Plague inc: The cure mode guide

Warning!!!

The guide is meant for new players, and players that struggle playing cure mode. It does not cover statistics at all, nor will have a datamined content. This guide does not contain any sort of achievement hunting methods (yet), and does not provide any guaranteed win strategies

Under maintenance !!

Updates regarding guides:

If you haven't heard of it until recently, now this is the thing that exist. Ndemic recently decided to add a beta for the cure mode in Mobile, with a new plague type to cure (if you want to have it a go, remember that cure mode is inaccessible in mobile and therefore you need to buy it, and you will need their discord server)

Obviously for non spoiling purposes, I will be updating this guide eventually when the beta had ended for it, along with other various content I had promised to update.

If you do wondering, the guide will have a massive overhaul in term of how it is defining 'strategy'. In this case, while the initial part of the disease guide and how to play section will not be erased, there will be significantly more detail in the disease guide itself. Unlike me lumping all disease together, I will explain them separately in preparation if they ever do decide to add even more disease, as this would be a better system for a 'disease by disease' curing guide.

But before that, understand first thing first. The initial launch of the new disease will not have pretty image since its all on mobile

At least that disease does look pretty hard though, its difficulty is midway between fungus and prion as long as you know how to tackle it

Extra:
If you do wonder why some of the screenshot are missing, well, of course they are basically a bug that exist now. Well, the disease section will be taking an overhaul soon, so it practically doesn't matter if it did continue to exist or not. Though I will say it kinda happens and I hope I can continue updating it asap


Extra 2:
Just have a look and see for this. Obviously this is kinda bragging right but you can easily realize what I m about to introduce to your strategy for difficult to cure disease.


Update 1:
Honestly, I didnt expect this. My pc basically went to hell recently and its only repaired up recently. This means that well, screenshot are basically screwed. It may take a while to get back to everything and of course, I may decide to abandon it entirely...

The cure mode

As the cure mode released, I have seen a lot of people - not just 1, not just 10, probably 100, but I can assume up to thousands of people, complain about the difficulty of the cure mode

Thus, this guide was created to help new players learn about whats going on in the cure mode

Do not assume the guide will just win you games 100% of the time. This guide merely serves as help, but not as a 100% win rate guide that you might be seeing pretty soon. This guide covers the basics of the game, together with specific symptoms and responses for each of the disease.

I m very new in guide making, so if anything were to went wrong, tell me about it, but please leave my cat alone

Basic understanding of the cure mode

The cure mode, as it states, allows you to become an international organization, to track down, research and manufacture a vaccine/cure for the newest pathogen that appeared in the world. (Or in nano virus case, develop a kill code and broadcast it to stop and fully disable the nano virus)

So, there is a lot of stuff, but generally, i will classify all of them that you can buy as:

The newest response tab for curing disease and take action against the disease

As you may have noticed, there are the 3 new tabs aside from seeing the statistic from the first page

These are:

• Quarantine

  
  Quarantine allows you to lock down borders or do lockdowns indefinitely on a continental level or temporarily on a national level. These are the main sources of non-compliance.
  
  

• Response

  
  Response is what you can do against the disease, be it by reducing infectivity, reducing lethality, reducing outbreak infections, or even reducing the chance for the disease to cross the borders.
  
  

• Operation

  
  Operation is the miscellanous category, similar to the abilities tab in the main game. Everything in this operation tab is what government would do. In this tab you can fund vaccine research and manufacturing, intelligence gathering, reducing non-compliance and a little more time by increasing authority. It is also where you can fund disease-specific initiatives.

Authority's mechanic

Authority

It's the newest mechanic originating from rebel inc (Reputation). The authority is basically the trust put towards the operation.

If your authority drops to 0, you lose!

Yes, this is Jevil playing numbers game with you essentially.

Anyway, there are a few ways for you to lose authority.

They are:

• Death authority loss

  As stated, this authority loss is caused by death. The more people die, the more authority loss this would stack up. Not the most powerful one, but it is very deadly when comparing the amount of authority loss you can get from this alone, than the other ones.
  
  

• Disease spread authority loss

  Disease spread is self-explanatory. If too many people are being infected, your authority will be reduced (possibly due to neglect of controlling the disease in a good way). Most often this would be a static 20-30, or even more authority loss if you kept it spread across the world without control, especially on higher difficulty. This is the least severe of them all, since theoretically it has a cap limit.
  
