Mega-Brutal Virus: 5-stars, 308 days (under 400 days pretty much guaranteed!)

May 2020 refresh: this was originally written back in 2017 and several players have recently pointed out that that version no longer works. I've done a couple of quick runs to identify the problem and this guide is now fixed.

After reading two of Tatsur0's excellent guides, I learned a new way to play - flamboyantly blanket the world in disease before anyone even has a chance to react! I used to play in stealth mode and this new way is much, much better in many cases.

With this new strategy in mind, I managed a 352 day 5-star Mega-brutal Virus win on my first try. While preparing this guide, I played another 10-odd games, experimenting with slightly different evolution sequences, and won them all in 308 to 385 days.

Of course, the thing about viruses is that their mutations are unpredictable, so there is necessarily quite a bit of variance between games in the effectiveness of this plan. It is also possible for a perfectly played game to fail because of random events or early closure of ports by Greenland, Madagascar, or one of the other islands, but that shouldn't happen very often at all if you follow this guide precisely.

Anyway, this is a pretty quick and low-stress method that should give you a 5-star Mega-brutal win with Virus almost all of the time. Have fun!

And if you find any way to improve this strategy, please post a comment!

Genetic Code

These are the genetic code options you'll want to pick:

• Metabolic Jump: you won't get to see too many orange or blue bubbles because of how rapidly your virus will spread
  
• Darwinist: since viruses mutate, let's help them along
  
• Aquacyte: to quickly reach those evil islands
  
• Urbophile: rapidly swamp dense urban centres
  
• Sympto-Stasis: we'll be buying lots of symptoms

Actually, the only gene you absolutely must have is Sympto-Stasis. I ran a test game with only that one gene and still won in 337 days with 5 stars.

I then ran another 2 games with no genes at all and beat the first only after 472 days with 4 stars. Adjusting my strategy in the second run to account for expensive Symptoms, I still took 469 days, suggesting that not having SS can extend your game by a whopping 40%!

Long story short, you can win with this strat even if you don't have a single gene, but a 5-star victory is guaranteed only if you have Sympto-Stasis.

Starting country

I really think Tatsur0's on to something: starting in Saudi Arabia seems to make every game a lot easier.

Phase 1: initial transmissibility

Because of changes to the game since this guide was first written, there is now a need to push up transmissibility a little before we can start investing in symptoms.

Since we're starting in arid Saudi Arabia, we'll begin with Air 1 and follow that with Water 1.

Phase 2: Symptoms

The idea here is to increase infectivity as quickly as possible. Grab 7-8 symptoms, focusing on maximum infectivity gain. Also make sure to hit Skin Lesions at some point so that Necrosis would have a chance to mutate.

• Coughing
  
• Sneezing
  
• Rash
  
• Sweating
  
• Pneumonia
  
• Cysts
  
• Abcesses
  
• Skin Lesions

You may be tempted to push a seemingly paltry 5 DNA points into the Viral Instability Ability at this point (or earlier). Don't. Though 5 points may not appear to be a lot, slowing down the spread of your disease just that little bit at this juncture often results in one of the islands closing its port before it can get infected.

Furthermore, the more unstable your virus is at this stage, the more likely it is to evolve lethality and severity, which you do not want yet.

Phase 3: Transmission

Now we want to spread the virus around the world as quickly as possible. This sequence, adapted from Tatsur0's in his Bacteria guide, works extremely well.

• Air 2
  
• Water 2
  
• Extreme bioaerosol **

* Why Air before Water? Because Saudi Arabia is an Arid land, and evolving Air 2 will cause the virus to explode across SA.

** The 2017 version of this guide recommended Bird 1 over bioaerosol, but the current state of the game makes Greenland very difficult for this virus to infect. The quicker you push into Greenland, the better.

By Air 2, red bubbles should start exploding all across your map.



Again, you may be tempted to buy Viral Instability now. Resist that urge.

Phase 4: Abilities

Once again, we'll be taking a page from Tatsur0's Bacteria guide. Since we started in hot Saudi Arabia, two levels of Cold Resistance will be extremely helpful in spreading our virus to Greenland and other cold places.

