Plague Inc. Wiki
Register
Advertisement
VirusIconV4
The following are strategies for the Virus plague type. Please read the Wiki Rules, before adding a strategy, tips and Q&A here. If you aren't quick enough to devolve a mutation before it's spotted, then pause the game time, then devolve the mutation.
If you want to write new strategies, please use this page.

Strategy 1[]

Scroll down for more content

The following is a complete gameplay guide to the Virus plague type, created by the strategist Mack. Below will be many tips on how to play it:

Abundance of DNA points

The obvious distinction between Virus and the other disease types is its ability to rapidly mutate. This, of course, can be obnoxious, but when it is harnessed effectively, can be used to one's advantage. When a disease mutates, it gains a trait without players needing to spend DNA points to acquire it, therefore saving one points that can be used later. Assuming that the mutated trait isn't doing more harm than good to a player's attempts to destroy the world, they can quickly stockpile these saved points to upgrade whatever they'd like.

Also, because a quickly mutating plague is unavoidably going to kill and infect people much quicker than a plague where one must upgrade every trait themselves, they're usually going to acquire a flood of DNA points.

How To Win

You need wipe out the entirety of humanity in order to win. To do that you need to evolve your plague or make it fatal. If you don't do that you will lose the game. You lose the game when everyone is cured from the plague.

Cure

When a player begins to try games on Brutal or Mega Brutal difficulties, they soon discover that subtlety is no longer an option. Humanity will quickly discover a player's disease even if it has no traits via 'Mystery Plague' riots or just anomalous blood tests, so they must overwhelm them before they can develop a cure. Virus is ideal for this. Within just a few hundred days, a quickly mutating virus can infect the entire world and bring it to its knees, killing off everyone before they can finish a cure. When the strategist beat Virus on Mega Brutal, the mutations that made his disease lethal were quickly key in his victory.

Disadvantages

Inability to control and hide

If you are a Plague Inc. player who likes to lurk, undetected, until the entire world is infected, then you wait until every last person in Greenland is unknowingly sick and you have one hundred DNA points until you leap out with every lethal trait the game has to offer. Well too bad, you're playing with a virus now.

This plague type mutates so quickly that it's nearly impossible to keep it undetected. Unless players willing to burn all their DNA points devolving, they're going to have to let some mutations be. And that means humanity will find you, hunt you down, and mercilessly slaughter you. Unless they get the pace perfectly right, viruses will either kill all of their hosts before the entire world is infected, or be cured faster then one can say "Plague Inc."

Possibility of severe DNA loss

When one is dealing with the virus, they can either have a surplus of DNA points or not enough. It all depends on how they react to random mutations. One cannot devolve all of their mutations, unless the gene Creationist is added at the beginning of a game, or if Translesion + is used to neutralize the escalation of devolving costs.

Strategy 2[]

Scroll down for more content

And now that the advantages and disadvantages of Virus have been listed above, it is time for the how-to of making use of advantages and avoiding the disadvantages.

Some of this may not work for you, but Plague, Inc. is unpredictable, so what works one game may not work the next. So instead, what the strategist is going to try to do here is lay down some general rules to follow, that should be useful in all virus rounds. But again, Plague, Inc. is unpredictable, so players should do what works for them. And without further ado, here it is:

Traits

I plan to keep this section as short as possible. Why? Because every game is a little different, and I'm never going to cover all the bases. Even if I somehow wrote down every single possibility as to what could happen in the game and how to solve it, nobody would want to read it. That would be boring, and take all the fun out of the game. And so I'll just give you some very rough outlines as to what you want to do.

Start at Saudi Arabia. Get Water 1 & 2, Air 1, Tier 1 & 2 symptoms, Cold Resistance 1, Drug Resistance 1, Genetic Hardening 1 & 2 in that order. After every country is infected, get Skin Lesions, Viral Instability 1, 2, & 3, get all cure delaying symptoms, and save the rest for Genetic Reshuffles for the end.

