries that are still healthy.

The sooner you evolve lethal symptoms, the higher your score. The strategy I used is just a suggestion. Sometimes I evolve more lethal symptoms sooner. Everything happens so fast during stage three, and you have to respond to what is happening in your game.

To maximize your score, make sure every single symptom is evolved before you finish.

Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Guide- Xenolith

Boblord's notes: Pretty straightforward. Works fine without the 3 xenolith specific genes. Ill list them but I did it trivially without.

Note that meteors do decrease your score for 5 biohazards, so they're not really used here, unless you need something to get past one of those experimental resonance fields or what have you. I'll mark that when and where you should consider it.

Original Author: lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/zCLk-HsEWMw?si=F8Gi-RnA_4WyPVCn
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Tidal Pull
Harmonic Vibrations
Alien Chemistry
Hydrophile
*Again, the 3 xenolith specific genes are nice but not required.

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Start by evolving:
Organic Bridge
Subdermal Anchoring
Mineral Leeching
Replicating Lattice
Lithic Seed
Crystal Alignment
Atomic Bonding
Shatter

As soon as your meteor gets detected:
Volatile Isolation

Molecular Cleavage
Harmonic Field
Field Persistence
Local Amplification

The G-Com team should form shortly. When they fly to saudi arabia, use a crystal alignment on saudi. Should create a handful of bubbles

If countries ever create an "experimental resonance field" that prevents terraforming, ignore it. We'll clean them up at the end.

Crystal Bloom
Cascade
Unstable Construct

Crystal alignment in east africa

Resonance Cascade

Crystal alignment in saudi arabia
Shatter in saudi arabia

Crust breach
Ferrous Attraction

Crystal alignment in egypt

Thermal Siphoning

Atomic Reconfiguration 1
Atomic Reconfiguration 2
*Research may still be a bit high about now but we'll be fine. We'll still well and clear 5 biohazards.
*moved up in the ordering due to post patch making the cure go faster

Crystal alignment in egypt
Shatter in saudi arabia

Lattice Optimization
Ionic Displacement

Crystal alignment in china

Tectonic Anchoring

Shatter in central africa
You should get a LOT of bubbles now. Make sure to pop them all.

Crystal alignment in brazil

Subsurface Fracturing
Harmonic Resonance
Skeletal Integration
Flash-Vitrification
Epidermal Shedding
Hydrophobic Surface
Seismic Liquefaction

Shatter in india

Void Geometry
Piezo-Static Charge

Shatter in poland

Geometric Sprawl
Grid Siphoning

Crystal alignment in central europe

Polymer Assimilation
Solute Saturation

Shatter in canada
Shatter in russia

Macro-Crystallisation
Lithic Fissures
Silicate Purism

At this point if a country has an "experimental resonance field" active, we'll need to clear those out to win. In that case evolve:
Gravimetric Tether
Geode Burst
Piezoelectric Discharge

Drop meteors on the countries with an active field, optionally use a crystal alignment there if need be to finish the job. They should be consumed almost immediately.

At this point, everything should have been crystalized and you should have won.

Speedruns- 5 Biohazard Time Guides

The following are a series of guides designed to achieve 5-biohazard times in the speedrun section.

Additional note on speedruns:
There's a running myth that buying anything before the "speed run started" popup appears has no effect on the game. Personally, I feel like that's a bunch of bunk and anyone who says otherwise just has some shade of confirmation bias stemming from the rng in this game. Although I can't disprove it, so take that how you will. If it makes you feel more comfortable from some variant of the placebo effect, go for it, its only like a 1-3 day loss anyhow.

Speedrunning is just blatantly heavy RNG in this game. It can be mitigated with a guide, but the rougher plagues with rougher time constraints are always going to be problematic and inconsistent. There's no way around it. Lots of saves at every major point is very useful to minimize RNG. Either way, these runs go fast so it's usually no big loss. Just keep pushing that boulder up that hill.

Current guides, sources and authors:


Speedruns- Bacteria

Boblord's note: Works as is, 5 bio time is sub 365 days, which is absurdly simple. Should have little to no rng, barring an island worst case.

This is an incredibly simplistic guide, it works and works well but it's fairly unoptimized compared to some of the later plagues. I've made some minor changes to make it a little better.

My removals have strikethroughs and my additions are marked with a *

Original Author: Robert
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=231414705
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Setup:

Pathogen: Bacteria
DNA Gene: Cytochrome Surge *atp boost
Creation Gene: Genetic Mimic *darwinist
Travel Gene: Aerocyte or whatever is available *native biome
Environment Gene: Xerophile
Evolution Gene: N/A *Sympto stasis

On the Map
Start in Saudi Arabia
Keep Devolving any lethal mutations
Evolve Rash, Sweating, Skin Lesions
Evolve Water 1, Air 1, Insect 1
Evolve Drug Resistance 1
Evolve Water 2, Air 2, Insect 2
Evolve Cold 1 & 2
Evolve Coughing, Sneezing
Evolve Nausea, Vomiting
Once the cure starts, evolve Genetic Hardening 1
Evolve Bacterial Resilience 1, 2, 3
Wait until more than 4.5 billion people are infected, do not worry if all countries are not yet infected
From this point on, stop devolving mutations
Evolve Necrosis
Evolve Diarrhoea, Dysentery
Evolve Pulmonary Odema, Pulmonary Fibrosis
Evolve Total Organ Failure
Evolve Hemorrhagic Shock
Evolve Internal Hemorrhaging
Keep evolving the rest of the lethal symptoms

Greenland is the most bothersome county to infect due to being only accessible via ship
It may take you a few attempts but keep at it
If you have spare DNA points, evolve the next items in line, do not stick too close to this guide

Best of Luck and happy infecting

Speedruns- Virus

Boblord's note: Works as is, 5 bio time is sub 300(?) days. Don't precisely remember the time but this guide is pretty solid at achieving it.
Do the rat 1 at the start or don't, I don't think the choice there has a big impact on the end result, but imo I prefer higher severity asap.

Original Author: YoItsSpicy
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2015/02/plague-inc-virus-speed-run-guide.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

RECOMMENDED GENE SETUP:
ATP Boost
Native Biome
Sympto-Stasis
Based Oxidisation
Urbophile

As you may notice, the genes are set-up in a way that the starting country will have as much infectivity as possible right at the very beginning. It is all about speed, so making sure that the Virus spreads fast, we'll need to have a good base start.

TIP: Having Necrosis and some transmissions mutate early will significantly lower your days-taken to finish. On the other hand, mutating lethal symptoms like Systemic infection will make it longer. It's all about luck sometimes.

1.) Start in China, then evolve the following in this order as soon as you can:
TIP: You could also choose to evolve RAT 1 right at the beginning, it's kinda good since it increases the infection rate right off the bat. You'll have to wait for the first +1DNA tick after starting, though, since it costs 10 DNA.
Coughing
Sneezing
Pneumonia
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Cysts
Abscesses
Hypersensitivity

2.) Now we move onto abilities and transmissions after establishing a good amount of infectivity. Again, evolve the following in this order:
Drug Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 1
Water 1 & 2
Bird 1 & 2

3.) We are now nearing the part where you'll know if you will fail or not, keep evolving:
Drug Resistance 2
Necrosis
Air 1 & 2
Nausea - If necessary for Dysentery
Vomiting - If necessary for Dysentery
Diarrhoea - If necessary for Dysentery
Dysentery
Pulmonary Fibrosis - If necessary for Dysentery
Total Organ Failure
Hemorrhagic Shock

4.) This is the part where you'll find out if you're going to fail or win, you can tell by checking your world menu and infection summary spread. If there are any island countries still healthy, there's a high probability of failure in your immediate future, you can still win though, I'd say about a 45% chance of winning.

That aside, continue by evolving the following:
Cold Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
Internal Haemorrhaging
Systemic Infection
Tumours
Coma
The last 4 symptoms will make your Virus very lethal, so making sure you have every country infected is kind of necessary at this point.

5.) At this point, all you need to do is to go crazy on symptoms, evolve every single one of them if you want. But if you find yourself still unable to infect Greenland, or some other stupid island country, you might want to evolve some transmissions like extreme bioaerosol.

If done right, and if mutations don't eff you up, you will be able to finish with a 5 Biohazard score. Hurray!

Speedruns- Fungus

Boblord's notes: The threshold for 5 here is sub 200 days. This is rough and needs good rng/save loading.
  • Save load heavily for good spore rng. You need to infect greenland or iceland or the nordic countries, 2 of the NZ/aus/phillipines/gunea cluster, a country that has a ship to the caribbean/ or he caribbean itself, a country that has a ship to madagascar or madagascar itself and otherwise just a handful of rich/cold countries spread out across the map.
  • Pop 1-3 spore bursts(1 if you care for perfection, 3 if you wanna go faster), make sure you get some of the countries listed, reload if not, and save each time.
  • After you get spore hardening, make sure the profuse bleeding combo happens shortly/already happened and reload otherwise. It helps a lot, and getting it late really messes your time up.
  • Mutations matter a bit but I don't feel like they're as run breaking as good spore rng is. As awkward as it seems, you need to be hitting total organ failure/necrosis a lot faster than you'd otherwise be comfortable with. A well timed necrosis mutation is really useful.
  • Regardless, you will be reloading a bunch until you get all islands infected in a reasonable time before your lethality starts spiking. Otherwise it's too late.
  • Additionally, I like to spec into the environmental upgrades just a tad bit earlier than the guide details, and found it working nicely to finish up country infecting at the end. Once you get ToF/necrosis/maybe hemmoragic shock I usually go for it.
  • A decent spore rng run can usually finish in 180-210, varying for the remaining islands that are needed. You will need a good number of save/loads, all things considered. Getting good times in this game is just like that.

Original Author: Narth
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2015/07/plague-inc-submitted-guide-fungus-5.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

First, pick ATP boost, Suppression, Patho-Stasis, Darwinist, and Extremophile. According to rumor, suppression helps land transmission even when the border is NOT closed and considering how helpful it seemed to be, the rumor is likely true. The other genes are pretty standard for a fungus run otherwise.

Start in India. Higher population means more to infect at start, and we will be relying on increased water transmission to also help infect our humid starting country.

Wait until the speed run pop-up emerges, then close it and buy Anemia and Hemophilia. Again, rumor has it that if you evolve before the popup it hampers transmission and it would seem the rumor is true.

Buy as many spore bursts as you can. However, do not yet buy a spore eruption. If you buy a spore burst at the same time you buy a spore eruption, they sometimes cancel one another out.

At the same time, buy Rash, Sweating, and Skin Lesions. Do your best to buy these symptoms before you use up spores...the more severity you have when you infect a new country, the more DNA you get from popping each bubble.

Once you have bought all spores up to and including spore hardening, buy Water 1 and Blood 1. Then as soon as possible buy Water 2 and Blood 2. Water transmission will help infect islands which are always a pain and I think it is more reliable than hoping to get lucky with spores and random boats. I chose blood transmission (yet again, because of a rumor) because it would appear that when combined with profuse bleeding (hemophilia and skin lesions combo) infectivity is greatly increased relatively cheap which is very necessary in this run. The combo makes it easier, but even without it, this combination was a HUGE game changer for me. My runs were reduced by an average of 10 days after I started using blood. Plus, profuse bleeding combo adds a bit of lethality early which is nice.

After this, evolve Birds 1 and 2. Another standard and necessary evolution in this run.

Now switch to abilities. Evolve Drug 1 and Cold 1 and look at your lethality and countries infected. If you have managed to evolve some highly lethal transmissions while also infecting most countries, especially islands, skip to the next step. If not, evolve Fever, Immune Suppression, Total Organ Failure and Necrosis...perhaps another high lethal symptom if needed.

Now, evolve Drug 2, Cold 2, Heat 1. Evolve 2 or 3 more lethal symptoms, unless you still have quite a few countries, especially islands, to infect. The most important are going to be total organ failure and necrosis, followed by Dysentery if available (don't buy more than 1 or 2 symptoms to unlock, just get it if mutations get you close), and of course the two hemorrhaging symptoms, systemic infection, fibrosis. Tumors if leftover as well - it is not as lethal as it suggests but it helps.

Once you've evolved the first resistances and raised your lethality, evolve Drug 2 right away, followed by Heat 2 and Environmental Hardening. If all countries are not infected shortly after this, it is a bad sign.

Finally, max out your lethality as soon as possible following my symptom list in the paragraph above the last. Pay attention to what countries are not fully infected. Poland, for some odd reason, was low on infected in my record game. I bought livestock 1 and it immediately infected and killed the country in a few days, basically making the difference between a 4 and 5 biohazard game for me.

Hopefully at this point you will win in under 200 days. What will decide your game is which countries you infect at the start, followed by lucky mutations, followed by good decisions made by the player based on what is happening in game. Greenland, Iceland, Philippines, Caribbean, New Zealand, Madagascar, and Canada seem to give the most trouble in that order. Greenland not infecting at start seems to be a failure every time, and not having at least a few of the others as well.

That's the guide. Good luck!

Speedruns- Parasite

Boblord's notes: The threshold for 5 here is sub 365 days. This is absurdly easy again, even with really poor rng on islands and something like canada/nz.

The guide leaves out some key symptoms and has some poor decisions regarding some very severe symptoms before air 1, resulting in having saudi's airports shut before we can really take advantage of them. I've adjusted the guide accordingly and marked my changes with a *

Mutations are less ideal as time is barely a concern here, all they lead to is islands getting shut prematurely. If it's something useless ignore it, if its something like organ failure or necrosis early that might be a little problematic.

Original Author: JASON O
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2015/07/plague-inc-submitted-guide-parasite-5.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Parasite

Genes:

  1. ATP Boost
  2. Aquacyte
  3. Sympto-Stasis
  4. Base Hydrolysis
  5. Extremophile

Start in Saudi Arabia

  1. Coughing
  2. Pneumonia
  3. Pulmonary Oedema
  4. Rash
  5. Sweating
  6. Skin Lesions
  7. Sneezing
    * Purchase Air 1 here
  8. Immune Suppression
  9. Anaemia
  10. Haemophila
    * Purchase Cysts here
    * Purchase Abscesses
  11. Systemic Infection
    12. Air 1
  12. Air 2
  13. Water 1
  14. Water 2
  15. Extreme Bioaerosol
  16. Drug Resistance 1
  17. Cold Resistance 1
  18. Cold Resistance 2
  19. Heat Resistance 1
  20. Heat Resistance 2
  21. Environmental Hardening
    * Purchase Diarrhoea here
  22. Dysentery
  23. Necrosis
  24. Haemoragic Shock
  25. Drug Resistance 2
  26. Total Organ Failure

Depending on your situation, you can swap 25, 26, and 27 to get better times/infectivity

Speedruns- Prion

Boblord's notes: The threshold for 5 here is sub 350 days. Prion is notoriously very very slow, which doesn't help for this challenge at all.

I need to make some larger changes to the underlying strategy of this gude, my additions are marked with * and my removals are marked with strikethroughs

You want early profuse bleeding and projectile vomiting. Make saves after getting them nice and early and work off of those saves.

Still very very RNG based. You need to step on the gas early and NEVER let off. This means greenland and the carribean may be a little rng at times due to port countries shutting off sooner. That's just the way it is. Run the table until you get lucky. It'll happen sooner or later. I hate being this RNG based, but it's just the way anything resembling speed is with prion.

Original Author: u/Shiboleth17
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/3s5w3o/prion_speed_run_guide_5_bio/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genes: ATP Boost, Aerocyte, Sympto-Stasis, Darwinist, Extremophile

Start in Saudi Arabia

Wait for the Speed Run pop-up, then evolve the following in this order:

Anaemia
Haemophilia

Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Make sure Profuse Bleeding Combo happens soon

Nausea
Vomiting
Diarrhoea

Coughing
Make sure Projectile Vomit Combo happens soon

Necrosis
Dysentery

The sudden release of planes/boats going everywhere should provide you the large amount of DNA you will need for those last two in a relatively short period of time.

* This is where what you need to do consistently diverges from the guide. You need to step on the gas here and run the rng. Go full lethal. Do NOT let up or get worried you might miss countries. You can reload, but you can't afford to slow down. Prion is TOO SLOW to kill.

Purchase pulmonary oedema, fibrosis, total organ failure, and hemorrhagic shock.

If anything mutates, just let it happen. The more, the better. Continue to evolve all of the remaining tier 1 and 2 symptoms that increase infectivity...

* Feel free to do the infectivity symptoms later or not at all, I like coughing/sneezing/pneumonia but not the others. You need to be pushing lethality and making sure you hit islands, not general infectivity at this point.

Pneumonia

Sneezing

Cysts

Abscesses

Hyper Sensitivity

Then start working on Abilities and Transmissions.

Drug and Cold Resistance 1

* Get internal hemorrhaging here.

Water 1, Bird 1, Air 1.

Drug and Cold Resistance 2

Water and Air 2

Extreme Bioaerosol

Now, evolve all lethal symptoms, leaving Organ Failure last (if you go Organ failure too early, islands will shut down early). If every island gets infected, immediately evolve Total Organ Failure (even if all countries haven't been infected, we only really care about islands), then continue with the remaining deadly symptoms.

Internal Hemorrhaging

Hemorrhagic Shock

Pulmonary Oedema

Pulmonary Fibrosis

Fever

Immune Suppression

Tumors

Systemic Infection

Inflammation

Paralysis

Coma

Total Organ Failure

These last few things may or may not help, not sure. But by this time, there really isn't much else for you to do anyway, since by now, there should be no healthy people remaining, and you should have every lethal symptom.

Heat 1 and 2

Environmental Hardening

Speedruns- Nano-Virus

Boblord's notes: The threshold for 5 here is sub 250(? don't precisely remember) days. Regardless, it's not hard to hit 220 as the nano-virus is built to race against the clock.

I need to make some minor changes to the underlying strategy of this guide, as the original did not touch replicator overload(why not????). My additions are marked with * and my removals are marked with strikethroughs

Really not too bad beyond making sure you're set up to hit greenland and eat good off of your overload.

Original Author: ste33
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2016/05/plague-inc-nano-virus-speed-run-guide.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

1) Gene setup:
• ATP Boost
• Darwinist
• Native Biome
• Sympto-Stasis
• Extremophile

2) Start in Saudi Arabia

  1. Pause the game right after the speed run pop up appears and evolve simultaneously:
    • Coughing
    • Cysts
    • Hyper Sensitivity
    • Insomnia
    • Paranoia
    • Rash
    • Sweating

4) Continue the game evolving:
Nausea
Vomiting
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Abscesses
Anaemia
Haemophilia
Paralysis (at the same time of Haemophilia)
Coma (at the same time of Haemophilia)
Water and Insect 1
Skin Lesions
Diarrhoea
Water and Insect 2
Drug Resistance 1 and 2
Cold Resistance 1 and 2
Seizures
Insanity
* Code fragment interception
* Code segment interception
* Replicator overload
Necrosis
Dysentery
Livestock 1 and 2
Fever
Systemic Infection
Tumors
Bird 1 and 2
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Heat Resistance 1
Total Organ Failure
Tumors
Internal Haemorraging
Pulmonary Oedema
* Once all countries are infected, get total organ failure and anything else below.
Heat Resistance 2
Environmental Hardening
Haemorragic Shock
Immuno Suppression
Inflammation
Air 1 [and 2]

Speedruns- Bio-Weapon

Boblord's notes: 5 bio time is sub 200 days. This one really isn't pretty. There's nothing that we can chalk it up to like fungus with spore rng or prion with slower lethality. This one is just straight up challenging to hit the right RNG. No other way about it.

I had to make some minor adjustments to solve getting africa infected faster, as that's the most challenging part of this strat. Islands are what they are, but never usually that awful considering its a short jump to russia and then the nordic port countries.

Additionally, you really, REALLY need good mutation timing. If either necrosis(ideally) or dysentery doesn't mutate by the time you make it to purchasing drug 1, consider a restart/reload. The earlier the better. You could try and run it through and purchase the missing one manually, but you'll probably come in 10-20 days short of the threshold.

As per usual, my additions are marked with a * and my removals are marked with a strikethrough

Original Author: JASON O
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2015/09/plague-inc-submitted-guide-bio-weapon.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genes:
ATP Boost, Darwinist, Suppression, Sympto-Stasis, Urbophile

Start in China
Only evolve the first symptom/transmission after the speed run pop-up is closed, or it seems to mess with the bonus!
Rodent 1
Coughing
Sneezing
Pneumonia
Cysts
Abscesses
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Pulmonary Oedema
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Bird 1
Bird 2
Water 1
Air 1

This is where you'll need to make some on-the-fly work.Necrosis (If necrosis or dysentery have evolved already, evolve drug 1, heat 1, and cold 1 first, then necrosis or dysentery)
* Purchase either necrosis or dysentery. The other should have mutated by this point. If it hasn't, just reload. You're cooked with how tight the time is.

Drug 1
Heat 1
Cold 1
Dysentery (if it hasn't evolved)
Systemic Infection
Drug 2
Heat 2
Cold 2
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Total Organ Failure
Environmental Hardening

* We just need to ensure africa and south america are handled timely. All islands should be well on their way to collapsing at this point
* Insect 1
* Hemorrhagic Shock
* Livestock 1
* Internal hemorrhaging
* A good portion of the other pretty lethal symptoms(tumors, immune suppression, etc)
* Blood 1
* Any remaining lethal symptoms

Depending on your state, you need to make a decision here.

  1. If every country is infected (to a reasonable level):
    Haemorrhagic Shock
    Internal Bleeding
    Coma
    All other lethal symptoms

--OR--

  1. If the countries aren't all infected:
    Insect 1
    Livestock 1
    Blood 1
    Haemorrhagic Shock
    Internal Bleeding
    Coma
    All other lethal symptoms

Speedruns- Neurax Worm

Boblord's notes: 5 bio time is sub 200 days. A bit tight, but not too rng heavy due to trojan planes.

This guide is designed for pushing the WR time, which more or less relying on heavier rng to make things easier. We don't need to do that. As such, we can take a little easier of a path than otherwise.

