In Plague Inc., you play Parasite on Brutal similar to how you play Fungus on Brutal. It’s a fairly slow spreading plague, but it has an Ability that is just amazing and makes it pretty easy to beat, just time consuming.
The special ability for Parasite is called Symbiosis. Symbiosis helps to keep your plague from being detected, which is key to winning. It doesn’t keep it from being detected completely, but I have figured out exactly how many symptoms you can load up on without being detected.
I have listed my gene setup below. I have all genes unlocked, which just requires winning 25 games. You don’t need to unlock all of the genes to win this one, as most of these are just the third in each category to unlock.
DNA Gene - Cytochrome Surge (Get more DNA from popping orange DNA bubbles – this one is vital for getting DNA points throughout the game)
Travel Gene - Teracyte (Increases the chance of your plague spreading by land)
Evolution Gene - Sympto-Stasis (Symptom costs don’t increase, but easier to cure – the benefits far outweigh the cost though, this is a must for this strategy)
Mutation Gene - Genetic Mimic (Your plague is harder to cure – counterbalances Sympto-Stasis a bit)
Environment Gene - Extremophile (Minor bonus in all environments – I like this one instead of the specific environment bonuses, but it’s not vital)
Travel Gene - Teracyte (Increases the chance of your plague spreading by land)
Evolution Gene - Sympto-Stasis (Symptom costs don’t increase, but easier to cure – the benefits far outweigh the cost though, this is a must for this strategy)
Mutation Gene - Genetic Mimic (Your plague is harder to cure – counterbalances Sympto-Stasis a bit)
Environment Gene - Extremophile (Minor bonus in all environments – I like this one instead of the specific environment bonuses, but it’s not vital)
The main strategy here is to infect the world without them knowing, and then kill them all as fast as possible. This is a longer game since Parasites takes a little while to spread, so you have to be patient.
Your Symbiosis ability is vital for this to work. With all three levels of Symbiosis purchased, you can buy a ton of symptoms to increase infectivity, and you don’t even need a ton of transmissions because of this. Since you’re working with Symptom-Stasis as well, symptoms you purchase will be a lot cheaper than normal as well since they don’t increase in cost.
One very important thing to remember is that you DO NOT want your plague to be detected until everyone in the world is infected. The only way to do this is to keep your severity at zero, which means buying exactly the symptoms I list and no more than that.
You also need to devolve any mutated symptoms that aren’t on the list below immediately. When I say that you need to devolve mutated symptoms immediately, I mean once the notification pops up that a symptom has mutated, do not close the notification first, go immediately to the symptoms list and devolve it, or risk your plague being noticed before you even get a chance to react. If the world detects your plague early, you might as well start over because you probably won’t win.
Ok, let’s get to it then shall we?
Phase 1
- Start in China
- Abilities: Symbiosis 1, 2, and 3 (get these before anything else)
- Symptoms: Cysts, Hyper Sensitivity
- Transmissions: Livestock 1, Water 1
Phase 2
- Symptoms: Anaemia, Haemophilia, Rash, Sweating, Sneezing, Coughing, Pneumonia, Nausea, Vomiting – Devolve anything else that mutates (trust me, they can’t detect your plague with these, but anything else and they will)
Phase 3
- Transmissions: Bird 1, Air 1, Blood 1
- Symptoms: Devolve any symptom mutations immediately
- Abilities: Drug Resistance 1, Cold 1
Phase 4
- Ride this out and rack up points. You’ll need 59 points to begin killing people everyone off, but you should have more than enough
- Abilities: Genetic Hardening 2 if you have enough extra points at this time, but if you don’t for some reason then let time run a little longer and gather up the points from orange DNA bubbles
Phase 5
- Time to start destruction!
- Symptoms: Once everyone in the world is infected and you have 59 points, purchase Paralysis, Coma, and Total Organ Failure to start killing people off
- The cure will start to rise quickly, but don’t panic.. you’ll be racking up points quickly as well
- Purchase Genetic Reshuffle 1 when you have enough points, spend the rest on deadly symptoms like Internal Hemorrhaging, Hemorrhagic Shock, and Necrosis
- The cure shouldn’t get much higher than 50% with everyone dying so quickly, spend any spare points on other fun symptoms
Congrats, you win!
It’s tough to get a very high score on this one, but at least you beat it.