General Guidelines: Casual

Most Plague, Inc. players serious enough to go to this wiki will have already beaten the Virus on Casual. If you are, however, struggling to beat the Virus on Casual, I'm here to help you out. I'm guessing that you don't have many genes to modify your genetic code with at this point. That's okay, you can beat it without them. (I'm not, by the way, just saying this while I have all my genes maxed out. To make this article I removed all of my genes just to see how I'd do).

We've already gone over some possibilities of where we might want to start your disease. Pick whichever one you feel is best.

As for the actual gameplay, it should be fairly simple beating the virus. My first rule of thumb for all attempts to beat the virus is to let it mutate. At the casual level, people aren't going to notice a little cough and some nausea for the first part of the game. Let it mutate, save your DNA points, and use them for something other then devolving every mutated trait. At this level, I'm not going to tell you to necessarily evolve Viral Instability right at the start. After all, you don't want to mutate your virus so much that it evolves Total Organ Failure before a billion people are infected. Let it mutate, but don't let it get out of hand. Although humanity may not notice a cough, they're definitely going to notice a rash, cysts, or vomiting. Keep it under control.

Humanity will find your virus sooner or later. Luckily for you, they won't do anything about it quite yet. Once they find your virus, my advice is to allow those symptoms to spread. Infect as many people as possible, though try to keep it at a low lethality. for now. Once humanity starts to freak, however, my advice is to pull the trigger. If they start getting close to having the cure at maximum priority, your only chance is to wipe them out. Feel free to go wild at this stage.

However, every once in a while you're going to get an island nation uninfected with its ports closed. My strategy for dealing with this is to keep killing off the rest of the world, until cure research is severely crippled. Then I devolve most of the lethal traits, and wait for Extreme Zoonosis to infect them. When I beat the Virus on Mega Brutal, I needed this strategy. I don't insist you do much in this strategy guide, but I am going to implore you to get Extreme Zoonosis.

With any luck, following these guidelines will give you success within a few tries. Feel free to let me know if you have any improvements on this strategy in the comments below!

General Guidelines: Normal

For me, my strategy with Normal is about the same as my strategy with Casual. Again, don't try to devolve every mutation that comes your way. In the early stages of the game, I do tend to devolve certain symptoms that will attract a lot of attention (such as Cysts), but besides that I recommend letting Coughing evolve. It is nearly impossible to hide a virus disease type while still keeping your DNA points up, so don't try. "Let it go but keep it in check" is the new motto of the day. Remember it.

As with Casual, let your disease have more mutating freedom when it is discovered. They've already spotted it, so it won't attract too much more attention if it's patients start breaking out into cysts. At this stage of the game, still keep it on a leash; people will notice if their fellow humans are dying in droves but then you have to go eat bitch. Save complete death and destruction until 90% of the population is infected and humanity is already pouring it's money into curing you. Once they do, you have no choice but to knock them out. As for uninfected island nations with closed borders, refer back to my "casual guide."

Normal and Casual are almost identical to each other in difficulty. Brutal and Mega Brutal, however, are in a league of their own.

General Guidelines: Brutal

By the time you get to the Brutal difficulty, you're going to need some tweaks to the genetic code of your disease.There is really only one DNA gene that I consider absolutely vital in this game, and that would be the Catalytic Switch. This is helpful right from the middle of the game to the end. When humanity starts to freak, you have a reliable source of DNA to help you keep evolving traits. When you pull the trigger and people start dying in droves, the extra DNA points it gives you will be helpful in evolving a couple more lethal symptoms or slowing down cure research. When it's near the end of the game, and your flood of DNA points from dying people has turned into a trickle, then the Catalytic Switch is whats going to give you the points you need to fend off humanity for a few more days while you wait for their governments to fall.

As for the rest of the genes, I honestly don't think they're game-changing. Sure, they're nice to have and all, but I honestly think that you could beat the game on mega brutal without any. Except maybe Catalytic Switch.

While making this guide, I'll have you know that I did play through and beat Virus on Brutal without any genes. Don't you worry, first time Plague, Inc-er. You'll be all right.

To be perfectly honest, beating Plague, Inc's Virus on Brutal isn't too bad. In fact, in general, your strategy is going to be similar to beating it on Casual and Normal. Again, you want to let your plague mutate, but stay away from symptoms that will make your disease noticeable in the beginning. In the meantime, work on transmission and abilities.