As per usual, my additions are marked with a * and my removals are marked with a strikethrough

Original Author: u/Abloy72
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/cltzw9/trying_to_better_a_170day_neurax_worm_speedrun/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genes: ATP Boost Suppression Trans-Stasis Darwinist Extremophile

Starting country: China, though I've experimented with Saudi Arabia and can get into similar ranges. This is a China-specific run though. Substitute the rodent transmissions with air for SA start.

Start: don't evolve anything until closing speedrun popup Eggs 1, 2

Rodent 1

Locomotions 1, 2

Rodent 2

Bird 1. (Should infect first adjacent country right around then)

Bird 2

Trojan Planes 1.

* Plane orderings:
* First plane goes to brazil if north and south america are uninfected.
* Otherwise, send to central africa if saudi arabia is uninfected
* Otherwise send to west africa if saudi is infected
* Otherwise, pick your favorite island. Greenland, Madagascar, and the Caribbean are probably the most important 3 to knock off in that order.
* Any other planes go to untouched countries or countries that are a bit slower in infection rates

China should get a plane almost immediately. If the New World is already infected, I send the plane to Central Africa or West Africa, depending on whether Saudi Arabia is infected. If Africa is infected, it goes to Brazil. If somehow the Americas and Africa are already infected (yay!), central Europe. I send planes wherever they're most convenient thereafter.

Things get a bit more flexible after this spot—based on what's getting infected

Bug 1

Water 1,2,3

* Trojan Planes 2

Air 1,2,3

Bug 2

Drug 1, 2

Cold 1,2

Heat 1

Genetic swap

Mutative regeneration 1, 2

Symptom time! I usually go this route:

Neural breach

Cerebral tendrils

Frontal mesh

Immaturity

Mania

Obsession

Devotion

* Better if transcendence mutates on its own, but still very doable if that's not the case.
* Make sure you have all islands cleaned up at this point as transcendence triggers country collapse which stops ships.

Transcendence

* Heat resistance 2

* Environmental hardening if you have the dna

All the while praying to the RNG gods that Transcendence will mutate in / all the islands will get infected in a timely fashion. If Transcendence or Devotion don't mutate, the run is usually in the 195-185 range. If they do, 185-175. Past that, it's a brick wall. I don't get how anyone gets to the 150 mark, short of the RNG Gods going insane.

Speedruns- Necroa Virus

Boblord's notes: 5 bio time is sub 300 days. This one stinks. Timing is incredibly rough to get sub 300, and VERY heavy rng. Either use lots and lots of attempts, or extensive save loads.

The guide below is one I cooked up myself, prepare to spend about an hour working through the save/load heavy section. Either spend an hour trying the save load or waste multiple hours just gambling away on rng runs. Up to you.

Original Author: Yours f*cking truly, Boblord
Source: It came to me in a dream
-------------------------------------------------------------------

There's no real functional guide for this. The existing "guides" have record times of 320-ish days. I'm splicing this together from like 3-4 different guides, reddit comments, discord messages, and way too much time wasted on this slop.

This plague stinks. It's very very slow when it wants to be, and massively rng. Midgame and endgame is easy enough, and this is where most people struggle as they just save load mid/endgame where it's already too late.

The key to winning this is to speed up the early game. And with a little datamining and absolutely degenerate amounts of save/load, we can do it.

The key behind this strat is the random chance to get dna points every day. Normally, it's god-like rng to get say, 6-7 dna points in a week. With saving at every point, we can pull nutty stuff like that off. Macro the S/L now if you want, it doesn't get better with some of the other really bad plagues.

We're focusing on tight time constraints to get upgrades and (sometimes) events. Reload if you don't get them. As should be expected, any negative event or zcom picking a bad location should be an instant reload. If you're faithful about it, you should only lose 1-3 days anyhow.

Let's get into it. Godspeed.

Gene setup:
- ATP Boost
- Suppression
- Spliced Activation
- Darwinist
- Xerophile

- Start in saudi

- Start with Zoonotic shift immediately

- Purchase insect within 10 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase hyper salivation within 14 days of the previous upgrade

- Side note: Get festival of love to trigger within 50ish days of your start date. Can drag it out to 2 months, but why be slow? It's a 1/400 chance of triggering every day.

- Purchase polyphagia within 12 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase gastroenteritis within 14 days of the previous upgrade

More or less all of the above should be done by the end of the 50ish day threshold.

While doing the next 2 transmission upgrades below, cannibalism should mutate. Reload a few saves until it does.

- Purchase bat 1 within 14 days of the previous upgrade

DNA might get a little harder to get here. In a few weeks you should be hitting some new country infections. If you want, save/load them until you get 3 dna for each red bubble.

- Purchase bat 2 within 30-32 days of the previous upgrade

- Save up 14 DNA for cytopathic reanimation over 21-24 days. Reminder that we're relying on cannibalism to mutate before you hit the 14 DNA threshold. Reload otherwise.

At this point you should be just passing 4 months by like 5-15 days. Making good time with a total day count of about 125 days.

- If you're all good on time and mutations, get cytopathic reanimation

- Purchase anaerobic resuscitation within 12-14 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase enhanced motor control within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase peptide surge within 7(or less, may have enough already) days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase acidic reflux within 7-10 days of the previous upgrade

You're probably getting 3-5 DNA points per red bubble at this point, shoot for all 4s and possibly 5s when possible.

- Purchase autothysis within 30 days of the previous upgrade

Note at this point: if z-com triggers early, reload. In regards to placement, anywhere in eurasia or greenland/iceland is ideal. Anything in the americas or oceania is a reload.

- Purchase horde instinct within 2-3 days of the previous upgrade

At this point a note on hordes: Don't bother until we get the second horde capacity upgrade, anything less is insignificant. I'll detail more when we get there.

- Purchase structured travel, drifting fermentation, dyskinetic movement, echopraxia, and engorged quadriceps (yes, all of them. they're cheap) within 7 days of the previous upgrade

You may be close to triggering another mutation soon. Make sure it is dermal calcification.

- Purchase horde mentality within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde vocalization within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde pheromones within 7 days of the previous upgrade

At this point you should be around 7 months into the run. If your time is good, move on to the second half of the game.

The next 4 upgrades should be done in parallel to your horde work. Recommended DNA thresholds included

- When you reach about 23-25 DNA, purchase cranial elephantitis

- When you reach 30-32 DNA, purchase bone dysplasia

For the horde segment, play on 1x speed and always pause when sending your hordes. Get as many out as you can. Focus on short jumps between countries, horde travel between neighboring countries should usually take no longer than 1-2 days.

Horde time. Let's get cooking. These are just recommended destinations, but I've noticed it can be hard to get to the North American countries, the central European countries, and the Oceania countries. Focus on getting those out.

Note when fighting z-com: just send 2-3 hordes to their country. Should be no issues here.

- Libya to Italy

- Brazil to Colombia

- India to Australia

- East Africa to Madagascar

- Turkey to Russia(Russia is a good base for many other countries)

- Italy to France

- Colombia to C. America

- Russia to Finland

- Australia to New Zealand

- China to Korea

- Russia to Japan

- C. America to Mexico

- Colombia to Caribbean

- Australia to New Guinea

- Australia to Indonesia

- Indonesia to Philippines

- Russia to Baltic States

- Russia to Ukraine

- Brazil to Bolivia

- Brazil to Argentina

- Italy to Central Europe

- France to Germany

- France to Spain

- Baltic States to Poland

- Germany to Norway

- Libya to West Africa

- Norway to Iceland

- Norway to Greenland

- West Africa to Morocco

That should cover the majority of the map. Next, focus on making sure the countries with the most healthy populations get zombie reinforcements ASAP. Focus on draining the destroyed countries if you need zombies to send. Remember, short jumps are best.

The 3 North American countries should be the hardest 3 to fell here. Send some zombies up from South America and don't forget to bring Greenland/Iceland over. If you're early about it, feel free to send some zombies trans-Atlantic from Europe or Africa to help.

If you have spare DNA points feel free to throw them into:

- Masticatory Tension

- Lumbrical Hypertrophy

Otherwise just use the map to see what you need to hit and focus on overwhelming everything with as many hordes as you can.

Even with all this saving and loading, the time for this is TIGHT. If you've been playing this right, you should have a number of saves to fall back on and fix whatever part went a little too slow. With enough determination, this can be swept pretty handily.

Speedruns- Simian Flu

Boblord's notes: 5 bio time is sub 300 days. No better than necroa gameplay-wise.

Extensive use of save/load is used to mitigate some of the rougher RNG in one of the most RNG heavy speedruns.

This guide is a modified version of one from the r/plagueinc subreddit, adjusted by myself to fit with day limits for save/loading. The upgrade order is the original author's, the formatting and anything else are mine.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/1ga2uw4/simian_flu_speed_run_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Lots of save/loading will be needed, especially in the early game where there's a random chance to get DNA points each day, and when the amount of DNA per bubble varies. You need to have insane RNG to pull this off, but we can run the table using constant saving when something good happens.

Genes:
ATP Boost
ATP Overdose
Suppression
Extremophile
Viral Affinity

Saudi start

- Start with Pharyngitis, Air 1, and Bird 1

- Purchase Sneezing within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Epistaxis within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Coughing within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Pneumonia within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Air 2 within 14-16 days of previous upgrade

Your first mutation should be occurring soon. Make sure it's Pulmonary Hemorrhage.

- Purchase Water 1 within 14 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Water 2 within 21 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Drug 1 within 10 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Cold 1 within 10 days of previous upgrade

At this point you should start having red bubbles to pop. Make sure to take advantage of

- Purchase Drug 2 within 14 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Cold 2 within 14 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Nausea within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Vomiting within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Blood 1 within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Diarrhea within 12 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Blood 2 within 10 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Fomites 1 within 10 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Simian Neurogenesis within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Hominidae Bridge within 12 days of previous upgrade

Your second mutation should be occurring soon. Make sure it's Dysentery.

- Purchase Hypocoaguability within 14 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Hydroencephalus within 12 days of previous upgrade

At this point just verify all islands are infected. You should be a bit before ports start closing, check now and rewind a little if rng didn't go your way.

- Purchase Neuro-Enhancement 1 within 14 days of previous upgrade

Your third mutation should be occurring soon. Make sure it's Meningitis.

- Purchase Neuro-Enhancement 2 within 10 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Neuro-Enhancement 3 within 10 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Total Brain Death within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Hemorrhagic Shock within 21 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Inter-genus Dissemination 1 within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Inter-genus Dissemination 2 within 7 days of previous upgrade

- Purchase Internal Haemorrhaging within 16 days of previous upgrade

That should be wraps. Now remember that you don't need to fully kill everyone, only get the infected population lower than the intelligent ape population. Greenland seems to struggle to spread, so don't worry about finishing the job there.

Speedruns- Shadow Plague

Boblord's notes: 5 bio time is sub 365 days(I think? Not too sure here)

This one really isn't that bad, it's just slow(time investment wise, the ingame time is obviously decent) as you have to do a LOT of flying around, especially lategame with multiple vampires,

Feel free to swap the mad scientist gene out for something else, it's useless but the others arent much more useful.

Original Author: wandering_stoic
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/gjkvim/shadow_plague_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_speed_run/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genes:

Harvester

Socially Awkward Bat

Teracyte

Urbophile

Mad Scientist

Start in western China, close to the border with India.

Shadow Blessing

Blood Rage

Blood Gift

Start a Blood Rage in China

Dark Cloud

Shadow Trail

Therianthropy

After 13 million infected in China, fly to India

Corrupted Air

You’re going to be traveling fast now, unless otherwise noted stay in each country only until you get over 1 million infected, which should be about 1 day.

Fly to Saudi Arabia

While you are flying get Nocturnal, Anaemia, Pallor, Weeping Sores

Fly to Russia

While you are flying get Hyperdontia

Fly to Finland

While you are flying get Jugular Bite

Next fly to Sweden, then Norway, then Germany.

Along the way get Travel Speed 1 and 2.

Fly to Central Europe, then Italy.

Along the way get Dog 1.

Fly to Spain, stay until you have at least 7 million infected.

Dog 2

Fly to France

Wolf 1

Fly to UK

Wolf 2

Fly to Iceland, stay until over 300K are infected.

Bat 1

Fly to Greenland, stay until 54K are infected.

Bat 2

Fly to Canada, Stay until 24 million are infected

Vampiric Awakening

Fly to US, stay until 8 million infected

Bat 3

Fly to Caribbean

Fly to Mexico

Fly to Central America

Dark Ritual 1

Fly to Columbia

Fly to Argentina

Fly to Brazil

Lair

Shadow Portal

They should be throwing up labs right now. Detour if a nearby country gets a lab.

You should get a second vampire right now, and both Africa and Australia will be largely uninfected.

Send one vampire to the Australia region and hit all the islands. Put a Lair in Australia.

Send one vampire to Africa and go around to all the countries. Put a Lair in Angola.

As you are doing that it’s also time to make some shadow slaves.

Shadow Slaves

Muscular Hypotrophy

Adrenal Surge

Dark Infiltration

Dark Ritual 2

Around now the Templars should be showing up. The first couple bases you hit should be destroyed by one vampire easily, but the later ones will need both vampires at once.

Shadow Blades

Vampiric Awakening again for your 3rd vampire

Check which countries aren’t fully infected at this point. Usually Canada, Spain, some countries in the Middle East. Fly a vampire to each one to finish the infection and win.

Malignant Pigmentation

Latent Adaptation

These last two will set back the cure getting you a better score, hopefully they mutate for you.

If you find yourself struggling with the Templars in one country then put a lair in that country so you can instantly move your vampires in and out of the country.

It’s a lot easier to destroy a Templar base if you can infect the whole country.

Speedruns- Xenolith

Boblord's notes: 5 bio time is sub 300 days(I think? Not too sure here)

Absolutely free, just takes time for the dna xna to come in to afford meteors.

The xenolith genes are not required, but are nice to have. You'll get 5 biohazards just fine.

Original Author: lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/xsLBWEV7-_s?si=P3HwbAV_E4wV4wTS
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:
Atp boost
Unstable trajectory
Magnetic Siphon
Quantum Obfuscation
Xerophile

Starting Country: Libya

Organic Bridge
Lithic Seed
Gravimetric Tether
Kinetic Impact

Send meteor to USA

Meteor Shower
Meteor Storm
Armageddon

Send meteor to Central Europe
Send meteor to Central Africa
Send meteor to China
Send meteor to Brazil
Send meteor to USA

One meteor to each continent and it's game over, ggs. Should take 260ish days or less. If meteor shields pop up just restart, this plague is fast enough that it's trivial to just not get them.

Scenarios- Mega Brutal 3 Biohazard Score Guides

The following are a series of guides designed to obtain 3 biohazard scores on mega brutal difficulty on every scenario in the game.

Every guide is viable at an easier difficulty as they are all aimed for mega brutal. Some of these can be RNG and are best helped along via lots of save/loading, but I've tried my best to mitigate that as much as possible.

Some scenarios allow you to pick your plague to do the scenario with, and I will not be covering every plague. The majority of the time the optimal pick is neurax worm, which will be used instead. If you want to do something like pirate plague on mega brutal with prion, be my guest.

Pirate plague/volcanic ash/shut down everything have their own separate section in this guide for their unique "get 3 biohazards on every plague on normal or above" achievements. Only one plague will be used for the guides in this section.

Current guides, sources and authors:

Scenarios- Herd Immunity

Boblord's notes: The scoring for this scenario is really rough right now, not entirely sure of a solution, but after ndemic's latest patch it's really hard to even sniff 60k much less the 65k threshold. You'll still win with this strat but 3 bio may be a patch away at the moment.

The wincon is a little funky here, but this strat does work. All people need to either be immune or dead, so functionally this is a much easier wincon.

With that said we go REALLY fast so islands can be screwed since you won't have a lot of time to wait on ships. May take a few attempts but you go quick.

Original Author: Lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/qTY-QkTn7hw?si=6cnJJi0Xy1ysJNYq
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague Type: Nano Virus

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Evolve:
Cysts
Abscesses
Paralysis
Coma
Insomnia
Paranoia
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Coughing
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Nausea
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Bird 1
Bird 2
Water 1
Cold 1
Cold 2
Drug 1
Genetic Hardening 1
Genetic Hardening 2
Drug 2
Radical Elements Stablized
Drug Immunity
Rodent 1
Livestock 1
Water 2
Livestock 2
Rodent 2
Extreme Zoonosis

When every island is infected:
Necrosis
Insanity
Hemorrhagic Shock
Encryption Breached

By this point people should start recovering and becoming immune en masse. When theres only a few people left infected, evolve Broadcast Interceptor Overload, so the final cure % is significantly lower, and you get a better score

Scenarios- Measles

Boblord's notes: Works as is. Do note the new vaccination mechanic here that we need to work against.

Original Author: Lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/ZwEEL8sKUBY?si=1gTKMXmpFnYlGqyo
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:
Catalytic Switch
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Evolve:
Sneezing
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Pneumonia
Insomnia
Subconjunctival Bleed
Vaccine Bypass 1
Bird 1
Bird 2
Water 1
Drug 1
Drug 2
Cold 1
Cold 2
Rodent 1
Livestock 1
Genetic Hardening 1
Genetic Hardening 2
Diarrhoea
Vomiting
Nausea
Pulmonary Oedema
Fever

Whenever the vaccine release event hits: Vaccine Bypass 2

Necrolysis
Coma

Mutations should finish the rest of the symptoms on their own.

Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3

Any symptoms you have left to save the time

Scenarios- Cure Mania

Boblord's notes: I've made some slight adjustments because catalytic switch is really funny here.

Original Author: Lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/3ZzuWQVE1-g?si=B9aEQWnOkVjcqx6f
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague Type: Virus

Genetic Code:
Catalytic Switch
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Evolve:

Cysts
Abcesses
Hyper Sensitivity
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Bird 1
Bird 2
Water 1
Cold 1
Cold 2
Drug 1
Drug 2
Rodent 1
Livestock 1
Water 2
Genetic Hardening 1
Genetic Hardening 2
Blood 1
Livestock 2

At this point enough mutations and symptoms should have triggered the cure bubbles. Start popping for free DNA. Start watching to ensure you hit all islands about now.

When last island infected continue with:
Necrosis
Hemorrhagic Shock
Fever
Immune Suppression
Total Organ Failure
Coma
Paralysis
Inflammation
Seizures
Insanity
Diarrhea
Literally every other symptom because you're getting so many cure bubbles
Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3

If you really need them, you can get some heat resistance before the reshuffles.

Scenarios- Leprosy

Boblord's notes: Works as is. This plague gets severe very quickly(blame it being typed as a parasite for no reason, Leprosy is very much not a parasite what are we doing ndemic

Update: This has been patched twice now. Currently they overcompensated and it's very VERY easy compared to the original state. Before that, the first patch made it much slower at the start and a lot harder. This could be changed again, but right now there's no concerns scorewise beyond actually hitting islands.

Biggest concern is ports closing due to our speed, otherwise works as described. Mutations of the final two symptoms that end up costing 40-50 are nice too, but not required

Original Author: Lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/AMJEFrjAFac?si=s4NxB-9K4rcmYrG2
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene setup:
ATP boost
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Urbophile
Patho-Stasis

Start in Russia. You should get a few red bubbles at various places across the world.

Evolve:
Livestock 1
Genetic Overhaul
Incubation 2
Livestock 2
Bird 1
Water 1
Heat Resistance 1
Heat Resistance 2
Drug Resistance 1
Rodent 1
Drug Resistance 2
Deformations
Induration
Genetic Hardening 1
Incubation 3
Abcesses
Rapid Abcesses
Necrosis
*Start your watch for islands here. Necrosis shoots up your severity quite a bit.

Drug Resistance 3
Genetic Hardening 2
Cold Resistance 1
Water 2
Epidermal Failure
Organ Exposure
Cold 2
Either Environmental Hardening or Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3, depending on the state of the world.

Scenarios- Plague Legacy

Boblord's notes: No genes adds an incredible amount of RNG to an already time stressed score requirement.

Virus is the ideal disease as we can cheat out a lot of symptoms to be efficient with our DNA point spending.

Save/Loading is ideal here, as otherwise you're hoping to get ideal mutations for quite a while, island infections ASAP as ports shut fast, and the nordic countries just being obnoxiously slow as usual.

Biggest note- I'd just reload if there's any world adjustments(aid program, livestock legislation, etc). All these significantly screw things up.

The mutations listed below are the optimal path. We'll be riding on the viral instability traits here, so we'll try and make sure we hit our mutations. If you don't, you might struggle a little, but for how frequent mutations are, you have some wiggle room with getting them. You can afford to purchase one of the expensive ones(mainly necrosis) occasionally but you'll stall out if you waste too much DNA on them.

Additions marked with * and removals with a strikethrough

Original Author: ur.local.drug.dealer
Source: https://discord.com/channels/1026953079758786601/1027311949811306526/1375577559902847087 in the Plague Inc Hub discord[discord.gg]
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Disease: Virus

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Evolution Order:

Rash
Sweating
*Viral Instability 1
Air 1
*Viral Instability 2

Skin lesions
*If skin lesions mutated, pick up coughing instead.
Heat resistance 1
*Viral Instability 3
Cold resistance 1

Necrosis (mutated) *required this early. The high severity means we need to push hard to get everything before ports shut, and this starts the ticking time bomb before it's too late. Should mutate this but if you really really need to, you can buy it.

Rodent 1
Water 1
Drug resistance 1
Coughing(if you didn't get it before)
Sneezing
Immune suppression

TOF (mutated)
*hemorrhagic shock might work here too, but that prevents us from having access to coma and the cure-related symptoms. You'll need to go the insomnia-paranoia path instead for them. One of these two should mutate, it's simply too expensive to buy otherwise and keep our evolution on track.

Cold resistance 2
Drug resistance 2
Bird 1
Blood 1
Livestock 1 and 2
Water 2

Coma (Mutated)
*if you went hemorrhagic shock, spec into the cheap cure symptoms and hope to mutate something like insanity or coma from that direction.