  

• Panic authority loss

  When lots of people are dying, infected people will panic. You can relate yourself to what causes panic realistically, and it will cause a lot of authority issue, especially disease like prion. This is probably the worst cause of authority loss, because of it appearing along with disease spread and deaths. Its indirect nature also makes it difficult to combat the panic, since you need to control the spread locally (in the panicking countries), globally as well as reducing fatality.
  
  Often times, the more people that are infected, the more severe it will be. You will see more panic authority loss in a game with more people infected, than games that have less people infected (the basic comparison is simple - play a game with prion vs a game with bacteria and you will see much more panic authority loss in the former).
  
  This also means that, if the disease is stable enough (dont actually kill, or not further infecting people), then there will be 0 authority loss from this. The one example I can only compared to, is if you stop all nano virus using the hacks (the 1 month hack that stop all activity of nano virus).

There is one more way to lose authority, but this will be discussed below

Quarantine and non compliance

Non compliance

This is one of the newest mechanic added by Ndemic to the cure mode. When you choose to quarantine a country, non-compliance risk will increase. Once it reaches 100%, people will actively choose to not comply, removing nearly all action that you had done in quarantine to that particular country.

There are 4 ways of quarantine as of now. They are:

• Close air access

  
  
  
  Closing air access is as stated, closing the air access of a country. They will be unable to use their air ports to send planes to other country. Fully non compliance country disable this, allowing them to send planes as normal. Costing 1 resource at base.
  
  This is actually one that i would recommend spending 1-2 to prevent the initial fast spread, so that you dont get all country fully infected. Once the spread had gone too far, you can always choose to refund it if you have non compliance issue.
  
  

  Non compliance generation: Low

  
  

• Close sea access

  
  
  
  Closing sea access is as stated, closing the sea access of a country. They will be unable to use their sea ports (dock or harbor or whatever you would say) to send boats to other country. Fully non compliance country disable this, allowing them to send boats as normal. Costing 2 resource at base.
  
  Since it cost 2 resource at base, its actually pretty much negligible to think that it can work fine together with closing air access. However, i don't recommend it because attempt to use quarantine to close down both ports and air ports in 2 continent is already a huge fund investment. You will literally need at base, 2+2+1+1 (the base of port + air port in 2 continent) + 4 (increase in cost from investment in quarantine) to even be able to lock down 2 of the air/ sea ports, that does not fully prevent the spread entirely. Beside, it also generate a hefty amount of non compliance that isn't negligible in the long term (most likely you would need non compliance help).
  
  

  Non compliance generation: Low

  
  

• Close land borders

  
  
  
  Closing land border does not prevent the spread of disease from 1 country to another. It only reduces the chance that a disease would naturally spread to other nearby countries. However, the reduction in chance is a pretty large, so you might as well say that it will prevent the disease from spreading too fast via land. Cost 2 resource at base.
  
  This is actually one of the more controversial ones to think. Since locking down land border actually affects every country, it does justify the low cost to reduce initial spread for the first few months. However, using this does generate non compliance by a lot compared to the previous 2, so choose wisely
  
  

  Non compliance generation: Medium

  
  

• Force lockdown

  
  
  
  

  Force lockdown does 2 things

  1: It directly decreases the infectivity of the disease.

  2: Indirectly, lock down the continent. Decreases infectivity in all of the continent's country.

  
  As initially, people thinks force lockdown is like, useless, and generate too much non compliance for their own good. However, the double down on infectivity of the disease really pays itself, and its the most powerful initiative in the entire game. Not even your normal response could be compared to this lockdown.
  
  But as stated, it does generate a lot of non compliance by itself, and should be controlled whenever possible.
  
  Note: It also increases fatality rate slightly, but that's not what you are looking for anyway.
  
  

  Non compliance generation: High

Targeted quarantine :

This is a purchasable skill, that can be used to lockdown a country entirely. This last a month, and allow you to lockdown everything in a country (ports, air ports, land borders, and lockdown combined). However, the backlash is that, it only lasts 1 month, and cost a minimum of 2 resource (with increasing value as you use more). This meant you basically waste 2 resource for a month worth of lockdown (Although you do regain the resource after that month) that almost does nothing in term of continent spread.