Drug Resistance is, of course, to allow our virus to rampage through rich countries.

After that, Heat Resistance will make your virus even more infectious in the equatorial zone and let it easily get into Africa and the Caribbean.

Your virus may still be having trouble reaching Greenland at this point. Though Environmental Hardening is very expensive, it seems almost necessary to avoid getting shut out of that last territory.

Let's also toss in one level of Viral Instability. (Finally!)

• Cold resistance 1
  
• Cold resistance 2
  
• Drug resistance 1
  
• Drug resistance 2
  
• Heat resistance 1
  
• Heat resistance 2
  
• Environmental Hardening
  
• Viral instability 1

Does Viral Instability really have to come only at the very end? I can't be sure, but after playing a number of games with VI pushed further up the buy order, it feels like earlier VI is a big mistake.

End game

Believe it or not, we're in the final stretch now.

At this point, there are likely to still be a couple of countries without cases. We want to max out Infectivity ASAP to get them red. The symptom clusters in the top left and bottom right are the ones we want.

Once that is accomplished, we will need to push up Lethality and Severity while also keeping an eye on the "harder to cure" symptoms.

The exact order of Symptoms here really isn't that important though. The game plan is really just to funnel random mutations towards expensive Symptoms by quickly buying up all the cheap ones. A simple yet highly effective way of playing through this phase is to go systematically from the cheapest to the most expensive Symptoms.

Two things: Do pick up Necrosis before 1/5 or so of the world has died. And when Symptoms start getting expensive, grab a second level of Viral Instability.

• Pulmonary fibrosis
  
• Pulmonary oedema
  
• Nausea
  
• Anaemia
  
• Haemohilia
  
  
• Hypersensitivity
  
• Vomiting
  
• Seizures
  
• Inflammation
  
• Diarrhoea
  
  
• Viral instability 2 (Ability)
  
• Insomnia
  
• Paranoia
  
• Tumours
  
• Paralysis
  
  
• Necrosis *** (do buy this here if it hasn't appeared as a mutation by this point)
  
• Immune Suppression
  
• Systemic Infection
  
• Insanity

Right before the game ends, buy all three levels of Genetic Reshuffle to improve your score.

• Genetic reshuffle 1
  
• Genetic reshuffle 2
  
• Genetic reshuffle 3

And that's a 5-star victory on Mega-brutal in 308 days!



Did this strat work for you? Drop me a comment and let me know!

[MrOmegaPlayer]

Worked like a charm. I reeeally clutched my booty at the end there as the cure was about 85% when I got the first reshuffle. Then came back to 90% when I got the second one. And as I got the third one, it went back down to 75% and the game ended with cure at 77%. I only got a 4 star result though. Still, amazing work. Gonna try again for those 5 stars.

[eastpaw]

I've just updated this guide and it again works. In my tests, I won all games under 350 days.

[eastpaw]

Nice, gen_angry!

[gen_angry]

Thanks for this! I used this strategy as a base for my own run. I tried it as written a few times and could not get above 4 stars so tried a few tweaks.

Made a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyrqA_cJtfM

It's no 300k run but it got me 5 stars.

[eastpaw]

Looks like something really has changed in the game then. I wrote this guide back in 2017 so it's not a big surprise that it's a little out of date by now.

[xWicked85]

Had to upgrade Bird 1 to make it work. Without that Greenland wouldn't get infected before they closed everything.

[eastpaw]

@UnlikelyWaffle I wonder if something has changed in the game since I wrote this? Back then, I ran this strategy more than 10 times in a row and had relaxed wins each time.

[eastpaw]

It's an opportunity cost and price inflation problem. Getting VI earlier means you buy some other traits later. And after a number of trials it felt like early VI was actually slowing things down.

Feel free to experiment with earlier VI though and post your findings!

[pinkbutton7]

You said VI at earlier stage is a mistake ? Why ? VI will work the same throughout the game, not that it will work differently at different stages of the game.

[UnlikelyWaffle]

Had to retry this about 3 times, but I finally got it! Works pretty well, thank you!