Heat resistance 2
Environmental Hardening
Rodent 2
Bird 2
Blood 2

Systemic infection (mutated)
*doesn't really matter, just something that pushes infection numbers

Genetic hardening 1 and 2

*play with the order of the below symptoms depending on what mutated already at this point
*Coma
*Paralysis
*Inflammation
*Seizures
*Insanity

Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
*Genetic Reshuffle 3 (if you can afford it)

Hemorrhagic shock (mutated)
*or total organ failure

Paralysis (mutated)
Genetic reshuffle 2

Insomnia (mutated)
*anything goes at this point

Scenarios- Greenland International

Boblord's notes: Absolutely no guide needed whatsoever, but here

Original Author: Boblord
Source: The CIA beamed it into my brain
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Just copy one of the generic neurax worm or nano virus strats from above for MB, it's really not that hard here. Most of the generic scenario ones below work as well.

This is just the normal game, but easier.

Scenarios- Fake News

Boblord's notes: Very easy scenario to do, you shouldn't be in trouble at any point in this run.

I found China to be a good start. Didn't test US or India but I feel like they'd work well also since starting country stops mattering very quickly here.

Original Author: BluePython101
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1947791721
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting the Game

First, choose a starting country for your fake news. China, India, and the USA have been proven to work with this guide, but it is likely other countries would work as well.

Create Your Manifesto
It doesn't matter what you choose for this, as it is not that important to the gameplay.

First Evolutions

When evolving your news, make sure not to hold onto DNA for longer than necessary to get the next trait. Our goal here is to try to balance virality and plausibility; community is not that important.

Evolve the following traits in order:
- Word of Mouth
- Internet
- Memes
- Influencers
- Bot Network 1
- Out of Context
- Bot Network 2
- Hire Fake Experts
- Viral Chat Messages
- Media Outreach
- Fabricate Data
- TV Targeting
- Talk Show
- Onboard Politician
- Onboard Political Party
- Exploit Institutions

If fact-checking is rapidly starting to become completed, and about 40% of the world is informed at this point, then skip to the adaptability section. If not, continue below with:

- Buy a TV Network
- Buy a Newspaper
- Billboards
- Print Targeting

Adaptability and Winning
Now the cure should progressing and a large percentage of the world will be informed. As long as the fact-checking doesn't get completed, it won't matter how far it gets because it will reset at the end of the game to net us all three biohazards. To slow the cure and win the game, evolve:

- Tweet Mean Things
- If you didn't have to skip the end of the previous section, also evolve Focus on Irrelevant Details and Claim Witch Hunt
- Accusation of Bias
- Discredit Experts
- Discredit Informational Sources

At this point, it should be getting to close to having half the world become informed. Continue with:

- Expand Victim List
- Defamation Lawsuits
- Media Hit Piece

The cure should now be at around 50% or higher. Purchase:

- Expand Blame List
- Hack Experts
- Misinformation Merge
- Misinformation Reshuffle

That should've been the final push needed to get 50% of the world deceived. Once you hit that mark, the misinformation will spread rapidly and the cure progress will be almost completely reset.

Congratulations! You just beat the Fake News Scenario on Mega Brutal with 3 biohazards.

Scenarios- Ultimate Board Games

Boblord's notes: Basically free if you just follow the guide in the order it's laid out in. Don't be too worried by the time if you still have things to purchase while selling your game at the end. You'll be fine.

I added the starting combo, as the original guide just says "get a combo". I just tossed in the Catan combo. The actual combo used doesn't matter if you want to look up another one.

Original Author: Shamrock Gamer
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2427483272
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting Game Design:

Make sure your game is one of the official combos, as it will increase the hype and make the rest of the game easier. One is provided below.

Catan combo:
Themes
- Strategy
- War Game

Mechanics
- Player Elimination
- Area Control
- Dice Rolling
- Competitive Play

Components
- Dice
- Miniatures

Player Number
- Two Players
- Three Players
- Four + Players

Start in the UK

Build up hype
In this section, spanning from 24 months to 6 months, you need to try to unlock as many of the production traits as possible.
I usually unlock all of them except for made in China.

First ones
- Test Session
- How to play videos
- Advertise in stores
- Kickstarter

Wait for the Kickstarter to end.
While you wait, evolve the video game IP, and Film/TV IP
Websites are a good idea too

The end of a kickstarter will have tons of bubbles. Pause the game to collect all your biohazard bubbles.

You should now try to keep your supporters happy, and evolve all other traits
Your goal is what I like to call "the Critical Mass". This is when you have so many people in a country interested, that it rapidly snowballs and everyone becomes interested.

You shouldn't be discouraged by low numbers but if you hit 12 - 8 months left and aren't getting red planes or ships, restart, and try again with a less complex board game.

After getting all the production traits, save up for Made in Germany and Made in USA
DO NOT GET MADE IN CHINA!

Its great to have made in America but if you hit 6 months left and don't have enough funds, ignore it.

I usually start production before 6 months but after 12. It all depends on how quickly you can evolve the production traits.

Sell!

Begin manufacturing, and send out test copies. Also play the game with family first.

Now go into the Distribution tab.

Begin to sell your game.

Make the following:
- Deals with Amazon (Amazon is to the UBS as Total Organ Failure is to the standard game)
- A companion app
- All the sellers, especially International Sellers
- Translation 1, Increase production 1, and the full Super Fan Sellout tree

If all has gone well you should have almost 7 Billion sales and have completely beat the game.
If not, just try again with a lower complexity.

Scenarios- Science Denial

Boblord's notes: We're fast enough that we can 3 bio without the cure reset.

The original guide was a video, the text version is transcribed by me.

Original Author: u/Theterrariaboi and transcribed by Boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Plague_Inc/comments/bq74sb/a_mega_brutal_3_biohazard_strategy_for_science/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Nano-Virus

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost

Aerocyte

Sympto-Stasis

Genetic Mimic

Extremophile

Start in Saudi Arabia

Air 1

Rash

Sweating

Cysts

Insomnia

Paranoia

Hyper Sensitivity

Abscesses

Nausea

Vomiting

Coughing

Anaemia

Skin Lesions

Pneumonia

Sneezing

Code Fragment Interception

Air 2

Water 1

Water 2

Cold 1

Extreme Bioaerosol

Code Segment Interception

Cold 2

Necrosis

Drug 1

Drug 2

Genetic Hardening 1

You can wait until every country is infected about here. Once that's good, move on.

Pulmonary Fibrosis

Total Organ Failure

Replicator Overload

Coma

Paralysis

Seizures

Insanity

Dysentery

Hemorrhagic Shock

Internal Hemorrhaging

Systemic Infection

Immune Suppression

Once everyone is infected-

Radical Elements Stabilized

Encryption Breached

You might not get all the genetic hardenings. That's fine, just make sure you have enough for the overload.

Genetic Hardening 1

Genetic Hardening 2

Genetic Hardening 3

Make sure you save enough for Broadcast Interceptor Overload

Once the "x plague to destroy humanity" is passed and the living population is near 100k, hit the Broadcast Interceptor Overload to further lower the cure right as the game ends.

If done right, you should have a great time and a nonexistent cure %

Scenarios- Mad Cow Disease

Boblord's notes: This scenario has been NERFED SIGNIFICANTLY and the guide for it has been overhauled and decreased in size by about 75%.

This scenario used to take approx 10-13 hours to complete, thousands of saves and loads, and way too much pain. A copy of the old original guide can be found here if you want to see what it looks like.[docs.google.com] The original strat was designed by Lolownik with additional resource videos and support by c0rupt1ble. The current new version of the strat used in this guide was written by c0rupt1ble.

Now about the new version of this scenario- it was nerfed heavily. The score requirement is 50k instead of 65k for 3 biohazards, and a score multiplier was added to make it easier to achieve.

You can get hit with bad world events, poor RNG, and a variety of problems and still come out on top. The mutations aren't even necessary to have as mutations, you can just buy them and get away with it.

Guide written by c0rupt1ble
Source: https://discord.com/channels/1026953079758786601/1433071573673443480/1442059428395221022
Message link above is from the plague inc hub discord server(not the official plague inc server)- https://discord.gg/dsj3VP8jNz
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene setup:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Native Biome
Urbophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting country:
China

Evolution order:
Human Cross-Infection
Ataxia
Coughing
Wild Game
Hermetic Storage Resilience
Frozen Storage Resilience
Preservative Storage Resilience
Inflammation
Abscesses
Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
Heat Resistance 2
Necrosis *(nice to mutate but just buy it otherwise)
Environmental Hardening
Plant Dissemination
Avocado
Pneumonia
Pulmonary Oedema
Coma
Total Organ Failure
Rabbit
Maize
Insect
Hallucinations
Insanity
Cannibalism
Delirium
Mania
Seizures
Systemic Infection
Blindness
Paralysis
Acute Encephalitis *(nice to mutate but it really probably doesn't matter as much at this point)
Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3

Scenarios- Flight Club

Boblord's notes: Just kind of another freebie. Nano virus can really blast the world with the overload and minimal effort.

Original Author: Boblord(yours truly)
Source: The gnomes in my walls
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This goes really fast and really easy. You shouldn't even have a single mutation.

Plague: Nano Virus

Gene Setup:
ATP Boost
Genetic Mimic
Aerocyte
Xerophile
Sympto-stasis

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Insomnia

Paranoia

Inflammation

Paralysis

Coma

Rash

Sweating

Code Fragment Interception

Skin Lesions

Air 1

Air 2

Drug 1

Genetic Hardening 1

Code Segment Interception

Seizures

Insanity

Cold 1

Drug 2

Cold 2

Heat 1

Replicator Overload

Radical Elements Stabilized

Genetic Hardening 2

Necrosis

Dysentary

Total Organ Failure

Hemorrhagic Shock

Internal Hemmoraging

Systemic Infection

Encryption Breached

Genetic Reshuffles 1-3

When humanity is about to perish-
Broadcast Receptor Overload

You should end with the overload active, significantly shortening the cure.

Scenarios- Where Is Everyone?

Boblord's notes: Interestingly a little more depth than you'd think due to two reasons: You infect everyone so quickly that you don't get a ton of DNA, and you infect everyone so quickly that there's not a lot of opportunities to infect islands.

A slight modification to the normal neurax worm strat is necessary to pull this one off. One thing to note here is that land transmission is SIGNIFICANTLY boosted. Bird 1 is enough to rip through every single land border.

Original Author: Boblord(yours truly)
Source: I saw it in the stars
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Neurax Worm


Gene Setup:
Metabolic Jump
Genetic Mimic
Aquacyte
Xerophile
Sympto-stasis

No ATP boost because you're just so quick anyways and getting loads of DNA is more important anyhow.

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Eggs 1

Bird 1

Concertina Locomotion

Undulatory Locomotion

Air 1

Water 1

Trojan Planes 1
- First plane is to Greenland, second plane to the next hardest/uninfected island as most of the world should be infected by now, third to anything uninfected, etc.
- Any additional planes when the whole world is infected should go to iceland as it seem to take a while for some reason.

Drug 1

Cold 1

Cold 2

Drug 2

Save DNA until 90-100 DNA points in the bank at this point

Neural Breach

Cerebral Tendrils

Frontal Mesh

Immaturity

Mania

Obsession

Devotion

Transcendence

Confusion

Memory Loss

Aneurysm

Aphasia

Coma

Genetic Reshuffles 1-3

If you don't have enough DNA for reshuffles and are super close to getting the last infected, feel free to evolve Apraxia. Not too soon though due to the infectivity debuff.

Scenarios- Santa's Little Helper

Boblord's notes: Pretty easy, endgame cure % can be annoying here though. Don't need to worry about islands since ports won't close once they're reopened. The reopening takes a minute though which is super annoying.

One minor edit, note removals have a strikethrough and additions have a *

Original Author: YoItsSpicy
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2015/01/plague-inc-santas-little-helper.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Recommended Genes:

ATP Boost
Aerocyte - Aquacyte is also an option. Actually it just might work better, but I chose this instead because I'm starting in Saudi Arabia.
Trans-Stasis
Genetic Mimic
Extremophile

This strategy will not make use of the Trojan Planes available to Neurax Worm. Instead, we'll let the worm infect countries on its own without the help of planes.

1.) Start your plague in Saudi Arabia. Then immediately evolve the following in this order:
Cracker Cocoon
Emotive Radar
Santa's Little Neurax Worm
Festive Tendrils
Digital Elf
Digital Herald
Digital Angel

2.) During this step, the world will probably start opening their point-of-entries again. That being said, continue by evolving the following in this order:
You can actually experiment with this part, there is no order which ensures 100% win-rate every time. I just like to use this order to maximize my infection rates leading to the cold island countries.
Solar Perfume 1
Solar Perfume 2
Eggs-Nog
Sunny Side Up
Snowballs 1
Snowballs 2
Fair-Weather Friend
Glow Worms
Snow Worm
Wellington Worm
Wild Side
Stocking Filler
Radio Worm
Gold Digger
Memory Lane
If you notice, we just evolve every single transmission. Guess I should have just wrote that instead, huh?

3.) Now we just have to evolve some symptoms, and an ability, that'll improve our worm's infectivity. Evolve the following in this order--don't worry we're not evolving everything again:
Laughter
Excitement
Joy
Indulgence
Partying
*By this point genetic shifts make it so you probably need to go for reshuffle here.

Genetic Reshuffle 1
Why Genetic Reshuffle? To boost our score even more, of course. If you think you won't need it, evolve what you want, it's your game, bro.

Scenarios- Teleportation

Boblord's notes: Dunno why bacteria was picked here instead of neurax. With that being said, it still works so does it really matter in the end?

One minor edit, note that removals have a strikethrough and additions have a *

Original Author: YoItsSpicy
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2015/02/plague-inc-teleportation-scenario.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Bacteria

RECOMMENDED GENE SETUP:

ATP Boost
Aerocyte
Sympto-Stasis
Genetic Mimic
Extremophile

1.) Before starting your plague, evolve Rash and Sweating. Then start your Bacteria plague in Saudi Arabia.

2.) Evolve the following in this order as soon as you get the DNA.
Skin Lesions
Air 1 & 2
Water 1
Necrosis
Yeah. Early Necrosis because we're hardcore. Continue evolving.
Drug Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 1 & 2
Coughing
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Water 2
Extreme Bioaerosol
Cysts
Abscesses
Hypersensitivity
Drug Resistance 2
TIP: Devolve the following if they mutate: Hemorrhagic Shock, Systemic Infection, Internal Haemorrhaging, and Tumours. Remember this until the end.

3.) Right after evolving Necrosis, maybe even after Cold Resistance 1, some countries will begin teleporting. In my experience, it's just a maximum of 3 countries, the worst being China if they teleport. I lose every game I had when China teleported. Continue by evolving the following:

* You may want to save/load for island infections right about here.

Paralysis
Coma
Total Organ Failure
Insomnia
Paranoia
Seizures
Insanity
Nausea
Vomiting
Pulmonary Oedema
Diarrhoea
Dysentery
That does it for symptoms, we are not going to need any more. Remember to devolve the symptoms I've mentioned above if they mutate, because we don't want to kill too quickly when the teleport-origin countries are left semi-infected.

4.) At this point, we are now trying to cope with the teleport-origin countries' low infection rates. Basically, what I do is evolve and max 3 transmissions:
Rat 1
Livestock 1
Insect 1
Rat 2
Livestock 2
Insect 2
The reason I chose these transmissions is because they cover most of what a country has descriptively. Rat is for urban, livestock for rural, and insect just in case a hot country is left with a low cure infection. These transmissions work best for Korea and Brazil, but for the most part they work quite well anywhere else.

5.) If you have any spare DNA points left, allocate them towards Genetic Re-Shuffles. Now, pray hard and hope that the last 2 or 3 countries don't die off and are completely infected.

Scenarios- Artificial Organs

Boblord's notes: Guides for this scenario include every non special plague. Even though neurax might be simpler, nano virus has a pretty high success rate, so why not mix it up?

For my edits, note that removals have a strikethrough and additions have a *

Original Author: AllHailSpicy
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2014/05/plague-inc-artificial-organs-scenario_3719.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's get on with the guide, first off, the gene setup:
ATP Boost
Aquacyte
Sympto-Stasis
Genetic Mimic
Extremophile

1.) Before selecting a country to start in, evolve the following symptoms:Coughing
Sneezing
Insomnia
Paranoia
Cysts

2.) Start in China. Continue to evolve the following in this exact order:Hyper Sensitivity
Paralysis
Coma
Abscesses
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Devolve any symptom that mutates. You'll only have to do this once.

3.) Continue to evolve the following in this order:Water 1 & 2
Necrosis
Seizures
Code Fragment Interception
Code Segment Interception
Radical Elements Stabilised
Encryption Breached
Drug Resistance 1 & 2
Insanity
During this step, specifically after evolving Necrosis, the first pop-up should appear saying "Artificial Organs saves Lives. The second pop-up appear after evolving Insanity, you need to see the first one before this appears. You don't have to wait for them to appear, they'll show up eventually. Continue to the next step right after evolving Insanity.

4.) Once again, evolve the following in this order:
Cold and Heat Resistance 1 & 2
* Genetic Hardening 1
Environmental Hardening
Air 1 & 2
Extreme Bioaerosol
Replication Factory Overload
* Bird 1- helps get Morrocco
Genetic Hardening 1 & 2
*Total Organ Failure, Hemorrhagic Shock, Dysentery
Genetic Re-Shuffle 1, 2, and 3

Remaining DNA you may have is best used to evolve very lethal symptoms such as Total Organ Failure, Hemorrhagic Shock, etc. The best time to evolve all these is when you completely infect the entire world.

5.) From here onward you'll just have to watch people get infected and die. The second pop-up that makes people rip out their artificial organs increases your Nano-Virus' lethality at a steady rate. That itself is enough to kill people fast. If you want a better highscore, wait for the pop-up that says your plague is about to eradicate humanity. After the pop-up's appearance evolve Broadcast Interceptor Overload right away.

Scenarios- Frozen Virus

Boblord's notes: Cure % doesn't matter for the 3 bio here. Only time being sub 365.

You're going to want to savescum your mutations to be the path to the regression symptom.

Some chances needed to be made just for ease of use. For my edits, note that removals have a strikethrough and additions have a *

Original Author: Antonio
Source: https://youtu.be/jpZ0qoiZ9lc?si=Zx3c__sasDZA22yY
Transcribed from video by Boblord
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost
Darwinist
Suppression
Extremophile
Trans-Stasis

Forced start in Russia. This makes the Caribbean, New Zealand, and Madagascar quite annoying to get. At least Greenland and Iceland are easy.

Note on mutations: The ideal path is Edentulism, Carnivorous Denticulation, Bone Dysplasia, Cranial Elephantitis, and Neanderthal Regression. Save/Load until you get them, if you have a mutation. If none of these symptoms are unlocked, go for some of the cure slowing ones.

Cysts

Skin Lesions

Water 1

Water 2

DNA Repair 1

Edentulism

Amoeba 2

Livestock 1

Bird 1

Amoeba 3

Bird 2

Insect 1

Insect 2

Heat Resistance 1

Livestock 2

DNA Repair 2

Drug Resistance 1

DNA Repair 3

Heat Resistance 2

DNA Repair 4

Drug Resistance 2

DNA Repair 5

Full DNA Repair

Now take the shortest path to Neanderthal Regression, or try and let it mutate. Mutation is a perfectly valid option, as virus mutates quickly, and genetic shifts make it EXPENSIVE(70+ DNA points).

If you still need to infect some more African countries, evolve Heat Resistance 3. Anything else should be thrown at Genetic Reshuffles. Not like the cure matters too much for 3 biohazards on this one, but it does help.

Scenarios- Nipah Virus

Boblord's notes: Cure below 50-55% and sub 1 year are the main goals here.

Good mutations are super useful as this is a virus. If you choose to save/load for them, it makes this MUCH easier. Specifically Pulmonary Haemorrhage and Respiratory Failure as they are quite expensive due to shifts.

Earlygame as well, if you want to save/load mutations into being coughing/vomiting or the other very infectious ones, feel free.

In endgame, 1 genetic reshuffle and going for meningitis was the best option instead of seizures.

Original Author: AllHailSpicy
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2014/06/plague-inc-nipah-virus-scenario-mega.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Gene Setup

1.) ATP Boost - Having 8 DNA to work with right at the beginning will help.
2.) Aquacyte - To infect island countries easier.
3.) Darwinist - Genetic Mimic is also an option, but the mutation of infectious symptoms, although random, will help out more than slowing down the cure.
4.) Trans-Stasis - We'll be focusing mostly on transmissions to spread the plague quickly
5.) Hydrophile - Extremophile is always an option here, but I chose this one to fully infect India earlier. I haven't tried this strategy with extremophile yet.

The strategy

1.) Before popping the very first red bubble, evolve the following:
Bat 2
Swine 1
Nausea

2.) Pop the red bubble then continue to evolve the following:
Swine 2
Bat 3
Bat 4
Respiratory Shift

3.) Take a look at your mutated symptoms and continue to evolve in either of these ways:

Note: The main point here is to evolve Haemoptysis. Also, if given a choice between Pulmonary Oedema and Pulmonary Fibrosis, always choose Oedema.
If Coughing and Sneezing are evolved, evolve Pulmonary Fibrosis then Haemoptysis
If not, evolve Vomiting, Pulmonary Oedema then Haemoptysis

4.) Continue to evolve the following:
Hendra Traits
Cedar Traits
Fomites 1
Fomites 2
Water 1
Water 2
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Pulmonary Haemorrhage In my experience, having this symptom mutate earlier than this point will cause problems.
Respiratory Failure
Air 1
Air 2
Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
Heat Resistance 2
Environmental Hardening This makes the infection rate on Greenland and Iceland super fast
Encaphalitic Shift

5.) At this point in the game, the whole world is already on its way to complete infection. From this point on, you can decide on what you want to evolve.

In my games I prioritize evolving these symptoms, in order:
Hallucination If symptoms leading to it are already mutated. If not I evolve the closest one to it.
Hallucination and Coma will slow the cure by a great amount. Remember that the cure progress has to be below 55%

Seizures Although this symptom has low lethality, it'll still help in making kills much faster
You either have the choice to go full on lethal with your Nipah Virus or slow down the cure. Pulmonary Haemorrhage and Respiratory Failure will still take some time erase humanity, so evolving some lethal symptoms might be helpful, but keep in mind that you need the cure to be below 55%. If you're confident that the cure won't reach 55%, it might be best to go and get Meningitis.