There is the option to assign a softer targeted lockdown. Using it will only get you air port, port, land border lockdown, without the actual force lockdown in place. This is very bad and should be avoided as much as possible because it literally does nothing unless you already have a non compliance issue in the first place.

Non compliance risk:

This actually doesn't matter in term of non compliance, as each quarantine actually increase this by a basic, set value.

However, non compliance risk does just 1 thing. It amplifies the non compliance that you have. Which means, a higher non compliance risk will generate more non compliance in a country, compared to low non compliance risk. Its a small detail, but keeping non compliance risk low is also necessary to keep the non compliance in check

Anti non-compliance measure:

Seen as a yellow colour in the operation menu, this allow you to quell non compliance, and decrease non compliance generation.

Not known to many, but it also increase the limit which a country's non compliance limit before they are capable of non comply against lockdown actions.

Targeted Economic aid:

This really is considered a sub section to this, as its an active ability. This allows you to decreases non compliance directly in only 1 country, but will cost you 2 resource per use.

This generally doesn't have much usage, as buying the main initiative branch that decreases non compliance, and increasing the non compliance cap is really often preferred. However, you never know when this should be used. Use at will.

And now, the thing we all waiting for
Maybe not

Non compliance authority loss

This authority loss is due to a country non comply against your quarantine action. Its value can vary, but generally, you will lose up to 2-5 authority per country non comply against you.

This should not be neglected, at all. However, it have a basic weakness to it

Non compliance authority loss can be regained by quelling the non compliance in a country, allowing you to regain the authority.

What does this mean?

It means that, you can often quell non compliance country so that, you dont lose authority from non compliance.

This can be accomplished via:
- Anti non compliance measures
- Economic aid
- Refunding some quarantine in that continent.

Now for just 1 useful tip for this entire section

You can refund the full amount of your resource from quarantine !

Lets imagine a scenario where you already funded lockdown in a continent. It cost you 5 resource.

In a scenario where if people non compliance against your action...

Refunding lockdown will return you the full value of 5 resource you had spent !

This tactic works extremely well if you already have non compliance issue, because refunding it will instantly quell and shut down non compliance

You can't non comply if you have nothing to comply to.

Quoted by an unknown cat

Just something extra here: When country non comply, the infection rate actually rises very quickly compared to country that is complying to your action. It is to my suspect that if they non comply, they also don't exactly care about any infectivity reducing initiative you had bought previously.

The point of no return

There is a point of no return for the disease in a country. Mainly, when the infection rate reaches approximately 10% + of the country's population.

When this point is reached, no amount of effort in infectivity/lethality reduction will save you from the major loss of authority

What is the the point of no return?

If you do know about exponential growth, then you will surely know

At a certain point, the growth of a disease would exceed the amount which you can control. Aka the disease have gone out of control. The infectivity boom.

For example: Lets assume the disease have enough infectivity to infect 20% new people from its infected population.

In a case where 1% of the population is infected, this might only mean 0.2% of the population is going to be infected in the next day, 0.24% the next day, etc.

Not bad, but not too good indeed.

However, at a point where 10% of the population is infected, 2% of the population would be infected in the next day, 2.4% the next, etc.

In this case, its way worse than you can ever imagine. This is the worse case scenario to leave the disease at !

This is the point of no return. Your exponential growth taking effect. Nothing can stop the disease unless you kill everyone involve in some way or another. The "critical mass" where population would begun to infect themselves non stop. In some way, you will learn this concept in the plague inc main game.

It often varies with the disease's infectivity. The higher infectivity , the earlier the point of no return starts. It is also dependent on a country's state. As country goes into total anarchy, response will not matter as much since the government would have less control over infection, eventually to no action taken against it.

In the cure mode, your mission is

To stop the disease from reaching a point of no return in a country

Why does this matter? Why this is a topic? Why this is not a thing for us to know? It matter because, once the point of no return starts...

There will be literally no returning the country without investing a lot of effort

There will be a huge authority loss from infect, panic, and death.

Your research speed would be reduced, due to a country going into total anarchy

And worse of all, the lethality rate would begin to climb.

You will definitely lose a lot of authority if you even let this happen to 1 country alone. Let alone 2,3,4, or more.

And there is a literal tons of countries.

Originally posted by author:

And worse of all, the lethality rate would begin to climb.

What is this? You may ask.

