Plague Inc. Wiki
Register
Advertisement
BacteriaIconV4
The following are strategies for the Bacteria plague type. Please read the Wiki Rules. If you want to write new strategies, please use this page.

Strategy 1[]

Scroll down for more content

Starting Off

  1. Water 1 (9 DNA)
  2. Bird 1 (13 DNA)
  3. Air 1 (11 DNA)
  4. Drug Resistance 1 (11 DNA)
  5. Bacterial Resilience 1 (7 DNA)

For a total of 51 DNA Points.

As your Bacteria starts to spread, devolve any mutations you receive.

If you get a message that says a place has added more security, such as "USA bans movement of livestock," evolve the corresponding Transmission (in this case, livestock). Such instances, however, shouldn't occur if you follow this strategy—as long as you don't get the disease spotted. (But if a random event like the passage of rural livestock legislation happens after the disease is spotted, don't bother evolving the corresponding trait, and be ready for an American livestock stasis.)

Upgrade the following to infect more people:

For a total of 62 (Without Genetic ReShuffle 1) or 86 (With Genetic ReShuffle 1) DNA Points.

Accumulate 47 DNA Points and then evolve the following symptoms so you can achieve Total Organ Failure. (You could evolve them one by one, but evolving them all at once lessens chance of failure).

  1. Coughing (4 DNA)
  2. Pneumonia (4 DNA)
  3. Pulmonary Fibrosis (8 DNA)
  4. Total Organ Failure (31 DNA)

For a total of 47 DNA Points.

Strategy 2[]

Scroll down for more content

Note: You get the most infection for your DNA from the symptom Coughing. Having only Coughing will not lead to the disease being discovered as long as you immediately devolve all other mutated symptoms and the Mystery Plague event doesn't happen.

  1. Start in India
  2. Get Coughing (4 DNA)
  3. Get Water 1 (9 DNA) and 2 (16 DNA)
  4. Get Air 1 (11 DNA) and 2 (17 DNA)
  5. Get Bacterial Resilience 1 (6 DNA) and 2 (8 DNA)
  6. Get Drug Resistance 1 (13 DNA) and Cold Resistance 1 (10 DNA)
  7. Improve resistances further if, for example, Iceland or Canada is especially slow to infect and you have a lot of DNA. Otherwise, be patient and save the Points for the kill strike and to slow research.
  8. Wait for the message "No more healthy people left in the world" before you evolve fatal symptoms.
  9. When your disease is noticed, immediately buy the abilities Genetic Hardening 1 and 2. If you have Points left now, invest more in lethal symptoms like Hemorrhagic Shock to kill faster.
  10. At the end, buy all abilities that will increase the amount of research needed, and buy the symptoms Coma and Paralysis. This will decrease the percentage of Cure research completed and give you more Points. So, if you still have Points left, invest in symptoms with maximum severity and infectivity, because doing so will increase your game score.


To sum up, the keys to this strategy are: fast and unnoticed transmission, followed by swift kill and decreased researched speed. Related, your score is increased by: increasing disease severity, and decreasing the number of (game) days you need to win, and the percentage of completed research,

Strategy 3[]

Scroll down for more content

Genetic Code

Gameplay

  1. Start in China (Note: Evolve the advised traits as soon as possible, ina addition, devolve symptoms not listed below.)
  2. Evolve, in this order (Note: This includes every first-tier symptom except Insomnia, and all second-tier symptoms except Paranoia):
  3. Evolve these transmissions in order:
  4. Now for some infective symptoms:
  5. Stop the cure (Note: If an island closes its ports before you infect it, you may as well restart—you're highly unlikely to win at that point, also If cure goes >90%, get Genetic ReShuffle 1):
  6. Wait for world to get infected (Note: If a country closes its land borders before it's infected, get Bird 1)
  7. Evolve the following lethal and cure-slowing symptoms.

Strategy 4[]

Scroll down for more content

This is a simple strategy which will work on Casual, Normal, or Brutal. (It doesn't work on Mega Brutal because the "random medical checkups" in that level make the disease noticed sooner, and so, a cure is available before everyone is infected.)