Scenarios- Unknown Origin

You need a guide for this? Just restart over and over until you get a half decent starting location, and then just follow the neurax worm speedrun guide. Or the nano-virus one. Up to you, really.

For neurax, do you really even need to restart for a good location?

China, India, Saudi, South Africa, anything with good central position and an airport/sea port is a decent enough start. Oh, avoid wealthy countries as well.

Scenarios- Black Death

Boblord's notes: Heavily RNG, very rough scenario to do. Top 2 in difficulty tied with smallpox.

Will be lots of attempts, or some a lot of save/loads to pull this off. Cure shoots up very fast and the transmission layout/optimal starting location of this virus makes countries that aren't usually an issue into much larger problems.

This guide needs some modifications as it feels slightly outdated. My removals are marked with a strikethrough and additions with a *

Original Author: PatrickSon
Source: https://youtu.be/UP00vqqbOrQ?si=uV-Ad633Bv-pqFvn
Transcribed from video by Boblord
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
Catalytic Switch *ATP Boost
Genetic Mimic
Aquacyte *Suppression
Extremophile
Sympto-Stasis

*ATP boost is just strong and optimal save/load gameplay means we should never have blue bubbles in the first place

*Suppression seems to have a multiplier to normal border hopping as well, since Morocco is a huge pain to infect and the biggest time delay in the run, getting up there ASAP is vital.

*An additional note: If you really, really want to make this as easy as possible, save load after every upgrade. Reload if you get any negative event whatsoever, specifically the watch list event, as thats the trigger for "x country leading cure effort" and blue bubbles. It'll pop up a fair bit, but you can bypass it with enough diligence. This is very important for the 3 bio score. It's possible without but this makes it much easier as it handicaps the cure quite a bit.

*Mutations should go towards infectivity boosters. Systemic infection or diarrhea are the two easily accessible and obtainable ones.

Starting Country: China

Cysts

Flea 2

Skin Lesions

Rodent 1

Pneumonic Plague

Coughing

Sneezing

Livestock 1

Drug 1

Bird 1

Cold 1

Water 1

* First mutation about here about here, infection symptoms listed at the start are best. Not run breaking but nice to have.

Septicemic Plague

Abscesses

Nausea

Vomiting

Pulmonary Oedema

Haemoptysis

Heat 1

Drug 2

Air 1

Genetic Reshuffle 1

Drug 3

Cold 2

Heat 2

* Second mutation about here. Doesn't matter as much but another infection symptom can't hurt.

* This is the point where you want to lock up all islands. New Zealand and Madagascar can be tricky, and NZ is too wealthy to be infected super late, as it takes forever to fully infect.

* Also make sure you're making good progress towards Morocco. Try to get it before they shut land borders. If you do manage to get it, you should be on track for a good time at this point.

Environmental Hardening

Blood 1

Diarrhoea

Dysentery

Hypotension

Hemorrhagic Shock

Total Organ Failure

Hyper Sensitivity

Paralysis

Inflammation

Seizures

* Internal Hemorrhaging

* Genetic Reshuffle 2

* Any remaining DNA can be funded towards another Genetic Reshuffle variant. Feel free to refund 2 traits from transmissions/symptoms/abilities(obviously ones that don't matter at this point) for an extra 9 dna in total if you need it.

Scenarios- Created Equal

Boblord's notes: Pretty easy, just need to contend with an absurd cure pacing.

Original Author: YoItsSpicy
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2014/08/plague-inc-created-equal-scenario.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Plague: Bacteria
Gene Setup:
ATP Boost - 8 DNA right off the bat, can't go wrong with this gene.
Aquacyte - Because Greenland.
Sympto-Stasis - Strategy heavily relies on symptoms for infection boost.
Genetic Mimic - To help slow down the progression of the cure.
Xerophile - A slight infection rate boost in our starting country.

1.) Before selecting your starting country, evolve the following symptoms:Nausea
Coughing
Cysts

2.) Start your plague in Saudi Arabia, then proceed to evolve the following in this order:Abscesses
Sneezing
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Air 1 & 2
Water 1 & 2
Hyper Sensitivity
Pneumonia
These symptoms and transmissions will help spread the plague fast and help boost transmission through ships and planes.

3.) Continue by evolving the following:Drug Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Cold Resistance 2
Genetic Hardening 1 & 2
Necrosis
Resistances will boost infection in cold and rich countries, especially in the European Region. Necrosis will cause the significant increase in the cure progression, thus the early evolution of both Genetic Hardening abilities.

Immediately continue by evolving the following:Vomiting
Diarrhoea
Pulmonary Oedema
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Insomnia
Paranoia
Seizures
Insanity
Paralysis
Coma
Total Organ Failure
Note: It's perfectly fine to let mutations happen, but if they aren't listed yet immediately devolve them to get some much needed DNA.

4.) Because of Total Organ Failure, your plague will now start killing fast but will also negate the effects of Genetic Shifts--we don't want Re-Shuffles to costs insanely high.
At this point, evolve all three Genetic Re-Shuffles. If Greenland isn't halfway infected at this point, wait a little while until it is. Then evolve these lethal symptoms:(Don't worry about not getting them all)
Hemorrhagic Shock
Internal Haemorrhaging
Tumours
Systemic Infection
All that's left now is to wait for the demise of the entire virtual human race.

Scenarios- Global Warming

Boblord's notes: Straightforward and simple, just need to contend with greenland being more annoying than usual and some countries like Morocco/Mexico just being slow.

Some slight modifications made just to improve gameplay flow, additions marked with * and removals marked with a strikethrough

Original Author: u/Yaldev
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/klljty/guide_global_warming_mega_brutal_3_biohazard/?rdt=42869
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Nano Virus
Gene Setup:

ATP Boost - This should surprise nobody. When cure is worked on the world over right from the start, you have to move quickly.

Darwinist - Yes, there's some RNG here. I'm not a fan of that myself. Just bear with it; the free value you can get out of this is nuts, especially with how fast you need to go.

Aquacyte - Minimize your chances of missing Greenland.

Extremophile - I know how tempting it is to use Xerophile given how most countries are now arid, but remember: you still have to get the non-arid countries! Your in-game decisions will help you aim closer toward arid specialty, but in pre-game, this bonus is the better one to ensure best chances of victory.

Sympto-Stasis - You're going to wind up getting every single symptom by endgame. The amount of DNA this will be saving you is phenomenal.

Start in Saudi Arabia.

Grab the initial bubble and then evolve the following:

Nausea

Rash

Sweating

Anaemia

Cysts

Hypersensitivity

Abscesses

Insomnia

Paranoia

Coughing

Seizures

Air 1

Code Fragment Interception

Paralysis

Coma

Pneumonia

Skin Lesions

Heat Resistance 1

Water 1

* Radical Elements Stabilized

Water 2

Air 2

Extreme Bioaerosol

Sneezing

Vomiting

Necrosis

Insanity

Hemophilia

Tumours

Pulmonary Oedema

Immune Suppression

Pulmonary Fibrosis

Code Segment Interception

Replication Factory Overload

Cold Resistance 1

Cold Resistance 2

Drug Resistance 1

Drug Resistance 2

Drug Immunity

Internal Haemorrhaging

Dysentery

Diahorrea

Inflammation

Systemic Infection

Fever

Hemorrhagic Shock

(Either Bird 1 or Livestock 1 - Look at the countries currently infected and note whether you're still trying to get across some land borders, or if you're still at low numbers in a number of rural countries.)

Total Organ Failure

Encryption Breached

Genetic Hardening 1

Genetic Hardening 2

Genetic Hardening 3

* When world is almost dead:

Broadcast Interceptor Overload (if didn't already need to use to reduce cure)

Kill Switch Stasis

Scenarios- Golden Age

Boblord's notes: Pretty quick moving strat, but that's required in order to combat the absurd cure speed here. If you're fast enough, you can just rely on time to offset the cure % in your score.

This strat relies heavily on mutations, specifically for transcendence. It gets way too expensive to buy manually and the cure is already at full pace around that time as well. Mutations are pretty easy to get so it's not too much of a concern.

Original Author: Mosh2841
Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2014/06/golden-age-of-wormneurax-worm-guide.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Neurax Worm

Gene Setup:
ATP Boost - Allows you to get amazing infectivity right off the bat, which will help you reach the 300-350 day goal we have
Teracyte - Helps spread accross land very easily, so all you have to do to get a contenitent contaminated is send 1 plane.
Trans-Stasis - This is the bread and butter of this strategy, because you are only concerned with infecting people and not killing them you can use and abuse this.
Darwinist - Very useful to help mutate closer to transcendence
Extremophile - It really doesn't matter what you use here, i like this one because is gives bonuses to many climate types.

Remember to always spend you DNA as it is available to you. It won't do to hoard up, because you will be wasting out on potential infectiveness. And also it will leave you open for Genetic Drift to screw you over.

1) Before you start evolve:
-Eggs 1 & 2
-Concertia Locomotion & Uldolatery Locomotion

  1. Start in Egypt(poor, has 2 sea ports plus an airport)
  2. Evolve the following transmissions:
    -Genetic Swap(You should be able to get this off the Red DNA bubble you get from your country of origin)
    -Rodent 1
    -Insect 1
    -Bird 1
    -Air 1
    -Water 1
    -Air 2 & Air 3
    -Mutative Regeneration 1 & 2

-Trojan Planes 1

As you get planes make sure to send them to the following places to make sure you get everything in time:
Send first plane to Canada
Send second plane to Central Europe
Send third plane to Central Africa
Send fourth Plane to Finland or Sweden
Send Fifth Plane to South America
Send all other planes to Islands/Countries not yet infected

5) Get the rest of your transmissions
-Insect 2
-Bird 2
-Rodent 2
-Water 2 & 3 (helps in poor countries, which pretty much all the ones that aren't rich in this scenario are poor)

5)Next we are gonna finish up by getting the rest of the Trojan plane abilities so we can keep sending lots of planes out, and then we'll get some of the resistances to help close out the world a bit faster. There isn't a need to get all of them every time, just see which countries are taking the most time. You probably will just need Cold/Drug Resistance and can ignore heat.
-Trojan Planes 2 & 3
-Cold Resistance 1
-Trojan Roamers 1 (optional)
-Drug Resistance 1 & 2
-Trojan Roamers 2 (optional)
-Cold Resistance 2

6) At this point you probably have the whole world nearly infected, work the closest path you mutated to it I'll list out the possibilities below
-Neural Breach
---------------------------
-Adreneic Constriction
-Anixolyic Infusion
-Psychosis
-Adoration (I <3 MY WORM!)

--or--

-Cerebral Tendrils
- Frontal Mesh *only take this path if you have randomly mutated up to this point*
-Immaturity
-Mania
-Obsession
----------------------------
-Devotion
-Transcendence (All hail the holy worm)

7) at this point if you haven't won you are just sending planes to places that haven't reached 100% yet.

Scenarios- Ice Age

Boblord's notes: Really simple assuming you get decent spore burst rng at the start. Cure goes fast but you can stop it last minute with reshuffles and knock it back down to 60%

Original Author: u/Shiboleth17
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/4akzy3/ice_age_fungus_mega_brutal_3_biohazards/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Fungus

Standard fungus genes:

ATP Boost

Extremophile

Terracyte

Patho-Stasis

Darwinist

Start in Russia.

Evolve the following Symptoms:
Rash > Sweating > Skin Lesions

Evolve all Spore Abilities.

Evolve the following Abilities
Medicine 1 & 2

Cold 1

Heat 1

Evolve the following Transmissions:
Water 1 & 2

Bird 1 & 2

Evolve more abilities:
Cold 2

Heat 2

Environmental Hardening

Now we can move back to Symptoms:

Necrosis

Shortest path to Dysentery

Genetic Reshuffle 1

Shortest path to Organ Failure

After this, I just kept evolving Reshuffles to get cure as low as possible, since I knew I was doing great on time.

*Make sure to get cure-reducing symptoms as well

Scenarios- Mirror Earth

Boblord's notes: Well done and straightforward. No real comments. Just worthwhile to consider spare dna being thrown towards genetic reshuffles at the end as well right before broadcast interceptor overload.

Additions marked with *

Original Author: u/Yaldev
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/klljty/guide_global_warming_mega_brutal_3_biohazard/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Plague: Nano Virus

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost - This should surprise nobody. When cure is worked on the world over right from the start, you have to move quickly.

Darwinist - Yes, there's some RNG here. I'm not a fan of that myself. Just bear with it; the free value you can get out of this is nuts, especially with how fast you need to go.

Aquacyte - Minimize your chances of missing Greenland.

Extremophile - I know how tempting it is to use Xerophile given how most countries are now arid, but remember: you still have to get the non-arid countries! Your in-game decisions will help you aim closer toward arid specialty, but in pre-game, this bonus is the better one to ensure best chances of victory.

Sympto-Stasis - You're going to wind up getting every single symptom by endgame. The amount of DNA this will be saving you is phenomenal.

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Grab the initial bubble and then evolve the following:

Nausea

Rash

Sweating

Anaemia

Cysts

Hypersensitivity

Abscesses

Insomnia

Paranoia

This is Mega Brutal, so you typically don't want to stockpile DNA points and buy a whole bunch of upgrades at once. That said, you do have to be careful regarding the cure meter. When it's at 85% or higher, you'll be wanting to do some guesswork and ensure that when cure hits 98%, you'll have the DNA points available to slam a Radical Elements Stabilized to send it back down. You could do it sooner than that, but you'd rather spend the DNA points on symptoms to benefit from them earlier in the game and spread farther; the earlier you get anything that helps you spread, the more you'll necessarily be getting out of it, while cure decrease abilities are just emergency buttons.

You typically don't need to devolve stuff, because everything is helpful. If you come to something on the list below that you already mutated, just go to the next one. Even if you get random lethality, it'll usually either be low enough that your spread speed allows you to continue growing, or said lethal trait will also come with infectivity as well (such as Necrosis), and not jeopardize your odds of victory. The only thing I might caution you on is if you mutate Total Organ Failure before you're in every country, since that's both scary enough to warrant shutting down borders and doesn't contribute to higher infectivity, creating the risk of killing off hosts before you can spread.

Typically, spend DNA ASAP on the following, in this order (but remember having some on reserve when cure is close to finished for Radical Elements Stabilized, then Encryption Breached, then Broadcast Interceptor Overload):

Coughing

Seizures

Air 1

Code Fragment Interception

Paralysis

Coma

Pneumonia

Skin Lesions

Heat Resistance 1

Water 1

Water 2

Air 2

Extreme Bioaerosol

Sneezing

Vomiting

Necrosis

Insanity

Hemophilia

Tumours

Pulmonary Oedema

Immune Suppression

Pulmonary Fibrosis

Code Segment Interception

Replication Factory Overload

Cold Resistance 1

Cold Resistance 2

Drug Resistance 1

Drug Resistance 2

Drug Immunity

Internal Haemorrhaging

Dysentery

Diahorrea

Inflammation

Systemic Infection

Fever

Hemorrhagic Shock

(Either Bird 1 or Livestock 1 - Look at the countries currently infected and note whether you're still trying to get across some land borders, or if you're still at low numbers in a number of rural countries.)

Once every country is at least half infected: Total Organ Failure

*With leftover DNA: Genetic reshuffle 1/2/3. Save enough for interceptor overload at all times, even if you cant get a reshuffle as a result

*When humanity is nearly wiped out: Broadcast Interceptor Overload (if didn't already need to use to reduce cure)

* If you can afford it- Kill Switch Stasis. You should be fine without.

The last two help the final score by tanking cure progress.

This may take a few tries. If you fail, it'll be for the usual reasons, such as an early panic leading to faster shutdowns, or you let a Total Organ Failure mutate too early and wound up killing faster than you could infect, or you just missed Greenland or Iceland as a routine procedure. It happens.

Scenarios- Pirate Plague

Boblord's notes: This is not a guide for super sparrow. Sure, you can probably use this to knock off neurax worm on super sparrow, but a proper guide for super sparrow will be included in this guide later on.

Btw the yoitsspicy guide is horrible for this scenario, but this video I found does the requisite aggression incredibly well.

This guide was transcribed by myself from the original youtube video.

Additions marked with *, removals marked with a strikethrough

Original Author: JustaSlav_
Transcribed to text from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/LsJbZDl7mjg?si=6x2ArECnqXTBiENR
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Neurax Worm

Gene Setup:

*ATP Boost- this video has metabolic hijack but we're better than that. This is just a stronger option.

Darwinist

Aerocyte

Extremophile

Trans-Stasis

Starting Location: Saudi Arabia

Concertina Locomotion

Undulatory Locomotion

Air 1

Eggs 1

Eggs 2

Air 2

Insect 1

Trojan Planes 1

Planes Guide:
Planes go to islands without an airport first and foremost.
Send first plane to Greenland
Send second plane to Caribbean
Send third plane to Madagascar
Send fourth plane to New Guinea
Send fifth plane to Philippines
Send any remaining planes to other uninfected islands
After all islands focus on uninfected countries first, then places with low infection counts

Drug 1

Cold 1

Water 1

Bird 1

Rodent 1

Cold 2

Water 2

Water 3

Neural Breach

Cerebral Tendrils

Adrenergic Constriction

Anxiolytic Infusion

Psychosis

Genetic Swap

Mutative Regeneration 1

Adoration

Devotion

Transcendence

If you do it right you should be picking up transcendence before genetic drift really kicks in and ruins costs.

Drug Resistance 2

Genetic Reshuffle 1 *Now I don't really think this is super necessary this early, but it doesn't hurt and that's what the guide does. Either do it now, or do it later. Up to you.

Rodent 2

Bird 2

*If you didn't get genetic reshuffle 1 before, get it here.
Genetic Reshuffle 2

Scenarios- Shut Down Everything

Boblord's notes:
XENOLITH UDPATE: For some reason neurax/necroa/simian/shadow were removed as options for this scenario, and xenolith never got added in the first place. This guide includes mega brutal 3 bio guides for the standard plagues as part of the Mr. President achievement. As this guide uses the now defunct neurax worm, it does not work. Check out the Mr. President section for a working one.

This is not a guide for mr. president. Sure, you can probably use this to knock off neurax worm on mr. president, but a proper guide for the achievement will be included in this guide later on.

Btw the yoitsspicy guide is horrible for this scenario once again, but this video does the requisite aggression needed for this scenario incredibly well.

This guide was transcribed by myself from the original youtube video.

Original Author: Lolownik
Transcribed to text from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/GMj9BGkibXA?si=65Cr6FfdmYoZgWRE
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic

Suppression

Urbophile

Trans-Stasis

Starting Country: China

Eggs 1

Rodent 1

Eggs 2

Concertina Locomotion

Undulatory Locomotion

Genetic Swap

Corpse Feeder 1

Corpse Feeder 2

Bird 1

Mutative Regeneration 1

Mutative Regeneration 2

Rodent 2

Bird 2

Trojan Planes 1

Planes Guide:
First plane to France
Second plane to United States
Third plane to Brazil
Fourth plane to a cut off island that's closed it's ports if any are present(or just Greenland otherwise)
Fifth plane and beyond to any other cut off islands, focus the rich ones like Japan and New Zealand
Once all islands are grabbed just focus uninfected countries with a priority towards the richer ones/higher cure contributions

Neural Breach

Water 1

Air 1

Insect 1

Insect 2

Cerebral Tendrils

Trojan Planes 2

Trojan Planes 3

Drug 1

Genetic Hardening 1

Genetic Hardening 2

Cold 1

Cold 2

Frontal Mesh

Immaturity

Mania

Obsession

Devotion

Transcendence

Heat 1

Trojan Roamers 1

Trojan Roamers 2

Genetic Reshuffle 1

Any other cure reducing symptoms/abilities you can afford

Scenarios- Smallpox

Boblord's notes: This one's rough. You're pretty lethal as it is, but have limited means of slowing the cure(no good symptoms beyond coma) or spreading across closed land borders(no birds).

The cure doesn't really matter here as it's very easy to 3 star from speed even with cure in the upper 90s. Problem is that how quickly we gain severity can make it occasionally hard to spread to islands, and requires some events falling in your favor.

Some slight modifications to endgame procedure, additions marked with * and removals marked with a strikethrough

Original Author: u/PurgeAllRepublicans
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/26tbe0/smallpox_on_mega_brutal/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP boost
Darwinist
Aquacyte
Hydrophile
Trans-Stasis

Starting country: India

* Any "negative" event(awareness day, climate/population change, etc) early on that shifts the game world, helps the cure, or harms you should be a reload. This is already a rough one without the extra shenanigans.

* Do NOT get placed on the WHO watch list until after you evolve drug 2. Any earlier results in the cure being very, very difficult to fight against and will most likely result in a loss.

vomiting

abscesses

foamites 1

vaccine shield

air 1

water 1

air 2

droplets 2

droplets 3

water 2

foamites 2

extreme bioaerosol

I favor doing air before water because from India itself I’ve found you never get a ship to Greenland. Therefore, you want air to infect as many other port countries as quickly as possible to maximize your odds of infecting Greenland & Iceland.

cold 1

cold 2

drug 1

drug 2

Evolve diarrhea once you get placed on the WHO watch list

At this point watch the news bar- if any countries start distributing vaccines 2 or 7, purchase the respective resistance for it. May happen now, may take a bit. It varies, but you need to counter immediately.

Corneal ulceration

Hypersensitivity (this one speeds up the spread in the pain-in-the-ass Nordic countries)

Genetic hardening 1

Genetic hardening 2

* First mutation should happen soon. Coma is preferred, but dysentary or necrosis is workable if island or land borders don't get shuttered immediately. Anything else makes things challenging or near impossible

Blood 1

Blood 2

Blood 3

*Livestock 1

*Insect 1

You need these to move things along rapidly in a few of the stubborn countries like Argentina.

Coma if it didn't mutate before, and make sure you have a very good handle on island/country infectivity when you do it. The severity will often shut ports and borders but you need to balance that to cure speed.

Insect 2

Livestock 2

* Necrosis or dysentary should be your second mutation, less important than coma but still helps a lot saving the dna.