Once people discover your plague, let some more symptoms mutate, but stay away from the lethal ones. After all, you don't want humanity focusing their research on you when only a billion people are infected. Speaking of which, now might be a good time to upgrade Genetic Hardening. You might also consider buying some Viral Instability at this point to help your disease along. This is a bit of a gamble, of course, but you'll need to get used to Viral Instability if you want to beat the virus on Mega Brutal. That's all I'm saying for now.

As with Casual and Normal, start killing people off as soon as humanity starts to pour money into curing you. Even if you have a few places that your disease hasn't taken ahold of yet. After all, even if you do kill off all the infected in said not-very-infected place, you can always re-infect them later with Extreme Zoonosis after cure research is crippled. Also as with Normal and Casual, take away lethal abilities when research speed has been severely crippled, if some island nation is still uninfected. Then just wait for Extreme Zoonosis to work it's magic.

My friends, whether you're an experienced Plague, Inc-er or a complete newbie to the game, you should be able to beat the Virus on Brutal, even if it takes you a few tries. Mega Brutal.

General Guidelines: Mega Brutal[]

Scroll down for more content

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if it was skill or just luck the two times I beat the virus on Mega Brutal. When I did beat it, it came down to a nail-biting (for me, at least) wait for Greenland to become infected while the remaining infected people slowly died off.(everyone hates Greenland, Madagascar, etc.) And that wasn't even as intense as beating Mega Brutal with a Prion, which came down to waiting for people in Iceland to start being infected quicker than they were dying off, as the cure became 98% complete. What I'm trying to say is, Mega Brutal is no joke.

However, having beaten Mega twice in a row now, I feel that I can give you some useful advice. The first rule for beating the Virus on Mega Brutal; throw caution to the wind.

Seriously. I'll tell you the only way I know how to beat the Virus on Mega Brutal, and that is by letting the virus go wild with it's mutating. The first thing I did both times I beat it was evolve Viral Instability to the max. Before I evolved any transmission trait, any drug resistance or temperature resistance, any anything, all three Viral Instabilities were purchased. And then I just let it go. I evolved the transmission and most of the abilities, while mutations took care of the rest. I only devolved two things during the first half of the game (these were, if you're curious, Cysts (I didn't want them finding my disease too early), and some super lethal trait (I forget exactly what it was, but humanity would've freaked if it had been unleashed too early)). And it worked like a charm. For some reason, they let it spread without worrying about it too much, and by the time they did half of them were dead already (remember "potential to overwhelm humanity before they can develop a cure"). Very soon every country but Greenland was infected. After that it was a simple matter of decreasing the population to 500 000 000 and then devolving all the lethal traits. Greenland was infected five minutes later through Extreme Zoonosis, I re-evolved one or two more lethal traits, and voila. That exact same storyboard happened both times I beat the Virus on Brutal.

And that is really all the advice I can give you for Mega Brutal. Go for it, and I know you'll soon get it.

Strategy 3[]

Scroll down for more content

Note: You need to play extremely aggressively to win as a virus, which means success is often determined by luck. The main determining factor is whether you can get island nations, particularly Greenland, before they close their ports. So it may take a few tries if you are unlucky.

Genetic Code

  • Catalytic Switch - Honestly, this is not very important. Any of the DNA genes will work, you will be drowning in DNA with this strategy regardless of your choice.
  • Aquacyte - You want this to get those pesky island nations (I'm looking at you Greenland).
  • Sympto-Stasis - Even though you will mutate many of your symptoms, this is helpful since you will still be evolving many symptoms on your own. Feel free to replace this with any of the other "stasis" genes.
  • Genetic Mimic - Research is insanely fast on Mega Brutal, so you want to slow it down as much as possible.
  • Urbophile - This is helpful for infecting Europe, which you need to do quickly so you can get Greenland before ports close.