Genes

Stage 1: Begin

  1. Start anywhere. The best places are India, Saudi Arabia, Greenland, Egypt, Madagascar, or even Norway
  2. If you want, increase game speed. (Note: If symptoms evolve spontaneously, devolve them immediately. Otherwise, doctors will spot the disease and the cure research will begin—and not much longer after that, the cure-research percentage will get out of your control, you'll lose)

Stage 2: Infection

  1. Evolve Bacterial Resilience 1
  2. Evolve Air 1 and Water 1
  3. Evolve Cold Resistance 1 or Heat Resistance 1; the opposite climate of your starting country (e.g., if you started in Egypt, you would evolve Cold Resistance 1). (Note:You should be gaining DNA Points by now. Don't use them on unnecessarily. though: you want to ensure you save them for later.)
  4. Evolve Air 2 and Water 2.
  5. Evolve Insect 1 and Extreme Bioaerosol (Note: Your disease should be spreading madly now. When you get the message, "No more healthy people left in the world," you know it's time.

Stage 3: Kill

  1. Devolve all Transmissions for extra DNA Points
  2. Evolve the following in order:


    (Note: If you popped all red and orange bubbles and devolved all symptoms, you should have at least twice the amount you need for this)
  3. Evolve:

Strategy 5[]

Scroll down for more content

Works in Casual, Normal, and Brutal.

Genetic Code

Stage 1: Infection

  1. Start in Saudi Arabia.
  2. Evolve in this order (Note: Only devolve any lethal symptoms that spontaneously evolve):
  3. Evolve Drug Resistance 1, then Genetic Hardening 1 and Genetic Hardening 2. If Air Filters or New Ship Cleaning Techniques come into effect, evolve the respective Transmission to counteract this.
  4. Evolve Drug Resistance 2 (Note: If at any point the disease is discovered, evolve as many tier 1 or tier 2 symptoms as you like for that sweet, sweet DNA—and you should also allow all mutations if that happens)

Stage 2: Killing

  1. Wait for all countries to have at least 100 people infected.
  2. Evolve Skin Lesions (if you don't have it already), Necrosis, and Hemorrhagic Shock. Continue evolving up to Coma and Total Organ Failure.
  3. If at any point the cure reaches over 75% completion, evolve the next Genetic ReShuffle ability.

Strategy 6[]

Scroll down for more content

Gameplay

  1. Choose Sympto-Stasis, Aquacyte, Catalytic Switch, Genetic Mimic, and any environment gene.
  2. Start in Saudi Arabia.
  3. Evolve Cysts, Abscesses, Rash, Sweating, and Skin Lesions in any order.
  4. Evolve Coughing, Pneumonia, Sneezing, Hypersensitivity, Insomnia, Paranoia, Nausea, Vomiting, and Diarrhoea in any order.
  5. Evolve Air 1 and 2, and Water 1 and 2, in any order.
  6. Evolve Heat Resistance 1, Cold Resistance 1 and 2, Drug Resistance 1 and 2, and Necrosis in any order.
  7. When Greenland is infected, evolve Dysentery, Anaemia, and any symptom that isn't very lethal.
  8. When Greenland is nearly fully infected, evolve more lethal symptoms.
  9. Evolve the genetic reshuffles, as needed.

Strategy 7[]

Scroll down for more content

Basic Information

  • Author: Blackfriday745
  • Difficulty: Brutal, Normal, or Casual
  • A 99.99% Win Rate.
  • Time:
    • Casual: 310-365 Days
    • Normal: 375-425 Days
    • Brutal: 435-455 Days (Untested)

Genetic Code

Genes are not needed, but if used in Brutal, Sympto-Stasis and Patho-Stasis are strongly recommended. Aerocyte and Aquacyte will increase your speed, so they are also recommended. It depends on whether you want to go for Urbophile or Extremophile, and to get this much DNA, Metabolic Jump might also be ideal.

This strategy does not work on Mega Brutal.

Part 1: Transmissions

  1. Start in Saudi Arabia.
  2. Save up 19 DNA and evolve Air 1 and Water 1.
  3. Evolve Rash, Sweating, and Skin Lesions.
  4. Evolve the following symptoms once Saudi Arabia is almost fully infected (Note: If your disease gets noticed, do not worry. Since Severity is not too high, the cure will not proceed too quickly.:
  5. Once you get into Europe, save up 79 Points for both levels of Cold Resistance, and finish the water and air tree to acquire Extreme Bioaerosol.
  6. Go for Drug Resistance 1 and 2, and (optional) Genetic Hardening 1.
  7. Wait until every country has at least 1 person infected, and 80% of the world is infected. (To infect Greenland, make sure the Nordic countries have hit critical mass so they can send infected ships into that seaport. If Greenland closes its seaport, restart.)