Genetic reshuffle 1

Genetic reshuffle 2

Genetic reshuffle 3

Obviously important with how insanely fast the cure progresses, but note they have the same effect at 99% cure as they do at 10% cure, whereas the sooner you can grab coma the more use you get from it, which is why I have them listed last.

*Necrosis or dysentary if you didn't get it before

*Any remaining lethal symptoms if you can afford them.

I won 2/5 with this slightly different method and had no trouble getting Greenland or the other islands infected. You will still need some luck from Darwinism, and will still finish somewhere between 94%-99% cure.

Scenarios- Sovereign Default

Boblord's notes: Not much special here. Just another quick game with minimal challenge elsewhere.

As always, additions marked with * and removals marked with a strikethrough

Original Author: JustaSlav_
Transcribed from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/vQ-9xPy4H5s?si=rWRUj5k5Dznj-cPy
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Nano Virus

Genetic Code:

Metabolic Hijack
*ATP Boost- we don't need hijack, we're better than that. Take the stronger option.

Darwinist

Teracyte

Extremophile

Sympto-stasis

Starting Country: Egypt
Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Cysts

Abscesses

Hyper Sensitivity

Anemia

Haemophilia

Air 1

Drug 1

Cold 1

Drug 2

Radical Elements Stabilized

Cold 2

Air 2

Water 1

Water 2

Extreme Bioaerosol

Code Fragment Interception

Drug Immunity

Code Segment Interception

Replicator Factory Overload

Internal Haemorrhaging

Necrosis

Paralysis

Coma

Total Organ Failure

Hemorrhagic Shock

Inflammation

Seizures

Insanity

Dysentery

Insomnia

Paranoia

Encryption Breached

*Optional if you have the dna to spare: Genetic hardening 1/2/3

Right as the last of humanity is about to die: Broadcast Interceptor Overload

Scenarios- Swine Flu

Boblord's notes: Another rough one, this one is especially reliant on managing your mutation RNG. Multiple notes on how to manage the mutations in an ideal fashion at every stage of the game rather than "just pray for good rng lol" are included.

As always, additions marked with * and removals marked with a strikethrough

Original Author: Lolownik
Transcribed from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/hJUwyTtFt5A?si=yR_VBvjSBIukDTJJ
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene setup:

ATP Boost

Darwinist

Suppression

Extremophile

Trans-Stasis

Starting Country: India

*Ideal earlygame mutations: you really just want to clear up slop for now, avoiding anything very severe/lethal. Just the usual stuff like nausea/vomiting/insomnia/paranoia. Ideally the more expensive ones but anything mutated at this stage is a boon as it means less variation for lethal mutations later when needed.

Swine 2

Livestock 1

Livestock 2

Droplets 2

Water 1

Air 1

Air 2

Water 2

Extreme Bioaerosol

Bird 1

Bird 2

Extreme Zoonosis

Blood 1

Blood 2

Drug 1

Drug 2

Cold 1

Cold 2

Heat 1

Historic Reassortment

*Genetic Hardening 1 - doing these two now rather than later is always more ideal.

*Genetic Hardening 2

*Midgame mutation notes: We're going to want to purchase as many cheap symptoms as possible for now(without burning too much dna). This makes mutations only have the expensive symptoms left to pick from, so we get better results.

*As we go through these symptoms you ideally want all islands handled before we start getting too severe here. Symptoms will be going out of hand very, very quickly. The more that mutate, the better, but it's more ideal obviously if the expensive ones mutate versus the cheaper ones.

Nausea

Vomiting

Rash

Hyper Sensitivity

Epistaxis

Haemoptysis

Pulmonary Haemorrhage(Nicer if this mutates but dont hesitate to purchase it ASAP if it hasnt yet)

* Once every country has been infected- Cytokine Storm(Another nice mutation but not a waste to purchase this yourself)
*No earlier on this symptom or else island infections get risky. We need to start killing sooner rather than later to neuter the cure. This adds a nice boost in lethality while still being remarkably infectious

*Do NOT let total organ failure mutate until canada is well past the tipping point towards being fully infected. Any sooner and you won't be able to infect it fast enough. Devolve a few times if necessary.

Any other dna you have should go to Genetic Reshuffle 1-2-3

*Once canada is good in the infection department feel free to let TOF mutate to help finish the job.

*Coma(if it hasnt mutated)

Scenarios- Volcanic Ash

Boblord's notes: This is not a guide for lava god. Sure, you can probably use this to knock off neurax worm on lava god, but a proper guide for lava god will be included in this guide later on.

This guide was transcribed by myself from the original youtube video.

Original Author: JustaSlav_
Transcribed to text from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/gwFtEYlzlsw?si=owxMUL4n5UIgtMxi
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Neurax Worm

Gene Setup:

*ATP Boost- this video has metabolic hijack but we're better than that. This is just a stronger option.

Darwinist

Aerocyte

Extremophile

Trans-Stasis

Starting Location: Saudi Arabia

Concertina Locomotion

Undulatory Locomotion

Air 1

Eggs 1

Eggs 2

Air 2

Drug 1

Trojan Planes 1

Planes Guide:
Planes go to islands without an airport first and foremost.
Send first plane to Greenland
Send second plane to Iceland
Send third plane to Caribbean
Send fourth plane to Philippines
Send fifth plane to Japan
Send sixth plane to New Guinea
Send any remaining planes to other uninfected islands
After all islands focus on uninfected countries first, then places with low infection counts

Neural Breach

Cerebral Tendrils

Frontal Mesh

Insect 1

Water 1

Cold 1

Cold 2

Water 2

Immaturity

Mania

Obsession

Devotion

Transcendence

If you do it right you should be picking up transcendence before genetic drift really kicks in and ruins costs.

Water 3

Bird 1

Rodent 1

Genetic Swap

Bird 2

Insect 2

Rodent 2

Drug 2

Genetic Reshuffle 1

Genetic Reshuffle 2

Genetic Reshuffle 3

Scenarios- Who Cares

Boblord's notes: Islands will always be a tad rng without playing the special plagues, but this isn't particularly challenging anyhow.

Original Author: Unknown
(yes, that's what their username is labeled as)

Source: https://icspicy.blogspot.com/2014/09/plague-inc-who-cares-bacteria-mega.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Bacteria

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost-DNA Gene
Aquacyte-Travel Gene
Sympto-Stasis-Evolution Gene
Genetic Mimic-Mutation Gene
Extremophile- Enviroment Gene

1.) At the starting point evolve these abilities to give your plague a nice infection boost.

It is extremely great to use this at the start of the game so you can finish the game nicely and quickly! It is helped because we have in our gene setup ATP Boost which happens to give us 8 DNA points. The now trio of cysts, abscesses, and coughing will give us a huge infection boost again at the start of the game! I consider it one of the best parts of the strategy guide for this simple reason.

Cysts-Symptoms Section
Abscesses-Symptoms Section
Coughing-Symptoms Section

2.) At this point in the game we are going to start in India.
Start in India- Select Country

3.) At this point we are going to go incredibly aggressive and use the skin lesions incredible infection boost to again get a huge infection boost at the start of the game. The other symptoms are just used to get skin lesions because they are relatively cheap in DNA points so we can evolve better symptoms letter in this guide.

Rash-Symptoms Section
Sweating-Symptoms Section
Skin Lesions-Symptoms Section

4.) At this point we will be evolving the "bathroom symptoms" which will understandably increase severity so people might happen to start notice it. This will not be a problem however but it will be causing to start people to have reasonable concern about your new plague.

Nausea-Symptoms Section
Vomiting-Symptoms Section
Diarrhoea-Symptoms Section

5.) Now we will be evolving symptoms that target the lungs of the infected.
Sneezing-Symptoms Section
Pulmonary Oedema-Symptoms Section
Pneumonia-Symptoms Section

6.) Continue Evolving The Symptoms Given.
Anaemia-Symptoms Section
Haemophilia-Symptoms Section
Hyper Sensitivity-Symptoms Section
Insomnia-Symptoms Section
Paranoia-Symptoms Section
Pulmonary Fiborsis-Symptoms Section

7.) Now we are going to evolve these transmissions to spread our disease even faster and more rapidly again. We are going to go and get all the air transmissions now and the water ones as well.

Air I-Transmissions Section
Air II-Transmissions Section
Water I-Transmissions Section
Water II-Transmissions Section

8.) Now we will begin to harden your disease by making it easier to spread in cold countries and countries with advanced drugs. It will help your disease spread faster in those counties.

Cold Resistance I- Abilities Section
Drug Resistance I-Abilities Section

9.) Now lets evolve Extreme Bioaerosol.

Extreme Bioaerosol-Transmissions Section

10.) Now lets keep hardening your disease.

Cold Resistance II-Abilities Section
Drug Resistance II-Abilities Section
Genetic Hardening I-Abilities Section
Genetic Hardening II-Abilities Section
Bacterial Resilience I-Abilities Section
Bacterial Resilience II-Abilities Section

11.) Once all island countries infected evolve.....

Necrosis-Symptoms Section
Dysentery-Symptoms Section
Total Organ Failure-Symptoms Section
Hemorrhagic Shock-Symptoms Section
Coma-Symptoms Section
Insanity-Symptoms Section
Paralysis-Symptoms Section
Seizures-Symptoms Section
Inflammation-Symptoms Section
Immune Suppression-Symptoms Section

Scenarios- Xenophobia

Boblord's notes:

Original Author: Lolownik
Transcribed from video by Boblord

Source: https://youtu.be/6EE5_JNMKS8?si=9eGXeAHfexf5Tupv
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Plague: Neurax Worm

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic

Suppression

Rurophile

Trans-Stasis

Starting country: India

Eggs 1

Insect 1

Eggs 2

Concertina Locomotion

Undulatory Locomotion

Genetic Swap

Corpse Feeder 1

Corpse Feeder 2

Neural Breach

Mutative Regeneration 1

Mutative Regeneration 2

Water 1

Cerebral Tendrils

Air 1

Trojan Planes 1

Plane Ordering:
First Plane to Brazil
Second Plane to Greenland
Third Plane to Iceland
Fourth Plane to Madagascar
Rest to any uninfected islands
Any after that to any uninfected countries(prioritize cold/wealthy ones)

Frontal Mesh

Bird 1

Bird 2

Rodent 1

Rodent 2

Trojan Planes 2

Trojan Planes 3

Cold 1

Cold 2

Drug 1

Genetic Hardening 1

Genetic Hardening 2

Drug 2

Immaturity

Mania

Obsession

Devotion

Transcendence

Genetic Reshuffle 1

Genetic Reshuffle 2

Genetic Reshuffle 3(if youre close to affording it, otherwise don't bother)

Any cure harming symptoms you can afford

Super Sparrow- All Plagues 3 Biohazards On Normal or Higher Guide

This section is dedicated to the Super Sparrow achievement- Obtain 3 biohazards on normal or above for every plague type on the Pirate Plague scenario.

This is obviously quite rough as you get subjected to heavy RNG on ship transmissions for islands quite frequently.

Where applicable I'll try and tune the guides for working on mega brutal as well, but no promises on some of the less savory ones. The ones that do will say "Mega Brutal Verified" in the notes for them or something to that extent.

General advice: Save/Load is recommended for islands once they get infected. Otherwise you're subjected to the raw RNG which is not fun here. Mobile players just need to throw a lot of attempts at it. This is NOT an easy achievement.

Reminder that for the 65k requisite score, the average requirements are sub 365 days and sub 60ish cure %. These vary somewhat but those are the common cutoffs.

If you play on normal, you don't really need to bother with symptoms as much as I write them into the guides and should keep mutations locked down. Time with open ports is critical here.

A few important notes about ship transmissions:

When save/loading, ship transmissions can go both ways. It's 50/50. If you reload and see a ship go from an island to a normal country, if you load again it might go from the country to the island instead. Abuse this to get your ship transmissions if need be.

Planes/ships are always scripted. If a ship starts 10 days after you loaded your save, it will always start 10 days after you load your save. This means reloading may not generate additional ship transmissions, especially the ones you need. As such, sometimes you might just need to restart entirely to shuffle the RNG and save/loading won't exactly cut it all the time.

If you save too close to when a ship/plane comes out, it just won't spawn. Don't lose your already scarce ships this way.

Current guides, sources and authors:

Super Sparrow- Bacteria

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

The original mega brutal bacteria guide works mostly fine here. Just needs some tweaks for this run.

My additions are marked with a * and my removals are marked with a strikethrough, as always.

Original Author: Tatsur0 and Barry
Modified for Pirate Plague by Boblord
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=288653571

If attempting on mega brutal, do take note of the things I mentioned in the introduction to this section. You'll need them

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic

Aquacyte

Urbophile

Sympto-Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia

Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Coughing
Pneumonia
Insomnia
Paranoia
*These two generate additional severity for no tangible benefit, not good when we need open ports.

*Keep any symptoms too severe/lethal from mutating if possible, we need as much time with open ports as possible.

Air 1
Water 1
Air 2
Water 2
Extreme Bio-Aerosol

Rodent 1 Not necessary

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
*Genetic Hardening 1
*Genetic Hardening 2
*Need that early cure protection

*At this point you'll need to focus on gaming the islands. Look for ships going in/out of them, if you see one, save/load until it's going to the island and hope it's infected. Repeat times all the islands. Sometimes you might just not get anything to or from a specific island. Just restart and try again with fresh RNG, save/loading won't fix this unless ports just closed for a ship that was scheduled already.

*If this is on normal difficulty, just keep symptoms down until you get them. Mega brutal you need to push a bit harder and more restarts will most likely be demanded.

*Once all islands are infected:
Necrosis
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Total Organ Faillure
Coma
Seizures
Insanity
Paralysis

Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3 (if you have the spare DNA by round end)

380ish days and sub 65% cure should net you the 3 biohazards you need. It's not an exact science, especially waiting on ships.

Super Sparrow- Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Mutations are quite nice to speed up the endgame killing. Focus on mutating the big symptoms but not early or else we lose our islands. Otherwise just let them do whatever, but ideally anything that we'll be purchasing anyways or general infectivity boosters(nausea, vomiting, coughing, etc)

For normal, you don't really need to push too hard for the mutations as the cure goes much slower, so you can afford to spend on it. Still worth doing if you want to minimize the margin of error.

Original Author: Boblord(yours truly)
Source: I made this base months ago and never uploaded it lmao
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP boost
Genetic Mimic
Aquacyte
Hydrophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting country: India

Water 1

Air 1

Air 2

Water 2

Extreme Bioaerosol

Drug 1

Cold 1

Cold 2

Heat 1

Drug 2

Genetic Hardening 1

Start looking at islands here and seeing what you need and what's sending ships(save/load if youre on pc)

Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Bird 1

Verify islands are set up to be infected at this point, once we evolve necrosis, everything is going to start closing.

Necrosis(could look for a mutation but not required)

Shortest path to total organ failure

Hemmorhagic Shock(ideal if this mutates here)

Coma

Paralysis

Inflammation

Seizures

Insanity

Genetic Reshuffle 1

Genetic Reshuffle 2

Super Sparrow- Fungus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Mutations don't matter too much here, just be careful with your land infections as south america or europe can be challenging if you dont get bursts there soon or your land infections get shut off.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic, adapted for pirate plague by boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g2cl02/fungus_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

Metabolic Jump

Darwinist

Suppression teracyte, suppression was patched

Extremophile

Patho-stasis

Start in India.

Keep it on the slowest speed at first, every day matters. Evolve spore bursts 1-6, one at a time, and then spore eruption.

While you are evolving those, get rash, sweating, and skin lesions as soon as you have enough DNA to have 1 left over for the next spore burst.

Hopefully you got a good spread across the globe. If you didn't get any in North America or South America you might need to restart.

We'll save the other spore bursts/eruption for much later.

Transmissions:

Evolve Bird 1 and 2, and Livestock 1.

Save your game before 4 months have passed.

You should get a mutation around now, at about 4 months in.

This needs to be a good one, preferably Necrosis but coughing is okay. If you don't get coughing, or necrosis then reload your save. You'll get a second mutation soon, that one has to be necrosis if you didn't get it the first time.

Evolve Rodent 1, Livestock 2, Rodent 2, Extreme Zoonosis.

That's it for transmissions.

Time for abilities:

Evolve Drug 1 and 2

Evolve Cold 1 and 2

Genetic Hardening 1

Time for symptoms:

You need to get down to Dysentery.

Coughing, pneumonia, pulmonary edema, diarrhea, dysentery.

By now you should have infected most of the world.

Time for the second set of spore bursts. If you use up all your spore bursts and still have countries left to infect, reload a save. We don't need to worry about the serious island issues this way.

Now to slow down the cure with symptoms

If coma or TOF mutate, that's ideal. Not required but still nice.

Insanity, seizures, inflammation, paralysis, coma.

Total Organ Failure

Use your DNA on Genetic Reshuffles.

Super Sparrow- Parasite

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

It's fine if the cure shoots up hard and fast, the score ends up being pretty good regardless.

Some additions with a * and removals with a strikethrough

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic, modified for pirate plague by Boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g3c7fx/parasite_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

ATP Boost

Darwinist

Aquacyte

Xerophile

Sympto-Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia

I recommend playing on a slower speed for a lot of this, every day counts.

Rash, Sweating, Nausea, Skin Lesions, Vomiting, Diarrhea

Air 1

Water 1

Water 2

Drug 1 & 2

Your month 4 mutation must be Dysentery.

Cold 1 & 2

Heat 1

Coughing, Pneumonia, Cysts, Hyper-Sensitivity

Insomnia, Paranoia

*Symbiosis 1
*Symbiosis 2
*Why these two? Ports closing is influenced by severity, evolving these here allows us to take advantage of the earlygame red bubble dna point boost for severity, but tune it down when it's time to get islands.

*Get all islands at this point, you should have a few months to burn.

*The second all the islands are good, continue on.

*Paralysis

If one of the next two mutates that's great, but it's not required.
*Coma
*Total Organ Failure

*Insanity
*Necrosis- helps clean up any remaining infections still needed on the last island

Genetic Reshuffles as you get the DNA

*Seizures

*Parasite score multiplier should be good enough to push it through easily here, biggest issue as usual is just the islands.

Super Sparrow- Prion

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

This is rough. It's probably the worst(imo) of any disease between this challenge on pirate plague/volcanic ash/shut down everything. Except for simian flu on MB here, that one has... other issues.

It's heavily RNG to get islands, heavily RNG to get good infections/lethality early enough to do it, and even worse to do both at once. Save/Load FREQUENTLY, otherwise you'll be spending a while here.

Original Author: Boblord(yours truly)
Source: Wrote this guide base when I did this garbage on mobile years ago
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
Metabolic Jump

Genetic Mimic

Teracyte

Sympto stasis

Extremophile

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Cysts

Hypersensitivity

Abscesses

Air 1

Water 1

Water 2

Cold 1

Heat 1

Drug 1

Cold 2

Drug 2

Neural Atrophy 1

Infect most hard-to-get islands here. If youre playing on normal, you don't have to push as hard, but for mega brutal, you need to hit the gas on the symptoms while doing this and pray you can get in before ports close.

Save/Load is your best friend. Even then, there might just not be any ships going and you'll need to restart based on that. Keep trying, you'll get a good setup eventually.

Necrosis

Hemmorgic Shock

Paralysis

Coma

Total Organ Failure

Insomnia

Paranoia

Seizures

Insanity

Dysentery

Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3

Any other lethal/infectious symptoms you want.

Again, this is challenging. Just because it doesn't look like it works the first time doesn't mean the guide doesn't work. I've done my best to mitigate rng, but it's still incredibly prevalent here moreso than any other challenge barring speedruns, MCD, or a few other scenarios.

Super Sparrow- Nano Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Nano virus is all about going fast and loud. Unfortunately limited ports means we can't go fast by design, and going loud just gets those ports shut before we have our opportunity.

What's normally a pretty comfortable plague becomes an absolute pain here as you need to thread the needle between the demands of the scenario and the demands of the disease.

After getting a foothold with infectivity and cure slowdowns, youll need to devolve any high severity symptoms to hopefully prolong the amount of time any critical ports are opened for, and hope for a ship.

If you can get the islands, the score is not a problem.

Original Author: Tatsur0, adapted for Pirate Plague by Boblord
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=291014984
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic

Aquacyte Teracyte- ships are rare enough that we can expect to be on them at any given point, more important to have land spread to get through the nordic countries for some greenland chances.

Urbophile

Sympto-Stasis

Saudi Arabia India start- better alligned for more shots at madagascar/new guinea/philippines

Note: keep all highly severe symptoms devolved. We spread fast enough to not need necrosis or other things, and severity loses runs here.

Nausea
Rash
Cysts
Hyper Sensitivity
Paralysis
Coma
Insomnia
Paranoia
Seizures

Code Fragment Interception

Sweating
Skin Lesions

Air 1
Water 1
Air 2
Water 2
Bird 1- addition to help land spreading. If you get the "mass bird migration expected" event, it's worth considering bird 2 in the lategame to finish up some land infections during overload.

Radical Elements Stabilized

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Drug Immunity

Code Segment Interception

Genetic Hardening 1
Genetic Hardening 2
Encryption Breached

Devolve coma/seizures- we have enough anti-cure to be fine now, and it keeps ports open.

Replication Factory Overload- start farming islands now. Keep any severe mutations suppressed as much as possible

On final island infection-

Necrosis
Seizures
Coma
Insanity
Dysentery
Total Organ Failure
Hemorrhagic shock- careful on this one, make sure your infection rates can hold up to your lethality

Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3

Broadcast Interceptor Overload- trigger when alive population gets low(sub 1 mil), should be able to win with this active for the score.

Super Sparrow- Bioweapon

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Another one with a weird balance between severity and ports, requiring you to keep all non-listed mutations suppressed until you can infect the world

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic, adapted for Pirate Plague by Boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g1k5i1/bio_weapon_mega_brutal_5_biohazards/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Need to keep ports open for as long as possible, so devolve any mutations as they appear.

Genes:
ATP Boost

Darwinist Genetic Mimic- mutations are a nono here.

Aquacyte Teracyte- land transmission is the more important key as we'll expect to hit all boats that sail anyhow.

Urbophile

Sympto-Stasis

Start in India.

Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Water 1

Air 1

Water 2

Air 2

Cold 1

Cold 2

Drug 1

Drug 2

Heat 1

Genetic Hardening 1 and 2

Farm islands at this point, keep all mutations suppressed so ports don't close early.

Once last island is infected, move on-

Necrosis

Hemorrhagic Shock

Insomnia

Paranoia

Inflammation

Paralysis

Coma

Total Organ Failure- just make sure you dont kill faster than you can infect the last country or two.

Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3 or Seizures/Insanity, whatever it takes to keep the cure low

Super Sparrow- Neurax Worm

See the section labeled "Scenarios- Pirate Plague" above for this guide. Obviously works on mega brutal.

Super Sparrow- Necroa Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Took my 5 bio speedrun guide and refactored it a little to work for pirate plague. The biggest difference between normal and mega brutal is on MB the cure WILL get to 100%, so you need a much better time to pull off the 65k scoreline.

As such, I've included time markers that are nice to follow, but if you're playing normal, you can safely disregard them.

The most important part is having zcom spawn in somewhere easily manageable, especially on MB as they'll quickly move to set up a new base if you leave them unharassed.

Mutations are important for MB but not normal as well.

Original Author: Boblord
Source: Modified from my 5 bio speedrun guide
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene setup:
- ATP Boost
- Suppression
- Spliced Activation
- Darwinist
- Xerophile

- Start in saudi

For the cure: if it gets to 100%, you can easily still pull off a 70k+ score and 3 biohazards, it just requires a stricter time. Not a problem with normal as the cure won't get far, but mega brutal can be a bit of a concern. Don't worry about it.

- Start with Zoonotic shift immediately

- Purchase insect within 14 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase hyper salivation within 21 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase polyphagia within 20 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase gastroenteritis within 21 days of the previous upgrade

While doing the next 2 transmission upgrades below, cannibalism should mutate. Reload a few saves until it does(not important for normal difficulty)

- Purchase bat 1 within 20 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase bat 2 within 30-32 days of the previous upgrade

- Save up 14 DNA for cytopathic reanimation over 21-24 days. Reminder that we're relying on cannibalism to mutate before you hit the 14 DNA threshold. Reload otherwise.

At this point you should be just passing 5 months give or take 5-15 days.

- If you're all good on time and mutations, get cytopathic reanimation

- Purchase anaerobic resuscitation within 12-14 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase enhanced motor control within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase peptide surge within 7(or less, may have enough already) days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase acidic reflux within 7-10 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase naja mortis within 24 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase autothysis within 30 days of the previous upgrade

Note at this point: if z-com triggers early, reload. In regards to placement, anywhere in eurasia or greenland/iceland is ideal. Anything in the americas or oceania is a reload. Once zcom spawns, send hordes there IMMEDIATELY no matter how big they are. Getting them cut off early is critical to finishing in a reasonable timeframe.

- Purchase horde instinct within 2-3 days of the previous upgrade

At this point a note on hordes: Don't bother until we get the second horde capacity upgrade, anything less is insignificant(with an exception for zcom as noted above)

- Purchase structured travel, drifting fermentation, dyskinetic movement, echopraxia, and engorged quadriceps (yes, all of them. they're cheap) within 7 days of the previous upgrade

You may be close to triggering another mutation soon. Ideal option is dermal calcification(not required though)

- Purchase horde mentality within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde vocalization within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde pheromones within 7 days of the previous upgrade

The next 4 upgrades should be done in parallel to your horde work. Recommended DNA thresholds included

- When you reach about 23-25 DNA, purchase cranial elephantitis

- When you reach 30-32 DNA, purchase bone dysplasia

For the horde segment, play on 1x speed and always pause when sending your hordes. Get as many out as you can. Focus on short jumps between countries, horde travel between neighboring countries should usually take no longer than 1-2 days.

Horde time. Let's get cooking.

Note when fighting z-com: just send multiple hordes to their country. Should be no issues here if you keep flooding them.

For hordes, send zombies from the countries with lots of zombies, to countries with next to none. Focus on covering a good spread of the map, with large countries like russia/china/brazil that can serve as operating bases a priority.

Most islands will need to be done manually(to no surprise), but as long as you get hordes sent out there early, there should be no concerns at all.

Make sure the hordes travel as short of a distance as possible, and flood all neighboring countries with zombies asap. This part goes much quicker on ingame time than you think.

Europe can be quite annoying with lots of little countries, so make sure to utilize the north african countries to flood the bottom of europe.

Don't let the americas/oceania countries sit idle for too long, especially if you need to send some zombies long-distance to them.

If you have spare DNA points feel free to throw them into:

- Masticatory Tension

- Lumbrical Hypertrophy

Otherwise just use the map to see what you need to hit and focus on overwhelming everything with as many hordes as you can.

Super Sparrow- Simian Flu

Boblord's notes:

Ok, this is where I give up on the whole mega brutal gimmick for this line. Just take your 3 biohazards on normal and run.

I'm pretty sure you might be able to perform the "MCD classic" and spend 10 hours save loading yourself to a MB victory but let's be real, no. Someone is welcome to come up with a consistent strat and prove me wrong, but I'm not going to blow my time on trying to figure out if it's possible or not.

Now with that out of the way, this is quite free on normal. The guide works smoothly and I got this with little effort first try. Special plagues pretty much make these challenges null and void, just that simian flu's scoring and general difficulty to go fast/have low cure make it quite obnoxious.

Original Author: Unknown, site doesn't say
Source: https://www.xboxachievements.com/game/plague-inc-evolved/achievement/107314-super-sparrow.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Use these Genes; ATP Boost, ATP Overdose, Teracyte, Urbophile & Together Stronger

Start in Central Africa

Evolve Simian Neuro-Genesis & Ape Colonies (Abilities)

Wait for your apes to breakout and establish a colony (restart if it takes more than 25 days)

Evolve Inter-Genus Dissemination 1-2 (Transmissions) & Organised Travel (Ability)

Send your Colony to East Africa (Through Sudan)

Once the apes are out of Central Africa re-establish a colony there next to Western Africa and a 3rd 1 in Sudan (If you do it whilst they are still in the country travelling they'll stop travelling and join the new colony!)

Evolve Logistics (Ability)

Send the colony in Central Africa to Western Africa and rebuild the colony in Central Africa. (You should have 4)

Move Apes from Saudi Arabia into Russia (Via Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Kazakhstan & China)
Evolve Seafaring (Ability)

Move some Apes from Saudi to New Zealand (Via India, Indonesia and Australia)
Evolve Cognitive Shift & Education (Abilities)

Send Apes from Russia to Mexico (Via Baltic States, Poland, Germany, France, Caribbean & Central America.) and another lot to Canada (Via Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland & Greenland)

Build a 5th Colony in Indonesia

Evolve Cold 1 & Drug 1 (Abilities)

Evolve Photophobia, Subconjunctival Bleed, Subconjunctival Haemorrhage, Headache & Joint Pain (Symptoms)

Evolve Hominidae Bridge (Transmission) You should get lots of bubbles to pop! If its taken longer than 9 months you'll probably need to restart.

Evolve Air 1, Water 1, Birds 1-2, Fomites 1-3 & Bat 1-2 (Transmissions)

If any labs are built evolve Ape Rampage (Ability) and destroy them.

Start moving Apes into the remaining countries where humans or Apes aren't already infected (try to be efficient as possible)

At the same time evolve any Symptoms that increase Infectivity and start to increase the Lethality
Evolve Cold 2 & Drug 2 (Abilities)

Keep evolving Symptoms and any other Transmissions (Air 2, Water 2 & Extreme Bioaerosol) that you think you need (Use your judgement on the Lethality) until you can evolve Total Brain Death
(Via the Neuro Enhancements tree) * use the other lethal symptoms to kill off the population.

You'll probably have some spare DNA at the end to evolve Genetic Reshuffles to get a little bit of a bonus score.

Super Sparrow- Shadow Plague

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

The room for error on this is MASSIVE. I got nearly 90k score with about 365 days and 50% cure.

Original Author: PatrickSon, transcribed from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/2FDTQjFe3lA?si=jKcoQEt1vHVC1rqJ
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
Harvester
Budget Bat
Teracyte
Extremophile
Shadow Spawn

Starting Country:
China- SPAWN NEAR THE WESTERN EDGE OF CHINA(if you can pick, that is)

Evolve immediately upon spawning in china:
Shadow Blessing
Blood Rage
Blood Gift

Trigger a blood rage in china

Dark Cloud
Shadow Trail
Therianthropy
Nocturnal
Anaemia

After this, move as soon as "Vampire feeding attracts attention in China" pops up-

So this is another shadow plague variant where we have an evolution path and a travel path. Evolve things as you get dna points unless you're told to hold up(matters at one or two spots). Keep following the travel path.

A note on the travel path: Blood rage immediately when you land in a country, wait a day or so until the red bubble popup(assuming not infected already), then fly to the next one and repeat. We are not spending more than 2-3 days per country, but make sure you do actually infect the country. Time matters, so be fast with pauses.

Note: Let mutations do whatever they want. Not really too relevant unless they hit shadow slaves way too early, which might be a bit of a problem.

Travel Path Part 1:
Saudi Arabia
Russia
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Germany
Central Europe
Italy
France
Spain
UK
Iceland
Greenland
Canada(see instructions below)

Follow this evolution path during travel path part 1. If you finish it by the time you hit canada, feel free to move on to path 2, but you probably won't.
Evolution Path Part 1:
Corrupted Air
Pallor
Weeping Sores
Hyperdontia
Jugular Bite
Zoonotic Shift
Dog 1
Droplets 1
Fomites 1
Blood 1
Travel Speed 1
Wolf 1
Travel Speed 2
Dog 2
Lair

Should have hit Canada at or about this point. When you reach it, sit here in blood rage until the country is about 75-80% infected. Canada sucks normally, so we're pre infecting most of it manually.

Now continue the next set of countries as per usual. We'll set up a few lairs shortly, just do them in addition to your normal blood rage travel activities.

Some labs will pop up soon. Ignore them, but if you want to take them out if it doesn't cost too much time, go for it. The cure will look bad but will tank as soon as

Travel Path Part 2:
United States
Caribbean
Central America
Brazil
West Africa
Central Africa
Angola - Lair 1 here
South Africa
Botswana
Zimbabwe
Madagascar
Australia - Lair 2 here

Evolution Path Part 2:
Anti-biotic Tolerance
Heat Tolerance
Save DNA until you finish travel path 2

Only move on once you hit Australia. Shadow slaves should not be evolved any earlier. Infect most of the country while you're there, and evolve the first 3 traits in evolution path 3 asap with your stored DNA.

Otherwise, keep doing the blood rage trick through the next batch of countries.

Travel Path Part 3:
New Zealand
New Guinea
Indonesia
Philippines
Japan

Evolution Path Part 3:
Shadow Slaves
Muscular Hypotrophy
Masticatory Tension
Cold Tolerance
Bat 1
Wolf 2
Dark Ritual 1

At this point templars should be activated very shortly, and cure should be mid 60s-upper 70s. Once a country is fully infected, any cure labs collapse immediately and same with templar bases. We can still hit 3 bio even with cure at 99% before things start falling apart.

With that said, now we want to target templar bases in countries that aren't on the verge of being fully infected.

Find the templar base country with the highest healthy population, and head there. Blood rage it, get it out(may take some time, that's fine), then heal up some.

Many bases will collapse on their own, and the cure will start plummeting. Find the bases that aren't on the verge of collapse, and target those. The final base will be hard to kill, but we can get it out by fully infecting the country rather than defeating the templars.

Evolution Path Part 4:
Adrenal Surge
Shadow Portal(can ignore if time/cure/drones aren't threatening you)
Dark Ritual 2
Dark Infiltration
If you haven't won by this point, keep hitting blood rage upgrades

This should be enough to infect everything and trigger our shadow slaves wincon. ggs.

Super Sparrow- Xenolith

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

1:1 with the normal mega brutal 5 bio guide. works perfectly.

If playing on normal you can do the speedrun strat for xenolith, but it's inconsistent on higher levels. This is just fundamentally more consistent, and as such I chose the more complicated guide over the easy one.

Original Author: lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/zCLk-HsEWMw?si=F8Gi-RnA_4WyPVCn
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Tidal Pull
Harmonic Vibrations
Alien Chemistry
Hydrophile
*Again, the 3 xenolith specific genes are nice but not required.

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia

Start by evolving:
Organic Bridge
Subdermal Anchoring
Mineral Leeching
Replicating Lattice
Lithic Seed
Crystal Alignment
Atomic Bonding
Shatter

As soon as your meteor gets detected:
Volatile Isolation

Molecular Cleavage
Harmonic Field
Field Persistence
Local Amplification

The G-Com team should form shortly. When they fly to saudi arabia, use a crystal alignment on saudi. Should create a handful of bubbles

If countries ever create an "experimental resonance field" that prevents terraforming, ignore it. We'll clean them up at the end.

Crystal Bloom
Cascade
Unstable Construct

Crystal alignment in east africa

Resonance Cascade

Crystal alignment in saudi arabia
Shatter in saudi arabia

Crust breach
Ferrous Attraction

Crystal alignment in egypt

Thermal Siphoning

Atomic Reconfiguration 1
Atomic Reconfiguration 2
*Research may still be a bit high about now but we'll be fine. We'll still well and clear 5 biohazards.
*moved up in the ordering due to post patch making the cure go faster

Crystal alignment in egypt
Shatter in saudi arabia

Lattice Optimization
Ionic Displacement

Crystal alignment in china

Tectonic Anchoring

Shatter in central africa
You should get a LOT of bubbles now. Make sure to pop them all.

Crystal alignment in brazil

Subsurface Fracturing
Harmonic Resonance
Skeletal Integration
Flash-Vitrification
Epidermal Shedding
Hydrophobic Surface
Seismic Liquefaction

Shatter in india

Void Geometry
Piezo-Static Charge

Shatter in poland

Geometric Sprawl
Grid Siphoning

Crystal alignment in central europe

Polymer Assimilation
Solute Saturation

Shatter in canada
Shatter in russia

Macro-Crystallisation
Lithic Fissures
Silicate Purism

At this point if a country has an "experimental resonance field" active, we'll need to clear those out to win. In that case evolve:
Gravimetric Tether
Geode Burst
Piezoelectric Discharge

Drop meteors on the countries with an active field, optionally use a crystal alignment there if need be to finish the job. They should be consumed almost immediately.

At this point, everything should have been crystalized and you should have won.

Lava God- All Plagues 3 Biohazards On Normal or Higher Guide

This section is dedicated to the Lava God achievement- Obtain 3 biohazards on normal or above for every plague type on the Volcanic Ash scenario.

This is still quite rough, but not as bad as super sparrow was. Lack of planes slows things down, ESPECIALLY americas/caribbean/iceland but it could be a lot worse. Island rng is pretty close to normal, still takes some tries but very achievable.

Where applicable I'll try and tune the guides for working on mega brutal as well, but no promises on some of the less savory ones. The ones that do will say "Mega Brutal Verified" in the notes for them or something to that extent.

General advice: Save/Load is recommended for islands once they get infected. Otherwise you're subjected to the raw RNG which is not fun here. Mobile players just need to throw a lot of attempts at it. This is NOT an easy achievement.

Reminder that for the 65k requisite score, the average requirements are sub 365 days and sub 60ish cure %. These vary somewhat but those are the common cutoffs.

If you play on normal, you don't really need to bother with symptoms as much as I write them into the guides and should keep mutations locked down. Time with open airports/ship ports is critical here.

A few important notes about ship and plane transmissions:

When save/loading, ship and plane transmissions can go both ways. It's 50/50. If you reload and see a ship go from an island to a normal country, if you load again it might go from the country to the island instead. Abuse this to get your ship transmissions if need be.

Planes/ships are always scripted. If a ship/plane starts 10 days after you loaded your save, it will always start 10 days after you load your save. This means reloading may not generate additional ship/plane transmissions, especially the ones you need. As such, sometimes you might just need to restart entirely to shuffle the RNG and save/loading won't exactly cut it all the time.

If you save too close to when a ship/plane comes out, it just won't spawn.

With that said it's not as big of a deal here as it was during super sparrow. Island rng is back down to normal levels. Still takes a few shots but it's pretty quick all things considered.

Current guides, sources and authors:

Lava God- Bacteria

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

The original mega brutal bacteria guide works mostly fine here. Just needs some tweaks for this run.

My additions are marked with a * and my removals are marked with a strikethrough, as always.

Original Author: Tatsur0 and Barry
Modified for Volcanic Ash by Boblord
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=288653571

If attempting on mega brutal, do take note of the things I mentioned in the introduction to this section. You'll need them

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic

Aquacyte

Urbophile

Sympto-Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia India

Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
*Livestock 1
Coughing
Pneumonia
Insomnia
Paranoia
*These two generate additional severity for no tangible benefit, not good when we need open ports.

*Keep any symptoms too severe/lethal from mutating if possible, we need as much time with open ports as possible.

Water 1
Birds 1
Air 1
Birds 2
Water 2

Rodent 1 Not necessary

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
*Genetic Hardening 1
*Genetic Hardening 2
*Need that early cure protection

*At this point you'll need to focus on getting the islands. Even though this isn't pirate plague, islands are still the weakpoint, along with canada's infection rate. Thankfully it goes a lot quicker, and you only need a few shots to get it before ports close.

*If this is on normal difficulty, just keep symptoms down until you get them. Mega brutal you need to push a bit harder and more restarts will most likely be demanded.

*Once all islands are infected:
Necrosis
Total Organ Faillure
Coma
Seizures
Insanity
Paralysis

Dysentary or Genetic Reshuffle 1(depending on how infected the last country is)
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3 (if you have the spare DNA by round end)

380ish days and sub 65% cure should net you the 3 biohazards you need. It's not an exact science, but you got a fair bit of room to play around here.

Lava God- Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Mutations are quite nice to speed up the endgame killing. Focus on mutating the big symptoms but not early or else we lose our islands. Otherwise just let them do whatever, but ideally anything that we'll be purchasing anyways or general infectivity boosters(nausea, vomiting, coughing, etc)

Decent margin of error here. Don't stress too much.

For normal, you don't really need to push too hard for the mutations as the cure goes much slower, so you can afford to spend on it. Still worth doing if you want to minimize the margin of error.

Original Author: Boblord(yours truly)
Source: Based off my super sparrow virus guide
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
ATP boost
Genetic Mimic
Aquacyte
Hydrophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting country: India
Water 1

Water 2

Air 1

Air 2

Extreme Bioaerosol

Drug 1

Cold 1

Cold 2

Heat 1

Drug 2

Genetic Hardening 1

Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Bird 1

Make sure all islands are infected before moving on

Necrosis(could look for a mutation but not required)

Shortest path to total organ failure

Hemmorhagic Shock(ideal if this mutates here)

Coma

Paralysis

Inflammation

Seizures

Insanity

Genetic Reshuffle 1

Genetic Reshuffle 2

Lava God- Fungus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

So unbelievably free.

Mutations don't matter too much here, just be careful with your land infections as south america or europe can be challenging if you dont get bursts there soon or your land infections get shut off.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic, adapted for lava god by boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g2cl02/fungus_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

Metabolic Jump

Darwinist

Suppression teracyte, suppression was patched

Extremophile

Patho-stasis

Start in India.

Keep it on the slowest speed at first, every day matters. Evolve spore bursts 1-6, one at a time, and then spore eruption.

While you are evolving those, get rash, sweating, and skin lesions as soon as you have enough DNA to have 1 left over for the next spore burst.

Hopefully you got a good spread across the globe. If you didn't get any in North America or South America you might need to restart.

We'll save the other spore bursts/eruption for much later.

Transmissions:

Evolve:
*Water 1

Bird 1

*Water 2

Bird 2

Livestock 1

Evolve Rodent 1, Livestock 2, Rodent 2, Extreme Zoonosis.
That's it for transmissions.

Time for abilities:

Evolve Drug 1 and 2

Evolve Cold 1 and 2

Genetic Hardening 1

Time for symptoms:

You need to get down to Dysentery.

Coughing, pneumonia, pulmonary edema, diarrhea, dysentery.

By now you should have infected most of the world.

Time for the second set of spore bursts. If you use up all your spore bursts and still have islands left to infect, reload a save. We don't need to worry about the serious island issues this way.

Now to slow down the cure with symptoms

If coma or TOF mutate, that's ideal. Not required but still nice.

Insanity, seizures, inflammation, paralysis, coma.

Total Organ Failure

Use your DNA on Genetic Reshuffles.

Lava God- Parasite

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

It's fine if the cure shoots up hard and fast, the score ends up being pretty good regardless.

Some additions with a * and removals with a strikethrough

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic, modified for volcanic ash by Boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g3c7fx/parasite_mega_brutal_5_biohazards_guide/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:

ATP Boost

Darwinist

Aquacyte

Xerophile * Extremophile - saudi sucks here, need a better gene

Sympto-Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia India

Rash, Sweating, Nausea, Skin Lesions, Vomiting, Diarrhea

Water 1

Water 2

Air 1

Drug 1 & 2

Dysentery *Doesn't need to mutate

Cold 1 & 2

Heat 1

Coughing, Pneumonia, Cysts, Hyper-Sensitivity

Insomnia, Paranoia

*Symbiosis 1
*Symbiosis 2
*Why these two? Ports closing is influenced by severity, evolving these here allows us to take advantage of the earlygame red bubble dna point boost for severity, but tune it down when it's time to get islands.

*Get all islands at this point, you should have a few months to burn.

*The second all the islands are good, continue on.

*Paralysis

If one of the next two mutates that's great, but it's not required.
*Coma
*Total Organ Failure

*Insanity
*Necrosis- helps clean up any remaining infections still needed on the last island

Genetic Reshuffles as you get the DNA

*Seizures

*Parasite score multiplier should be good enough to push it through easily here, biggest issue as usual is just the islands, but they're pretty simple now.

Lava God- Prion

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

This is rough. It's probably the worst(imo) of any disease between this challenge on pirate plague/volcanic ash/shut down everything. Except for simian flu on MB here, that one has... other issues.

It's heavily RNG to get islands, heavily RNG to get good infections/lethality early enough to do it, and even worse to do both at once. Save/Load FREQUENTLY, otherwise you'll be spending a while here.