Gameplay

  1. Start in Saudi Arabia. It's airport goes to several different countries, and it is nestled nicely between Africa, Asia, and Europe.
  2. Evolve Air 1 and Air 2 as soon as possible, as they help spread your disease through the airport. Also, Saudi Arabia is an arid country, so it will help your disease get a solid foothold. Right after that, evolve Rash, Sweating, and Skin Lesions. This will double your infectivity, helping you spread even faster.
  3. You might mutate Necrosis, since it is connected to Skin Lesions, but don't worry about it. In fact, you shouldn't devolve anything with this strategy, except for possibly Total Organ Failure since it has a tendency to kill off people too fast. Being discovered early isn't a problem; your primary concern should be infecting as many countries as possible.
  4. Once you have Skin Lesions, you have some options in how you continue. You need Europe to get infected as soon as possible, so I recommend Drug Resistance 1 and Water 1. You can hold off on these until you infect Europe, but they should be high priority as soon as you infect a European country. After that, Rodent 1 and Cold Resistance 1 are also good for getting Europe infected.
  5. During this time, you should also evolve Anaemia, Haemophilia, Coughing, Sneezing, and possibly Pneumonia. With Sympto-Stasis, none of these should cost more than a few DNA Points. Increasing Severity is actually a good thing in this case, as it will get you more DNA Points.
  6. Other important symptoms are Insomnia, Paranoia, Seizures, and Insanity. Hold off on these until cure research starts. Don't get them all at once, just get them whenever you feel cure research is getting a bit too fast.
  7. By this point you should be infecting countries very fast, and you should have a constant stream of DNA Points. If you haven't evolved Water 2 and Drug Resistance 2 yet, do so. Also get Extreme Bioareosol, Cold Resistance 2, and Rodent 1 if you haven't yet.
  8. This is the critical point in your playthrough. If Greenland (or any other island nation) closes its port before being infected, you've lost. Go ahead and start over. Otherwise, you should be able to win. Keep evolving symptoms to increase your infectivity; Necrosis is a good choice. Focus on cheap symptoms, such as Cysts, Nausea, Vomiting, Abscesses, etc. and let the more expensive ones mutate. Cheap symptoms also tend to increase infectivity without too much lethality, which is helpful if your worried about killing off your carriers. The main symptoms to avoid are Dysentery, Hemorrhagic Shock, and above all Total Organ Failure. Don't worry if they mutate, just don't evolve them on your own. Necrosis is OK since it increases infectivity just as much as lethality. You want to have some lethality, as killing people slows research.

Once you infect every country, get Viral Instability 1-3 and watch the world crumble! Evolve whatever you need. If cure research gets too high, get Genetic Hardening or Coma. Honestly, once you infect every country, you have essentially won as long as your infectivity is greater than your lethality.

Conclusion

Guys and gals, I really hope this strategy guide helped you. What it all really boils down to is get out there and try whatever the heck you want. With a bit of luck, you could beat the virus with any strategy. This strategy guide is merely one option.

That being said, I hope that you'll check out my soon to come strategy guides. I'm thinking that the Prion or the Neurax Worm will be next (after all, they're the only other ones I've beaten on Mega Brutal!). In the meantime, thanks again for reading, and I'll see you around.

Strategy 4[]

Scroll down for more content

Among all the plagues in Plague Inc., I find virus the easiest to destroy the world. I've tested it a lot on Casual and Normal, but I don't think this strategy will work on Brutal. As my parents don't allow me to do online transactions, I can't go Premium and have genes. So here we go.

  • Get your trusty (and deadly) weapon named the Virus and send him to Saudi Arabia and wait.
  • If any mutations happen don't worry and don't devolve them as they WILL remove your precious DNA. If the mutations are tier 2, then you should devolve them so you don't get caught.
  • Then wait until your deadly bioweapon spreads to the world. Don't worry if the countries blasted governments say that the virus has been spotted or they are doing research on the cure. Then save some probably 40 to 50 DNA.
  • Then just relax and cackle like a true bio-master as the world crumbles like mouldy bread and screams in agony, and you win!
  • Don't forget to thank your best buddy Cutterfish for this cool strategy. Alright adios amigos.

Strategy 5[]

Scroll down for more content
  • Author: Bihapove

Mega Brutal on Virus isn't hard

The key of this strategy is to infect the world as fast as possible. Then evolve all Viral Instability and every cheap symptom, so mutations will always aim at the expensive ones and save you lots of DNA points.