Part 2: Killing

  1. Evolve Necrosis.
  2. Save up approximately 47 DNA Points for Coughing and Pneumonia (if you do not already have this) and Pulmonary Fibrosis and Total Organ Failure.
  3. Wait until the whole world is infected. (Note: This is optional, as step 4 above might result in too much lethality. It is not recommended if you didn't follow step 3, wait until the whole world is infected, then get Dysentery and/or Hemorrhagic Shock)

Part 3: Cure

  1. Save up for Genetic ReShuffle 1
    • Optionally evolve Genetic ReShuffle 2 in case the cure has advanced a lot (e.g. more than 50% has been completed) or in case you want to get more points.
    Note: After evolving, if Lethality is too high (that is, the disease is killing faster than new people are infected), devolve Total Organ Failure or you will lose.
  2. Wait for the bacteria to unleash armageddon on the world (Note: If you followed this correctly, you should get at least 3 biohazards. However, this strategy is not recommended in Mega Brutal because of the random medical checks in that level)

Gallery

Strategy 8[]

Scroll down for more content

Basic Information

  • Author: 影流之嬲
  • This guide won’t help you get a high score, but is stable for Mega Brutal difficulty.
  • Four biohazards are guaranteed. You'll need some luck to get five, though.

Genetic Code

  • Catalytic Switch
  • Genetic Mimic
  • Aquacyte
  • Extremophile
  • Sympto-Stasis

Stage 1: Beginning

  1. Start in Saudi Arabia.
  2. Evolve the following symptoms to get a large amount of infectivity:
  3. Evolve Air 1, Drug Resistance 1, Water 1, Air 2, and Cold Resistance 1.

Stage 2: Spreading

  1. You probably have been discovered by now. Evolve Skin Lesions and Diarrhoea for some extra infectivity, severity, and a bit of lethality.
  2. Evolve Water 2, Cold Resistance 2, Drug Resistance 2, and Extreme Bioaerosol. Allow all mutations except Necrosis or Dysentery.
  3. Evolve Genetic Hardening 1 and Genetic Hardening 2 to slow the cure progression.

Stage 3: Killing

Once all islands have been infected, evolve Necrosis.

  1. Evolve Insomnia, Paranoia, Seizures, and Insanity to slow the cure.
  2. If Greenland and Iceland both have at least 10K infected people, evolve Total Organ Failure.
  3. Evolve Hemorrhagic Shock when the whole world is infected.
  4. Evolve Genetic Reshuffle 1, 2, 3, Coma, and Paralysis.

Results

2405E463-AB90-414C-B193-67EDE79BB3A5

Strategy 9[]

Scroll down for more content

Basic Information

  • Note: This is a speedrun strategy guide, so the gameplay might be aggressive. This strategy is not recommended for newcomers.

Genetic Code

The strategy works fine in all difficulties except Mega-Brutal. Genetic Code is not necessary, but if you want, I recommend (Note: These genes will boost speed for evolving and infecting):

Stage 1: Infecting

  1. Start in Saudi Arabia. Quickly get Rash, Sweating, and Skin Lesions
  2. Evolve Bird 1 and Air 1 as soon as possible.
  3. After that, evolve the symptom tree beginning with Nausea until you get the game symptom Diarrhoea. (If your disease has reached India or China, get Coughing.)
  4. Then, evolve transmissions in the order of: Air 2, Water 1, Water 2, and Bird 2 (If your disease has infiltrated rich countries (especially those in Europe!), get Drug Resistance 1 as soon as possible.)

Stage 2: Mid-Game

  1. Your disease will be discovered around this time. No worries about that—keep evolving. Get Coughing (if you haven't), Sneezing, and Pneumonia.
  2. From now on, keep collecting DNA. If your disease has gotten to cold countries, get Cold Resistance 1. Consider Cold Resistance 2 if infection speed is low.

Stage 3: Killing

  1. When all countries are infected, get Necrosis, Hemorrhagic Shock, and possibly Total Organ Failure.
  2. Get all high-lethality symptoms, if you want.
  3. Watch out for countries with few infections. Pick up transmissions when necessary.