Original Author: Boblord(yours truly)
Source: Modified from my super sparrow prion guide
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
Metabolic Jump

Genetic Mimic

Teracyte

Sympto stasis

Extremophile

Starting Country: India

Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Cysts

Hypersensitivity

Abscesses

Water 1

Water 2

Air 1

Cold 1

Heat 1

Drug 1

Cold 2

Drug 2

Neural Atrophy 1

Infect most hard-to-get islands here. If youre playing on normal, you don't have to push as hard, but for mega brutal, you need to hit the gas on the symptoms while doing this because prion's slow. Our infectivity is great so just press it now.

Necrosis

Hemmorgic Shock

Paralysis

Coma

Total Organ Failure

Insomnia

Paranoia

Seizures

Insanity

Dysentery

Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3

Any other lethal/infectious symptoms you want.

Do note prion is slow. You need to press the symptoms super early to get good lethality when it matters.

Lava God- Nano Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Due to the high severity nature of this disease(coma and the other cure stopper symptoms), islands can be a bit annoying moreso than previous ones, but at least we go fast.

After getting a foothold with infectivity and cure slowdowns, youll need to devolve any high severity symptoms to hopefully prolong the amount of time any critical ports are opened for, and hope for a ship.

If you can get the islands, the score is not a problem.

Original Author: Tatsur0, adapted for Lava God by Boblord
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=291014984

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic

Aquacyte

Urbophile

Sympto-Stasis

Saudi Arabia India start- better ports

Note: keep all highly severe symptoms devolved. We spread fast enough to not need necrosis or other things, and severity loses runs here.

Nausea
Rash
Cysts
Hyper Sensitivity
Paralysis
Coma
Insomnia
Paranoia
Seizures

Code Fragment Interception

Sweating
Skin Lesions

Air 1
Water 1
Air 2
Water 2
Bird 1- addition to help land spreading. If you get the "mass bird migration expected" event, it's worth considering bird 2 in the lategame to finish up some land infections during overload.

Radical Elements Stabilized

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Drug Immunity

Code Segment Interception

Genetic Hardening 1
Genetic Hardening 2
Encryption Breached

Devolve coma/seizures- we have enough anti-cure to be fine now, and it keeps ports open.

Replication Factory Overload- start farming islands now. Keep any severe mutations suppressed as much as possible

On final island infection-

Necrosis
Seizures
Coma
Insanity
Dysentery
Total Organ Failure
Hemorrhagic shock- careful on this one, make sure your infection rates can hold up to your lethality

Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3

Broadcast Interceptor Overload- trigger when alive population gets low(sub 1 mil), should be able to win with this active for the score.

Lava God- Bioweapon

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Another one with a weird balance between severity and ports, requiring you to keep all non-listed mutations suppressed until you can infect the world. Sometimes we kill faster than we can infect too, but we have time to take it slow.

Original Author: u/wandering_stoic, adapted for Lava God by Boblord
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/plagueinc/comments/g1k5i1/bio_weapon_mega_brutal_5_biohazards/
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Need to keep ports open for as long as possible, so devolve any mutations as they appear.

Genes:
ATP Boost

Darwinist Genetic Mimic- mutations are a nono here.

Aquacyte

Urbophile

Sympto-Stasis

Start in India.

Rash

Sweating

Skin Lesions

Water 1

Water 2

Air 1

Cold 1

Cold 2

Drug 1

Drug 2

Heat 1

Genetic Hardening 1 and 2

Farm islands at this point, keep all mutations suppressed so ports don't close early.

Once last island is infected, move on-

Necrosis

Nausea

Vomiting

Diarrhea

Dysentary

Insanity

Insomnia

Paranoia

Inflammation

Paralysis

Coma

As many other infective symptoms as we can, just fill out the tree. Maybe some lethality if you need it.

Lava God- Neurax Worm

See the section labeled "Scenarios- Volcanic Ash" above for this guide. Obviously works on mega brutal.

Lava God- Necroa Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Took my super sparrow guide and refactored it a little to work for lava god. The biggest difference between normal and mega brutal is on MB the cure WILL get to 100%, so you need a much better time to pull off the 65k scoreline.

As such, I've included time markers that are nice to follow, but if you're playing normal, you can safely disregard them. You kinda-sorta can do MB without them either, but you are TIGHT at the score threshold and need to play fast and severe.

The most important part is having zcom spawn in somewhere easily manageable, especially on MB as they'll quickly move to set up a new base if you leave them unharassed.

Mutations are important for MB but not normal as well.

Original Author: Boblord
Source: Modified from my super sparrow guide
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene setup:
- ATP Boost
- Teracyte(rip suppression)
- Spliced Activation
- Darwinist
- Extremophile

- Start in india

For the cure: if it gets to 100%, you can easily still pull off a 70k+ score and 3 biohazards, it just requires a stricter time. Not a problem with normal as the cure won't get far, but mega brutal can be a bit of a concern. Don't worry about it.

- Start with Zoonotic shift immediately

- Purchase insect within 14 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase hyper salivation within 21 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase polyphagia within 20 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase gastroenteritis within 21 days of the previous upgrade

While doing the next 2 transmission upgrades below, cannibalism should mutate. Reload a few saves until it does(not important for normal difficulty)

- Purchase bat 1 within 20 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase bat 2 within 30-32 days of the previous upgrade

- Save up 14 DNA for cytopathic reanimation over 21-24 days. Reminder that we're relying on cannibalism to mutate before you hit the 14 DNA threshold. Reload otherwise.

At this point you should be just passing 5 months give or take 5-15 days.

- If you're all good on time and mutations, get cytopathic reanimation

- Purchase anaerobic resuscitation within 12-14 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase enhanced motor control within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase peptide surge within 7(or less, may have enough already) days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase acidic reflux within 7-10 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase naja mortis within 24 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase autothysis within 30 days of the previous upgrade

Note at this point: if z-com triggers early, reload. In regards to placement, anywhere in eurasia or greenland/iceland is ideal. Anything in the americas or oceania is a reload. Once zcom spawns, send hordes there IMMEDIATELY no matter how big they are. Getting them cut off early is critical to finishing in a reasonable timeframe.

- Purchase horde instinct within 2-3 days of the previous upgrade

At this point a note on hordes: Don't bother until we get the second horde capacity upgrade, anything less is insignificant(with an exception for zcom as noted above)

- Purchase structured travel, drifting fermentation, dyskinetic movement, echopraxia, and engorged quadriceps (yes, all of them. they're cheap) within 7 days of the previous upgrade

You may be close to triggering another mutation soon. Ideal option is dermal calcification(not required though)

- Purchase horde mentality within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde vocalization within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde pheromones within 7 days of the previous upgrade

The next 4 upgrades should be done in parallel to your horde work. Recommended DNA thresholds included

- When you reach about 23-25 DNA, purchase cranial elephantitis

- When you reach 30-32 DNA, purchase bone dysplasia

For the horde segment, play on 1x speed and always pause when sending your hordes. Get as many out as you can. Focus on short jumps between countries, horde travel between neighboring countries should usually take no longer than 1-2 days.

Horde time. Let's get cooking.

Note when fighting z-com: just send multiple hordes to their country. Should be no issues here if you keep flooding them.

For hordes, send zombies from the countries with lots of zombies, to countries with next to none. Focus on covering a good spread of the map, with large countries like russia/china/brazil that can serve as operating bases a priority.

Most islands will need to be done manually(to no surprise), but as long as you get hordes sent out there early, there should be no concerns at all.

Make sure the hordes travel as short of a distance as possible, and flood all neighboring countries with zombies asap. This part goes much quicker on ingame time than you think.

Europe can be quite annoying with lots of little countries, so make sure to utilize the north african countries to flood the bottom of europe.

Don't let the americas/oceania countries sit idle for too long, especially if you need to send some zombies long-distance to them.

If you have spare DNA points feel free to throw them into:

- Masticatory Tension

- Lumbrical Hypertrophy

Otherwise just use the map to see what you need to hit and focus on overwhelming everything with as many hordes as you can.

Lava God- Simian Flu

Boblord's notes:

Once again just like super sparrow(because the gameplay really isnt different), 3 biohazards is rough even on normal. MB is WELL off the table. Guide is actually the same 1:1.

Original Author: Unknown, site doesn't say
Source: https://www.xboxachievements.com/game/plague-inc-evolved/achievement/107314-super-sparrow.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Use these Genes; ATP Boost, ATP Overdose, Teracyte, Urbophile & Together Stronger

Start in Central Africa

Evolve Simian Neuro-Genesis & Ape Colonies (Abilities)

Wait for your apes to breakout and establish a colony (restart if it takes more than 25 days)

Evolve Inter-Genus Dissemination 1-2 (Transmissions) & Organised Travel (Ability)

Send your Colony to East Africa (Through Sudan)

Once the apes are out of Central Africa re-establish a colony there next to Western Africa and a 3rd 1 in Sudan (If you do it whilst they are still in the country travelling they'll stop travelling and join the new colony!)

Evolve Logistics (Ability)

Send the colony in Central Africa to Western Africa and rebuild the colony in Central Africa. (You should have 4)

Move Apes from Saudi Arabia into Russia (Via Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Kazakhstan & China)
Evolve Seafaring (Ability)

Move some Apes from Saudi to New Zealand (Via India, Indonesia and Australia)
Evolve Cognitive Shift & Education (Abilities)

Send Apes from Russia to Mexico (Via Baltic States, Poland, Germany, France, Caribbean & Central America.) and another lot to Canada (Via Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland & Greenland)

Build a 5th Colony in Indonesia

Evolve Cold 1 & Drug 1 (Abilities)

Evolve Photophobia, Subconjunctival Bleed, Subconjunctival Haemorrhage, Headache & Joint Pain (Symptoms)

Evolve Hominidae Bridge (Transmission) You should get lots of bubbles to pop! If its taken longer than 9 months you'll probably need to restart.

Evolve Air 1, Water 1, Birds 1-2, Fomites 1-3 & Bat 1-2 (Transmissions)

If any labs are built evolve Ape Rampage (Ability) and destroy them.

Start moving Apes into the remaining countries where humans or Apes aren't already infected (try to be efficient as possible)

At the same time evolve any Symptoms that increase Infectivity and start to increase the Lethality
Evolve Cold 2 & Drug 2 (Abilities)

Keep evolving Symptoms and any other Transmissions (Air 2, Water 2 & Extreme Bioaerosol) that you think you need (Use your judgement on the Lethality) until you can evolve Total Brain Death
(Via the Neuro Enhancements tree) * use the other lethal symptoms to kill off the population.

You'll probably have some spare DNA at the end to evolve Genetic Reshuffles to get a little bit of a bonus score.

Lava God- Shadow Plague

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

The room for error on this is MASSIVE. I got nearly 90k score with about 365 days and 50% cure.

Original Author: PatrickSon, transcribed from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/2FDTQjFe3lA?si=jKcoQEt1vHVC1rqJ
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
Harvester
Budget Bat
Teracyte
Extremophile
Shadow Spawn

Starting Country:
China- SPAWN NEAR THE WESTERN EDGE OF CHINA(if you can pick, that is)

Evolve immediately upon spawning in china:
Shadow Blessing
Blood Rage
Blood Gift

Trigger a blood rage in china

Dark Cloud
Shadow Trail
Therianthropy
Nocturnal
Anaemia

After this, move as soon as "Vampire feeding attracts attention in China" pops up-

So this is another shadow plague variant where we have an evolution path and a travel path. Evolve things as you get dna points unless you're told to hold up(matters at one or two spots). Keep following the travel path.

A note on the travel path: Blood rage immediately when you land in a country, wait a day or so until the red bubble popup(assuming not infected already), then fly to the next one and repeat. We are not spending more than 2-3 days per country, but make sure you do actually infect the country. Time matters, so be fast with pauses.

Note: Let mutations do whatever they want. Not really too relevant unless they hit shadow slaves way too early, which might be a bit of a problem.

Travel Path Part 1:
Saudi Arabia
Russia
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Germany
Central Europe
Italy
France
Spain
UK
Iceland
Greenland
Canada(see instructions below)

Follow this evolution path during travel path part 1. If you finish it by the time you hit canada, feel free to move on to path 2, but you probably won't.
Evolution Path Part 1:
Corrupted Air
Pallor
Weeping Sores
Hyperdontia
Jugular Bite
Zoonotic Shift
Dog 1
Droplets 1
Fomites 1
Blood 1
Travel Speed 1
Wolf 1
Travel Speed 2
Dog 2
Lair

Should have hit Canada at or about this point. When you reach it, sit here in blood rage until the country is about 75-80% infected. Canada sucks normally, so we're pre infecting most of it manually.

Now continue the next set of countries as per usual. We'll set up a few lairs shortly, just do them in addition to your normal blood rage travel activities.

Some labs will pop up soon. Ignore them, but if you want to take them out if it doesn't cost too much time, go for it. The cure will look bad but will tank as soon as

Travel Path Part 2:
United States
Caribbean
Central America
Brazil
West Africa
Central Africa
Angola - Lair 1 here
South Africa
Botswana
Zimbabwe
Madagascar
Australia - Lair 2 here

Evolution Path Part 2:
Anti-biotic Tolerance
Heat Tolerance
Save DNA until you finish travel path 2

Only move on once you hit Australia. Shadow slaves should not be evolved any earlier. Infect most of the country while you're there, and evolve the first 3 traits in evolution path 3 asap with your stored DNA.

Otherwise, keep doing the blood rage trick through the next batch of countries.

Travel Path Part 3:
New Zealand
New Guinea
Indonesia
Philippines
Japan

Evolution Path Part 3:
Shadow Slaves
Muscular Hypotrophy
Masticatory Tension
Cold Tolerance
Bat 1
Wolf 2
Dark Ritual 1

At this point templars should be activated very shortly, and cure should be mid 60s-upper 70s. Once a country is fully infected, any cure labs collapse immediately and same with templar bases. We can still hit 3 bio even with cure at 99% before things start falling apart.

With that said, now we want to target templar bases in countries that aren't on the verge of being fully infected.

Find the templar base country with the highest healthy population, and head there. Blood rage it, get it out(may take some time, that's fine), then heal up some.

Many bases will collapse on their own, and the cure will start plummeting. Find the bases that aren't on the verge of collapse, and target those. The final base will be hard to kill, but we can get it out by fully infecting the country rather than defeating the templars.

Evolution Path Part 4:
Adrenal Surge
Shadow Portal(can ignore if time/cure/drones aren't threatening you)
Dark Ritual 2
Dark Infiltration
If you haven't won by this point, keep hitting blood rage upgrades

This should be enough to infect everything and trigger our shadow slaves wincon. ggs.

Lava God- Xenolith

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Almost 1:1 with the normal mega brutal 5 bio guide. This is a little bit harder since we cant just crutch on saudi. I've updated the country list accordingly for india.

If playing on normal you can do the speedrun strat for xenolith, but it's inconsistent on higher levels. This is just fundamentally more consistent, and as such I chose the more complicated guide over the easy one.

Original Author: lolownik
Source: https://youtu.be/zCLk-HsEWMw?si=F8Gi-RnA_4WyPVCn
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Tidal Pull
Harmonic Vibrations
Alien Chemistry
Hydrophile
*Again, the 3 xenolith specific genes are nice but not required.

Starting Country: Saudi Arabia India

Start by evolving:
Organic Bridge
Subdermal Anchoring
Mineral Leeching
Replicating Lattice
Lithic Seed
Crystal Alignment
Atomic Bonding
Shatter

As soon as your meteor gets detected:
Volatile Isolation

Molecular Cleavage
Harmonic Field
Field Persistence
Local Amplification

The G-Com team should form shortly. When they fly to india, use a crystal alignment on it. Should create a handful of bubbles

If countries ever create an "experimental resonance field" that prevents terraforming, ignore it. We'll clean them up at the end.

Crystal Bloom
Cascade
Unstable Construct

Crystal alignment in Kazakhstan

Resonance Cascade

Crystal alignment in india
Shatter in india

Crust breach
Ferrous Attraction

Crystal alignment in china

Thermal Siphoning

Atomic Reconfiguration 1
Atomic Reconfiguration 2
*Research may still be a bit high about now but we'll be fine. We'll still well and clear 5 biohazards.
*These are moved up in the order compared to the video guide as post patch makes the cure go a bit faster.

Crystal alignment in china
Shatter in india

Lattice Optimization
Ionic Displacement

Crystal alignment in india

Tectonic Anchoring

Shatter in china
You should get a LOT of bubbles now. Make sure to pop them all. *maybe not? Try shattering a few other well connected countries, it was weird when I did it.

Crystal alignment in brazil

Subsurface Fracturing
Harmonic Resonance
Skeletal Integration
Flash-Vitrification
Epidermal Shedding
Hydrophobic Surface
Seismic Liquefaction

Shatter in saudi

Void Geometry
Piezo-Static Charge

Shatter in poland

Geometric Sprawl
Grid Siphoning

Crystal alignment in central europe

Polymer Assimilation
Solute Saturation

Shatter in canada
Shatter in russia

Macro-Crystallisation
Lithic Fissures
Silicate Purism

At this point if a country has an "experimental resonance field" active, we'll need to clear those out to win. In that case evolve:
Gravimetric Tether
Geode Burst
Piezoelectric Discharge

Drop meteors on the countries with an active field, optionally use a crystal alignment there if need be to finish the job. They should be consumed almost immediately.

At this point, everything should have been crystalized and you should have won.

Mr. President- All Plagues 3 Biohazards On Normal or Higher Guide

This section is dedicated to the Mr. President achievement- Obtain 3 biohazards on normal or above for every plague type on the Shut Down Everything scenario.

On normal? Much easier than the other two. On mega brutal? Worse. How is that possible? Everything closes at the slightest touch so many infections on islands or land based are just plan rng or time waisters respectively.

Shame suppression got nerfed into the ground, but it might be useful in it's original (intended) form.

Where applicable I'll try and tune the guides for working on mega brutal as well, but no promises on some of the less savory ones. The ones that do will say "Mega Brutal Verified" in the notes for them or something to that extent.

Reminder that for the 65k requisite score, the average requirements are sub 365 days and sub 60ish cure %. These vary somewhat but those are the common cutoffs.

If you play on normal, you don't really need to bother with symptoms as much as I write them into the guides and should keep mutations locked down. Time with open airports/ship ports is critical here.

XENOLITH UDPATE: For some reason neurax/necroa/simian/shadow were removed as options for this scenario, and xenolith never got added in the first place. As such the guides for those are functionally useless now, but I'll leave them here because I highly doubt thats permanent.

Current guides, sources and authors:

Mr. President- Bacteria

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

This has a slightly different build due to some funny scenario exclusive events.

Islands suck. Pirate plague level scarcity when playing on MB, because everything shuts so fast. On normal, you can play a more transmission heavy game than what's done here.

Note that madagascar does get a special buff where it's much harder to infect, think canada but hot and an island.

Save/loads are necessary for mega brutal not being awful, but just take this and play slightly more under the radar for normal. Watch your severity on mutations.

With that said it's super easy to get 100k+ here so you can maybe play a bit slower even on mb.

Original Author: kirkistanempire
Source: https://discord.com/channels/523349543505362945/1435241952248332429/1446675083203449074
on the official ndemic creations discord: https://discord.gg/ndemic
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia

Air 1
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Cysts
Hyper Sensitivity
Abscesses
Anameia
Haemophillia
Coughing
Nausea
Vomiting
Bird 1
Bird 2
Cold 1
Cold 2
Water 1
Drug 1
Drug 2
Water 2
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Rodent 1
Livestock 1
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Necrosis(only when I got all islands)
*heat 1 if madagascar is being obnoxious
Total Organ Failure
Coma
Dysentery
Insanity
Hemorrhagic Shock
Paralysis
Genetic Reshuffle 1-3

Tip 1: ALWAYS save when you infect an island.
Tip 2: devolve too lethal symptoms. Countries will shut down much faster
Tip 3: If you see a boat go from an island to a country and you made a save, reload said save as that boat will actually go the island instead. That is how I was able to get Caribbean and Greenland on my Virus attempt

Mr. President- Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Same rules as bacteria. Kinda sorta pretty rng due to how aggressive ports close on mega brutal, but worlds better on normal.

Original Author: kirkistanempire
Source: https://discord.com/channels/523349543505362945/1435241952248332429/1446675083203449074
on the official ndemic creations discord: https://discord.gg/ndemic
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia

Air 1
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Cysts
Hyper Sensitivity
Abscesses
Anameia
Haemophillia
Coughing
Nausea
Vomiting
Bird 1
Bird 2
Cold 1
Cold 2
Water 1
Drug 1
Drug 2
Water 2
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Rodent 1
Livestock 1
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Necrosis(only when I got all islands)
*heat 1 if madagascar is being obnoxious
Total Organ Failure
Coma
Dysentery
Insanity
Hemorrhagic Shock
Paralysis
Genetic Reshuffle 1-3

Tip 1: ALWAYS save when you infect an island.
Tip 2: devolve too lethal symptoms. Countries will shut down much faster
Tip 3: If you see a boat go from an island to a country and you made a save, reload said save as that boat will actually go the island instead. That is how I was able to get Caribbean and Greenland on my Virus attempt

Mr. President- Fungus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

This one REALLY stinks. I like some adjustments but your initial bursts still p much determine if you win or lose. Probably MUCH better on normal.

Original Author: angycathy. based on Lolownik's Fungus speedrun build. Modified by boblord
Source: https://discord.com/channels/523349543505362945/1452486300979560530/1452489158042849472
on the official ndemic creations discord: https://discord.gg/ndemic
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Make a save before using a Spore Burst/Eruption. Evolution order may be different depending on how many DNA points you get per red bubble, or if you get orange bubbles. Basically, make sure you have 1 DNA point left after evolving a symptom for a Spore Burst, or 2 for a Spore Eruption.