This strategy has 80% winrate during my 10 tests. All losses result from island countries shutting their ports.

Genetic Code

  • ATP Boost
  • Genetic Mimic / Darwinist
  • Aquacyte
  • Sympto-Statis (Important)
  • Extremophile

Gameplay

  1. Start in China
  2. Evolve these symptoms as soon as possible: NauseaVomitingCoughingRashSweatingSneezingCystsAbscessesHyper sensitivity, and Skin Lesions. These symptoms buff your infectivity by a lot while providing enough severity to increase your daily DNA gain.
  3. Devolve these symptoms if they mutate, but keep any other mutated symptoms:
    1. InsanityDysenteryTotal Organ FailureComaNecrosisHemorrhagic Shock
    2. Internal Haemorrhaging
    3. If Systemic Infection and Immune Suppression both mutated, devolve one of them.
  4. The disease should have reached a few other countries. Now evolve Cold Resistance 1Heat Resistance 1 and Drug Resistance 1.
  5. Evolve Water 1Water 2Air 1 and Bird 1Air 2 is optional.
  6. Evolve Cold Resistance 2Drug Resistance 2 and Heat Resistance 2. You may notice that these have become pretty expensive. This is caused by genetic drift.
  7. If GreenlandIcelandNew ZealandCaribbean or Madagascar are healthy, evolve Environmental Hardening.
  8. Wait until all islands are infected. (If an island shuts down everything, don't hesitate to restart.)
  9. Once all islands are infected, evolve Viral Instability 1, 2 and 3.
  10. From now on, keep looking for the cheapest symptom in the Symptoms page and purchase it. This will increase the chance of obtaining bigger symptoms through mutating. Keep doing this until there are fewer than 6 unevolved symptoms or you already have at least 2 of the Deadly Six.
  11. Sit back and watch the world die. Do not evolve Genetic ReShuffles until population reaches 1 million or cure reaches 98%.
  12. If everything went well, you will now face a Five Biohazard Mega Brutal result page.

Strategy 6[]

Scroll down for more content

Basic information

  • Difficulty: Mega Brutal
  • This strategy's adapted from my Mega Brutal 5 Biohazard Bacteria strategy. Personal best is 327 days and 23%.
  • The key is to infect island countries ASAP while the Virus mutates in a controlled manner:
    • Shorten our time-to-flight out of Saudi Arabia.
    • Prioritise Russia as our main route to Greenland.
    • Prevention is better than cure. You can only mutate symptoms which have been unlocked i.e., visible on the screen. The best way to not mutate symptoms which are too severe/lethal too early is to not unlock them in the first place.

Genetic Code

Gameplay

  1. Start in Saudi Arabia.
  2. Evolve Coughing, Sneezing, Nausea, Vomiting, Cysts, Abscesses, Anaemia, then Haemophilia.
    1. Devolve any mutation which unlocks final-tier symptoms, except Paralysis and Seizures. Also, allow at most one of the "bridge" symptoms (Pulmonary Oedema, Fever, Inflammation, and Tumours) to mutate.
  3. Evolve Air 1, Air 2.
  4. Evolve Drug Resistance 1, Cold Resistance 1, and Cold Resistance 2.
  5. Evolve Pneumonia, Rash, and Sweating (skip Rash if Fever had mutated and unlocked Sweating).
  6. Evolve Water 1.
  7. 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.
  8. Evolve Heat Resistance 1, then Drug Resistance 2. You can resume fast forward after this if you want.
  9. 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.
  10. Evolve Skin Lesions, Insomnia, Paranoia, Seizures, Insanity, Hypersensitivity, and Paralysis.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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 Virus!

Q&A[]

  • Q: How many DNA points does it cost to devolve a trait?
    • A: It initially costs 2, but will increase by 1 every time you devolve a trait.
  • Q: What is the most lethal symptom?
    • A: The most lethal symptom is Total Organ Failure.
  • Q: Do I need genes to win the game?
    • A: No, but genes make it easier.

If you have more questions, type them above the line.
Advertisement