Strategy 10[]

Scroll down for more content

Basic information

  • Difficulty: Mega Brutal
  • This strategy's adapted from whisperwalk's guide on the Plague Inc subreddit. I play on mobile, and none of the Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Bacteria guides I could find worked for me, until I came up with this.
    • Most of the time, I can complete the game in approximately 330-390+ days with 20+ to 30+% Cure Research. Personal best is 354 days and 21%.
  • The key, as always, is to infect island countries ASAP so that we can safely get the final-tier symptoms underway:
    • We need to shorten our time-to-flight out of Saudi Arabia.
    • Greenland only receives ships from Russia and Norway, so we need to get infected ships out of them quickly, primarily via Russia. Our strategy is effective enough that we can potentially infect Greenland before some other islands.
  • The research breakthrough event, which increases Cure percentage, can potentially push your score into the 4 Biohazard range, so you'll be relying a little on the RNG gods for this not to happen or the effect to be mild enough.

Genetic Code

The boosted research speed neutralises just about every cure-impeding Gene and Ability; the only effective solution is to kill quickly.

  • Metabolic Jump: We use this instead of ATP Boost to yield us sufficient DNA points during the mid-game.
  • Aerocyte: Helps shorten our time-to-flight out of Saudi Arabia and proliferate worldwide more quickly.
  • Sympto-Stasis: We stick to the meta here.
  • Darwinist: Despite Genetic Mimic being the meta, it doesn't seem to contribute enough to get 5 Biohazards for me. Switching to Darwinist, which helps increase the likelihood of mutating symptom combos, was what finally did it.
  • Rurophile: Gets Russia to critical mass and infect ships sooner.

Gameplay

  1. Start in Saudi Arabia.
    1. If a Festival of Love occurs anytime, go ahead and evolve Nausea.
  2. Evolve Anaemia, Haemophilia, then Rash, Sweating, and Skin Lesions.
    1. This allows Profuse Bleeding to mutate, which greatly boosts infectivity. It's also slightly lethal but that's ok; this isn't a stealth build.
    2. Devolve any lethal symptom (tier 3+) which mutates. That's too much lethality and will cause islands to close ports before infection.
  3. Evolve Air 1, Air 2.
  4. Evolve Drug Resistance 1, Cold Resistance 1, Bacterial Resilience 1, and Cold Resistance 2.
  5. If a ship sterilisation filter event had occurred, evolve Water 1 then Coughing and Pneumonia. Otherwise, you can evolve Water 1 last.
  6. Set your game to normal speed, then evolve Water 2, Extreme Bioaerosol, and Bird 1. These will likely cause a burst of new country infections, so we don't want to miss out on those precious bubbles. Missing 1's tolerable, 2's a risk, anymore and it's bad for the final score.
    1. Our disease should be spotted around now. If Profuse Bleeding doesn't mutate by the end of this step, the odds of getting 5 Biohazards is dramatically lower, though not impossible.
  7. Evolve Drug Resistance 2. You can resume fast forward after this if you want.
  8. Wait for either of the two conditions to be met, whichever first, before proceeding further:
    1. Both the WHO watchlist and "<disease name> is more infectious than the Common Cold" events occur.
    2. All islands are infected.
  9. Evolve Insomnia, Paranoia, Seizures, Insanity, then Inflammation and Paralysis.
  10. Once all island countries are infected:
    1. Allow any symptom to mutate except Total Organ Failure. You must evolve this manually.
    2. Evolve Necrosis, Coma, Hemorrhagic Shock, then Dysentary.
  11. Evolve Total Organ Failure. By the time you've enough DNA to evolve this, you should be able to infect the last uninfected on time.
  12. Wait for the rapid influx of DNA points to slow, when most of the world is dead and genetic drift is nullified. Evolve as many as you can from Genetic Reshuffle 1, 2, and 3. This should set back the Cure percentage enough to get 5 Biohazards.
    1. If you want, you can devolve 2 Transmissions and 2 Abilities (except Drug Resistance 2 and Bacterial Resilience 1) to squeeze out an extra 6 DNA points, since you no longer need them.
  13. If you still have excess DNA leftover, evolve Internal Haemorrhaging, Systemic Infection, and other symptoms to quicken the kill rate and increase Cure Research requirement.

Congrats on getting 5 Biohazards with Mega Brutal Bacteria!

Advertisement