You *should hit the following countries with Spore Bursts:
Greenland, Iceland, Caribbean, Madagascar, Philippines, New Guinea

It is highly recommended to hit the following countries with Spore Bursts/Eruptions:
USA, Brazil, Sweden, Central Europe, Central Africa, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Australia

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Suppression
Extremophile
Patho-Stasis

Starting Country:
New Zealand

Cysts
Abscesses
Spore Burst 1
Spore Burst 2
Rash
Spore Burst 3
Spore Burst 4
Spore Burst 5
Sweating
Spore Burst 6
Spore Burst 7
Spore Burst 8
Spore Burst 9
Spore Burst 10
Skin Lesions
Spore Burst 11
Spore Burst 12
Spore Eruption 1
Spore Eruption 2
Spore Hardening save for later
Bird 1
Bird 2
Drug Resistance 1
Heat Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 1
Necrosis (mutated)
Hemorrhagic Shock
Drug Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 2
Cold Resistance 2
Environmental Hardening
Rodent 1
Livestock 1
Insect 1
* at this point see what's left and if you can gamble safely on your final spore eruption + hardening to get the job done
Fever
Immune Suppression
Total Organ Failure (mutated)
Systemic Infection
Internal Haemorrhaging
Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3

Mr. President- Parasite

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Same rules as bacteria/virus. Kinda sorta pretty rng due to how aggressive ports close on mega brutal, but worlds better on normal. Parasite is quite severe by default, so it's worth devolving any severe mutations that hit so you don't get fried by ports or cure super quickly.

Original Author: kirkistanempire
Source: https://discord.com/channels/523349543505362945/1435241952248332429/1446675083203449074
on the official ndemic creations discord: https://discord.gg/ndemic
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto Stasis

Start in Saudi Arabia

Air 1
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Cysts
Hyper Sensitivity
Abscesses
Anameia
Haemophillia
Coughing
Nausea
Vomiting
Bird 1
Bird 2
Cold 1
Cold 2
Water 1
Drug 1
Drug 2
Water 2
Pneumonia
Sneezing
Rodent 1
Livestock 1
* Genetic Hardening 1
Necrosis(only when I got all islands)
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Total Organ Failure
Coma
Dysentery
Insanity
Hemorrhagic Shock
Paralysis
Genetic Reshuffle 1-3

Tip 1: ALWAYS save when you infect an island.
Tip 2: devolve too lethal symptoms. Countries will shut down much faster
Tip 3: If you see a boat go from an island to a country and you made a save, reload said save as that boat will actually go the island instead. That is how I was able to get Caribbean and Greenland on my Virus attempt

Mr. President- Prion

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Slow plague, so hitting mutations or islands in a timely fashion is quite useful. VERY important for mega brutal, obviously less so for normal but prion is never fun.

Original Author: kirkistanempire
Source: https://discord.com/channels/523349543505362945/1452486300979560530/1452493088454086711
on the official ndemic creations discord: https://discord.gg/ndemic
-------------------------------------------------------------------

*These are more important for MB than normal, but S/Ling for some islands and mutations helps A LOT:
S/L for early boat from Saudi Arabia to Madagascar, and make sure the Island Quarantine event is in Madagascar.
Make a save for every island infected.
S/L for any bad events (watchlist, awareness day, any uninfected island or all countries that can send boats into the islands shutting down sea ports, etc)
Try to get into every island before evolving Necrosis.
Try to mutate more expensive symptoms.

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting Country:
Saudi Arabia

Cysts
Abscesses
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Coughing
Nausea
Vomiting
Air 1
Water 1
Bird 1
Bird 2
Cold Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Cold Resistance 2
Livestock 1
Rodent 1
Anaemia
Haemophilia
Hyper Sensitivity
Pneumonia
Paralysis
Coma
Necrosis
Hemorrhagic Shock
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Total Organ Failure
Dysentery
Insanity
Internal Haemorrhaging
Tumours
Seizures
Paranoia
Insomnia
Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3

Mr. President- Nano Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Due to the high severity nature of this disease(coma and the other cure stopper symptoms), islands can be a bit annoying moreso than previous ones, but at least we go fast.

After getting a foothold with infectivity and cure slowdowns, youll need to devolve any high severity symptoms to hopefully prolong the amount of time any critical ports are opened for, and hope for a ship.

If you can get the islands, the score is not a problem.

Original Author: Tatsur0, adapted for Lava God by Boblord
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=291014984

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:

ATP Boost

Genetic Mimic

Aquacyte

Extremophile

Sympto-Stasis

Saudi Arabia start

Note: keep all highly severe symptoms devolved. We spread fast enough to not need necrosis or other things, and severity loses runs here.

Nausea
Rash
Cysts
Hyper Sensitivity
Paralysis
Coma
Insomnia
Paranoia
Seizures

Code Fragment Interception

Sweating
Skin Lesions

Air 1
Water 1
Air 2
Water 2
Bird 1
*Bird 2- needed in this scenario

Radical Elements Stabilized

Cold Resistance 1
Cold Resistance 2
Heat Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Drug Immunity

Code Segment Interception

Devolve coma/seizures- we have enough anti-cure to be fine now, and it keeps ports open.

Replication Factory Overload- rip this asap. we need to get good #s in port countries to get island ships before ports get shut

Genetic Hardening 1

Genetic Hardening 2

Encryption Breached

On final island infection-

Necrosis
Seizures
Coma
Insanity
Dysentery
Total Organ Failure
Hemorrhagic shock- careful on this one(looking at you madagascar), make sure your infection rates can hold up to your lethality

Genetic Reshuffle 1/2/3

Broadcast Interceptor Overload- trigger when alive population gets low(sub 1 mil), should be able to win with this active for the score.

Mr. President- Bioweapon

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Very score friendly, as long as islands cooperate. Not too bad overall imo.

Original Author: kirkistanempire
Source: https://discord.com/channels/523349543505362945/1452486300979560530/1452494353477013679
on the official ndemic creations discord: https://discord.gg/ndemic
-------------------------------------------------------------------

*Below is mostly relevant for MB.
S/L for early boat from Saudi Arabia to Madagascar, and make sure the Island Quarantine event is in Madagascar.
Make a save for every island infected.
Try to get into every island before evolving Necrosis.
Use a Deactivate Modified Genes when your lethality starts getting too high. You should not need more than 2. Devolve all the ones used when all countries are infected.

Genetic Code:
ATP Boost
Darwinist
Aerocyte
Extremophile
Sympto-Stasis

Starting Country:
Saudi Arabia

Cysts
Abscesses
Rash
Sweating
Skin Lesions
Coughing
Nausea
Vomiting
Air 1
Water 1
Bird 1
Bird 2
Cold Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 1
Drug Resistance 2
Cold Resistance 2
Livestock 1
Rodent 1
Hyper Sensitivity
Pneumonia
Paralysis
Coma
Necrosis
Hemorrhagic Shock
Pulmonary Fibrosis
Total Organ Failure
Dysentery
Insanity
Internal Haemorrhaging
Seizures
Paranoia
Insomnia
Genetic Reshuffle 1
Genetic Reshuffle 2
Genetic Reshuffle 3

Mr. President- Neurax Worm

See the section labeled "Scenarios- Shut Down Everything" above for this guide. Obviously works on mega brutal.

Mr. President- Necroa Virus

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

Took my super sparrow guide and refactored it a little to work for shut down everything. The biggest difference between normal and mega brutal is on MB the cure WILL get to 100%, so you need a much better time to pull off the 65k scoreline.

As such, I've included time markers that are nice to follow, but if you're playing normal, you can safely disregard them. You kinda-sorta can do MB without them either, but you are TIGHT at the score threshold and need to play fast and severe. Approx 380-90 days for 65k score.

The most important part is having zcom spawn in somewhere easily manageable, especially on MB as they'll quickly move to set up a new base if you leave them unharassed.

Mutations are important for MB but not normal as well.

Original Author: Boblord
Source: Modified from my super sparrow guide
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene setup:
- ATP Boost
- Suppression
- Spliced Activation
- Darwinist
- Xerophile

- Start in saudi

For the cure: if it gets to 100%, you can easily still pull off a 70k+ score and 3 biohazards, it just requires a stricter time. Not a problem with normal as the cure won't get far, but mega brutal can be a bit of a concern. Don't worry about it.

- Start with Zoonotic shift immediately

- Purchase insect within 21 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase hyper salivation within 21 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase polyphagia within 20 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase gastroenteritis within 21 days of the previous upgrade

While doing the next 2 transmission upgrades below, cannibalism should mutate. Reload a few saves until it does(not important for normal difficulty)

- Purchase bat 1 within 30 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase bat 2 within 30-32 days of the previous upgrade

- Save up 14 DNA for cytopathic reanimation over 21-24 days. Reminder that we're relying on cannibalism to mutate before you hit the 14 DNA threshold. Reload otherwise.

At this point you should be just passing 5 months give or take 5-15 days.

- If you're all good on time and mutations, get cytopathic reanimation

- Purchase anaerobic resuscitation within 12-14 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase enhanced motor control within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase peptide surge within 7(or less, may have enough already) days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase acidic reflux within 7-10 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase naja mortis within 24 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase autothysis within 30 days of the previous upgrade

Note at this point: if z-com triggers early, reload. In regards to placement, anywhere in eurasia or greenland/iceland is ideal. Anything in the americas or oceania is a reload. Once zcom spawns, send hordes there IMMEDIATELY no matter how big they are. Getting them cut off early is critical to finishing in a reasonable timeframe.

- Purchase horde instinct within 2-3 days of the previous upgrade

At this point a note on hordes: Don't bother until we get the second horde capacity upgrade, anything less is insignificant(with an exception for zcom as noted above)

- Purchase structured travel, drifting fermentation, dyskinetic movement, echopraxia, and engorged quadriceps (yes, all of them. they're cheap) within 7 days of the previous upgrade

You may be close to triggering another mutation soon. Ideal option is dermal calcification(not required though)

- Purchase horde mentality within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde vocalization within 7 days of the previous upgrade

- Purchase horde pheromones within 7 days of the previous upgrade

The next 4 upgrades should be done in parallel to your horde work. Recommended DNA thresholds included

- When you reach about 23-25 DNA, purchase cranial elephantitis

- When you reach 30-32 DNA, purchase bone dysplasia

For the horde segment, play on 1x speed and always pause when sending your hordes. Get as many out as you can. Focus on short jumps between countries, horde travel between neighboring countries should usually take no longer than 1-2 days.

Horde time. Let's get cooking.

Note when fighting z-com: just send multiple hordes to their country. Should be no issues here if you keep flooding them.

For hordes, send zombies from the countries with lots of zombies, to countries with next to none. Focus on covering a good spread of the map, with large countries like russia/china/brazil that can serve as operating bases a priority.

Most islands will need to be done manually(to no surprise), but as long as you get hordes sent out there early, there should be no concerns at all.

Make sure the hordes travel as short of a distance as possible, and flood all neighboring countries with zombies asap. This part goes much quicker on ingame time than you think.

Europe can be quite annoying with lots of little countries, so make sure to utilize the north african countries to flood the bottom of europe.

Don't let the americas/oceania countries sit idle for too long, especially if you need to send some zombies long-distance to them.

If you have spare DNA points feel free to throw them into:

- Masticatory Tension

- Lumbrical Hypertrophy

Otherwise just use the map to see what you need to hit and focus on overwhelming everything with as many hordes as you can.

Mr. President- Simian Flu

Boblord's notes:

MB isn't happening due to how rough this is, just like super sparrow/lava god here. Guide is 1:1 to the other two.

Original Author: Unknown, site doesn't say
Source: https://www.xboxachievements.com/game/plague-inc-evolved/achievement/107314-super-sparrow.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Use these Genes; ATP Boost, ATP Overdose, Teracyte, Urbophile & Together Stronger

Start in Central Africa

Evolve Simian Neuro-Genesis & Ape Colonies (Abilities)

Wait for your apes to breakout and establish a colony (restart if it takes more than 25 days)

Evolve Inter-Genus Dissemination 1-2 (Transmissions) & Organised Travel (Ability)

Send your Colony to East Africa (Through Sudan)

Once the apes are out of Central Africa re-establish a colony there next to Western Africa and a 3rd 1 in Sudan (If you do it whilst they are still in the country travelling they'll stop travelling and join the new colony!)

Evolve Logistics (Ability)

Send the colony in Central Africa to Western Africa and rebuild the colony in Central Africa. (You should have 4)

Move Apes from Saudi Arabia into Russia (Via Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Kazakhstan & China)
Evolve Seafaring (Ability)

Move some Apes from Saudi to New Zealand (Via India, Indonesia and Australia)
Evolve Cognitive Shift & Education (Abilities)

Send Apes from Russia to Mexico (Via Baltic States, Poland, Germany, France, Caribbean & Central America.) and another lot to Canada (Via Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland & Greenland)

*Manually get madagascar sometime now too. It's hard to fill out with the modified version in this scenario.

Build a 5th Colony in Indonesia

Evolve Cold 1 & Drug 1 (Abilities)

Evolve Photophobia, Subconjunctival Bleed, Subconjunctival Haemorrhage, Headache & Joint Pain (Symptoms)

Evolve Hominidae Bridge (Transmission) You should get lots of bubbles to pop! If its taken longer than 9 months you'll probably need to restart.

Evolve Air 1, Water 1, Birds 1-2, Fomites 1-3 & Bat 1-2 (Transmissions)

If any labs are built evolve Ape Rampage (Ability) and destroy them.

Start moving Apes into the remaining countries where humans or Apes aren't already infected (try to be efficient as possible)

At the same time evolve any Symptoms that increase Infectivity and start to increase the Lethality
Evolve Cold 2 & Drug 2 (Abilities)

Keep evolving Symptoms and any other Transmissions (Air 2, Water 2 & Extreme Bioaerosol) that you think you need (Use your judgement on the Lethality) until you can evolve Total Brain Death
(Via the Neuro Enhancements tree) * use the other lethal symptoms to kill off the population.

You'll probably have some spare DNA at the end to evolve Genetic Reshuffles to get a little bit of a bonus score.

Mr. President- Shadow Plague

Boblord's notes:
Mega Brutal Verified- This guide will work on mega brutal for 3 biohazards. It works just fine on normal or brutal, but with even more room for error.

This one in particular is a bit more annoying than the other two as it's HARD to spread in countries. Some changes made and you need to be much more aggressive on shutting down labs as they spawn.

You'll ideally want to fully(or nearly) infect greenland/iceland, and some additional help in countries struggling(africa, europe) is useful.

Original Author: PatrickSon, transcribed from video by Boblord
Source: https://youtu.be/2FDTQjFe3lA?si=jKcoQEt1vHVC1rqJ
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gene Setup:
Harvester
Budget Bat
Teracyte
Extremophile
Shadow Spawn

Starting Country:
China- SPAWN NEAR THE WESTERN EDGE OF CHINA(if you can pick, that is)

Evolve immediately upon spawning in china:
Shadow Blessing
Blood Rage
Blood Gift

Trigger a blood rage in china

Dark Cloud
Shadow Trail
Therianthropy
Nocturnal
Anaemia

After this, move as soon as "Vampire feeding attracts attention in China" pops up-

So this is another shadow plague variant where we have an evolution path and a travel path. Evolve things as you get dna points unless you're told to hold up(matters at one or two spots). Keep following the travel path.

A note on the travel path: Blood rage immediately when you land in a country, wait a day or so until the red bubble popup(assuming not infected already), then fly to the next one and repeat. We are not spending more than 2-3 days per country, but make sure you do actually infect the country. Time matters, so be fast with pauses.

Note: Let mutations do whatever they want. Not really too relevant unless they hit shadow slaves way too early, which might be a bit of a problem.

Travel Path Part 1:
Saudi Arabia
Russia
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Germany
Central Europe
Italy
France
Spain
UK
Iceland
Greenland
Canada(see instructions below)

Follow this evolution path during travel path part 1. If you finish it by the time you hit canada, feel free to move on to path 2, but you probably won't.
Evolution Path Part 1:
Corrupted Air
Pallor
Weeping Sores
Hyperdontia
Jugular Bite
Zoonotic Shift
Dog 1
Droplets 1
Fomites 1
Blood 1
Travel Speed 1
Wolf 1
Travel Speed 2
Dog 2
Lair

Should have hit Canada at or about this point. When you reach it, sit here in blood rage until the country is about 75-80% infected. Canada sucks normally, so we're pre infecting most of it manually. Also pop a lair up here.

Now continue the next set of countries as per usual. We'll set up a few lairs shortly, just do them in addition to your normal blood rage travel activities.

Some labs will pop up soon. Ignore them, but if you want to take them out if it doesn't cost too much time, go for it. The cure will look bad but will tank as soon as

Travel Path Part 2:
United States
Caribbean
Central America
Brazil
West Africa
Central Africa
Angola - Lair 2 here
South Africa
Botswana
Zimbabwe
Madagascar
Australia - Lair 3 here

Evolution Path Part 2:
Anti-biotic Tolerance
Heat Tolerance
Save DNA until you finish travel path 2

Only move on once you hit Australia. Shadow slaves should not be evolved any earlier. Infect most of the country while you're there, and evolve the first 3 traits in evolution path 3 asap with your stored DNA.

Otherwise, keep doing the blood rage trick through the next batch of countries.

Travel Path Part 3:
New Zealand
New Guinea
Indonesia
Philippines
Japan

Evolution Path Part 3:
Shadow Slaves
Muscular Hypotrophy
Masticatory Tension
Cold Tolerance
Bat 1
Wolf 2
Dark Ritual 1

At this point templars should be activated very shortly, and cure should be mid 60s-upper 70s. Once a country is fully infected, any cure labs collapse immediately and same with templar bases. We can still hit 3 bio even with cure at 99% before things start falling apart.

With that said, now we want to target templar bases in countries that aren't on the verge of being fully infected.

Find the templar base country with the highest healthy population, and head there. Blood rage it, get it out(may take some time, that's fine), then heal up some.

Many bases will collapse on their own, and the cure will start plummeting. Find the bases that aren't on the verge of collapse, and target those. The final base will be hard to kill, but we can get it out by fully infecting the country rather than defeating the templars.

Evolution Path Part 4:
Adrenal Surge
Shadow Portal(can ignore if time/cure/drones aren't threatening you)
Dark Ritual 2
Dark Infiltration
If you haven't won by this point, keep hitting blood rage upgrades

This should be enough to infect everything and trigger our shadow slaves wincon. ggs.

Cure Mode- Mega Brutal Plague 3 Biohazard Score Guides

The following are a series of guides designed to beat the cure mode mega brutal plagues.

On PC the best score is a 3 biohazard score. On mobile, I'm pretty sure it's 5, but the score formula is probably different. These should get you above the 65k+ score threshold for 3 biohazards, which should pretty much be the same as scenarios.

I'm going to try and focus on strats that don't require quarantine micromanaging, and just work on simply upgrades and field operative management.

Current guides, sources and authors:

Cure Mode 3 Biohazard Score- Bacteria

Boblord's notes:

Pretty straightforward. The strat seems a bit weird compared to typical cure mode gameplay, but it works, so I'm not questioning it.

This guide was originally for virus, but works how it's supposed to on bacteria as well, or at least better than dedicated bacteria strats I've found.

Original Author: c0rupt1ble
Source: https://plagueinc.fandom.com/wiki/Strategy_Guide/Virus_(Cure_Mode)#Strategy_2
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task Force:
Fast Response EMTs
Technical Officer
Disaster Manager
Empty Advisor Slot
Forensic Epidemiologist

Start in China

Get:
investigate outbreak

government partnerships

deploy field operatives

Check Saudi Arabia, Egypt, West Africa, Brazil, Argentina, C. America, USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Russia. You'll likely find the disease before going to Europe

Get:
hand washing

self-isolation

social distancing

local lockdowns

mask wearing

This will kill the infection rate of the disease.

If a country hits critical mass before you finish getting the next 6, get infection control and plane to the at-risk country.

Get:
Vaccine Research

Accelerated Research

Global Research Treat

Vaccine Manufacturing

Accelerated Manufacturing

Global Manufacturing Treaty

Infection control

Now got to the country at the most risk with field operatives to stop it from going to anarchy and killing your authority

Get:
public warning not available here, but we're fine!

authority 1

authority 2

authority 3

Throw spare funds into any infection/fatality reducing upgrades.

If your authority is going down too fast, use censorship and fake news to buy time.

Cure Mode 3 Biohazard Score- Virus

Boblord's notes:

Pretty straightforward. The strat seems a bit weird compared to typical cure mode gameplay, but it works, so I'm not questioning it.

Works very well.

Original Author: c0rupt1ble
Source: https://plagueinc.fandom.com/wiki/Strategy_Guide/Virus_(Cure_Mode)#Strategy_2
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Task Force:
Fast Response EMTs
Technical Officer
Disaster Manager
Empty Advisor Slot
Forensic Epidemiologist

Start in China

Get:
investigate outbreak

government partnerships

deploy field operatives

Check Saudi Arabia, Egypt, West Africa, Brazil, Argentina, C. America, USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Russia. You'll likely find the disease before going to Europe

Get:
hand washing

self-isolation

social distancing

local lockdowns

mask wearing

This will kill the infection rate of the disease.

If a country hits critical mass before you finish getting the next 6, get infection control and plane to the at-risk country.

Get:
Vaccine Research

Accelerated Research

Global Research Treat

Vaccine Manufacturing

Accelerated Manufacturing

Global Manufacturing Treaty

Infection control

Now got to the country at the most risk with field operatives to stop it from going to anarchy and killing your authority

Get:
public warning

authority 1

authority 2

authority 3

Throw spare funds into any infection/fatality reducing upgrades.

If your authority is going down too fast, use censorship and fake news to buy time.

Under Construction- Check Back Later!

The rest of the guide is a work in progress, and is currently being written.

This includes cure mode things particularly challenging achievements. Cure mode is the first target, then the new plague/scenarios.

There's no ETA on when these will be done as I don't always get a ton of freetime. These things take a lot of time to find actual info, test it, modify it, transcribe it(if necessary), or write guides myself.

I'll update segments as I finish them, so check back sometimes and there may be new content.

There's guides floating online for most of the things not here yet. If you run across anything that's incredibly consistent for something not included here(yet) or that's just way better than an existing guide, feel free to toss it my way and I'll add it(eventually).

Thanks for reading this guide!
-Boblord

More Plague Inc: Evolved guides
🔥 Popular guides

This guide was created by its original author on the Steam Community. Are you the author and want it removed? Request removal.