Basic Strategy for Plague Inc

Originally I was going to post this strategy overview in the review I did of Plague Inc, but after I wrote the first section I realize this needs a blog all to its own. Anyway, I've included a link back to the iTunes store if you would like to pick up your copy!

Plague Inc.

Basic Strategy for Plague Inc
Now at first I thought this game was extremely challenging, but the I started to get into it more and realized there are some really simple tactics that let you always win. However, I am going to give an up-front warning that by following the easiest strategy, you will also be sacrificing your end score! Your end score is best when you infect and kill at the same time and lowest when you infect and then kill the population. I will be giving the easiest of the strategies possible (though I have done other ones).


First Step: Understanding Infection
So first thing you want to do is choose a poor country to start your new disease, which is as simple as tapping on the country. Anything in Africa will usually do fine though I have also chosen the middle east to start and South America. I am not trying to be rude to these countries, but the game is based off of real statistics in healthcare and sadly these nations are poor. So they tend to be unable to keep up with the diseases that form there, which works as an advantage to you since you want your disease to spread as quickly as possible.

Next, you will want to evolve your disease to help it spread it across the globe. To do so, click the disease button in the lower left hand corner and select Transmission. What you have should be seven options. Now before you select one, read all of them and what they do because you will need to learn how to use each one to infect all the different countries. Once you have an idea of how they all work, close out that window for now by pressing the X in the upper right hand corner. You may want to pause the game for this next part, but tap on a country (any one will do) and notice the name appears at the bottom-center of the screen.

Touch the name to bring up the current information about that country. Notice they tell you in here how many people are healthy, infected, and dead below the pie chart. Below that they tell you how much money goes from medical research and on the right they have status updates on how this country is communicating with other countries. In time, that will all be useful, but for now we do not need this information. Instead, click the i button in the upper left corner. Now you have a description of the country. This is what you need to check for every country you try and infect, see what their climates are like and start to understand how to best move a disease. Also, for a new person who might not know a lot about the world, this will be very helpful.

Second Step: Giving it to the World
So now you have started reading about each country and you are ready to select your Transmission evolution. Pick the one you think will work and then go back to the screen and start watching it spread. You'll want to select more transmissions as you get more DNA evolution points, or even more helpful is to watch the News which is located at the top of the screen. The reason why you want to watch that little bar as things go flying by is that sometimes something very helpful will come up on the News screen that might help you spread the infection. Some of the more common ones include the London Olympics or a lot of birds are starting to migrate. Respectively, you would want to infect all of England to help send the disease home with some of the athletes or evolve birds so that they can much more easily carry the disease. So watch the News bar for important pieces of information like that.

Next, you will also want to evolve some of the more interesting ways to infect. These can be found by pressing the Disease button and going over to the Abilities tab. There are three standard starting abilities, Cold Resistance, Heat Resistance, and Drug Resistance. There is also a specialty abilities that are relative to the diseases that you are using. Check out the specialty, I tend to use it every game because the will always help. Anyway, what you will need on this screen is the Drug Resistance, which will help you start infecting second and first world civilizations. Get that as soon as possible (though after your first transmission at least), because it will let the disease spread even faster in poor countries and start spreading in richer countries. You can wait a little bit before getting the second Drug Resistance upgrade, but I recommend getting it as well.

Now, during this phase of the game, your goal is just to infect every country in the world. You do not want anyone to notice your disease is spreading and, like most health sciences, no one will care unless it becomes lethal or annoying. So when the screen pops-up that tells you your disease has mutated, immediately click the Disease tab and go to Symptoms and devolve it back to a dormant state. In this manner, scientists will not care that a possibly harmful bacteria is taking over everyone. Also, for devolving your disease, you will gain some DNA points (except for Virus, which I don't recommend devolving for). Save them up, you will need them later.

By the way, patients is a virtue in this game, so don't spend all your points on Transmission and Abilities. In fact, try to save a bunch as it starts spreading because you will need them for the next step!

Third Step: The Set-Up
So every country now has at least one person infected by your deadly, dormant disease. That's wonderful (well, not exactly wonderful for the world's population). The next step is to get everything ready for your large explosion of Symptoms that will kill everyone off. Evolve both Genetic Hardening 1 and 2 so that when they start trying to find a cure it will be harder, then go to Symptoms page and read through them all. I've taken multiple paths to killing everyone, but the most basic is what I will show.

If you are running low on DNA points, wait until the entire world is infected with your disease (not a single person does not have your disease) and then devolve all the Transmission evolutions. You will not need them after that point. Keep the Abilities evolutions though, for they will come in handy.

Fourth Step: Kill the World
So you think you are ready to start killing everyone, that's wonderful. Go to the symptoms page and evolve either Coughing or Cysts as the first symptoms. However, do not stop there, but instead quickly start evolving everything that leads towards the center of the screen. Why go towards the center of the symptoms screen? Because in the very center is the most lethal and fastest killing symptom available, Total Organ Failure.

Once you reach Total Organ Failure as a symptom, you'll notice that many of the countries have started working on the cure and the percentage is going up quickly. Do not sweat it though, because remember that as you kill more people there is less of a chance for them to develop a cure. Instead, use the remaining DNA points to slow down the cure under the Abilities tab by selecting the Genetic ReShuffle abilities. Now just sit back and watch as the whole world dies off.

Final Comments
I hope this tutorial is helpful for new-comers to the game to learn how to play, but like I said this is actually the words way to finish the levels. You will gain the fewest points for taking this route, because it takes forever to do it. So if you want a higher score, you are going to have to take a more dangerous way of killing off the world. The faster you work, the higher your score, the better a player you are.

But I know how tough this game can be for new comers, so that is why I am posting this. Hope it was helpful and if not, please send me a comment below to tell me your thoughts!

The Spotted Canvas uses the Plague Inc.^® application programming interface but is not endorsed or certified by Ndemic Creations. All of the Plague Inc.^® logos and trademarks displayed on this website are the property of Ndemic Creations.