There is a hidden trigger, but its a very obvious trigger.

For those out there that ignores pop up, there is a message showing you about it


(There is even a DNA bubble designated for it. The death bubble (the black skull)

This trigger is very dangerous. It can kill you, increasing panic massively, and even get your authority down by a significant margin.

That trigger alone, is the only reason that made lock-down massively overpowered

Remember, you gain access to quarantine action

Even before the disease get fully analysed !

All normal disease beyond parasite will be required to analyse, and it takes time.

However, even though you can wait for analyse to complete...

The disease will not wait for you to get them cured !

Stopping the point of no return, regardless of any disease type, is the most crucial thing to do. Reducing infectivity early is the only concrete way to win the game without costing too much issue to your authority

The fog, and field operators

At the start of a game, choose a country to start in

Whats next? Find the disease? Find anything?

Too bad, you have nothing to help you at the start

(unless you are playing bacteria that is, and you can trace disease with it)



The only country you had started, will be the lone country that can help you in your research, or really anything else. And often times, its the only country that would benefit from your tackling on non compliance issue, since only investigated country can benefit from non compliance benefits.

However, fear not, as you can always buy...

The investigation group !

The investigation group provides information of a country, and allows your non compliance benefit to actually benefit them.

However, the thing that is important isn't that, but rather

Getting information from a country allows them to fund research, and allowing you to trace disease in their country !

If you don't know what it meant, don't worry. I have an even simpler explanation for you below

If a country isn't investigated, you will have no information about how far the disease have progressed, and you absolutely have no help from them for your research !

However, even though it isn't likely, there is a trigger that reveals countries when they had reached an infected margin, even if you did not get any investigation teams

But at that point, if you remember the previous section, you might as well drop dead.

Investigate and field operators

By buying the investigation team, they will send their teams to nearby zones, or zones that they have access to via planes or boats. This is done passively so you will get information over time.

However, that isn't your only way of investigating countries. You can buy yourself field operators to investigate countries as well. By sending field operator to a country, you also indirectly allow yourself to investigate that country.

Field operators themselves can reduced infection on the place they are situated. Not by a lot, but its significant enough that you can feel it doing some effect on that country.

Field operator have some special abilities themselves



In the top left corner, we have

Emergency care

Emergency care reduces fatalities in country that have a field ops. It doesn't reduce it by a lot, but still significant enough that you can feel it.

In the bottom left corner, we have

Infection control

This is really different from lockdowns. Instead of blocking air/sea ports and land border entirely, it 'cleans' up some air/sea ports that allows you to keep those open, but with less planes/boats infected traveling around the world, while keeping the land border safe (less change for infected people to cross it). There is actually an entire response designated for border control (which does the same thing as this does). However, it usually doesn't work that well since disease would keep on spreading anyway. It also have a rather hidden trait that reduces the disease infectivity even more in the country that it has deployed on.

Not entirely useless, but its usefulness really is too limited due to only having 1 field ops. Can be useful if you worried about the disease spread.

Lastly, this one

Field research

Debatable thing, but field research is incredibly useful, in my opinion. This usually allows your field operators to stay in an infected country, and also gain vaccine research in the progress. Putting it on the origin country increases from about 2-3% cure research to 4-5% of cure research per bubble, so its pretty powerful. In cases like prion actually having a harder time to actually research effectively against it, this is the one which carries you the entire run ! Sadly, it doesn't work on increasing manufacturing progress, but really, it does enough to warrant its cost.

Hidden event: Patient zero

I do avoid events quite a lot in this guide, since a lot of them are rather luck based.

But patient zero event is what i would consider a consistent event.

Triggering criteria: Field operative placed in the origin country for considerable amount of time.
(i m not sure, but you need to actually begin vaccine research for the chance to trigger it?)
Effect: Increase research by approximately 10 flat percentage.

This is one of those event where triggering it is quite easy, and gives a huge boost in research. Especially considering field research have a buff when placed in the origin country. Often times, placing field operative long enough in the origin country of the disease will trigger the event.

(origin country = listed in your first page of the disease menu, the disease summary)

Niche section

As this section goes, this is the niche section. Uncommon things to go for.

Note that disease individual operations is not covered in this section. Rather, its in the other sections.
Now lets start with

Vaccine VS Manufacturing, which is better?

This is rather difficult to determine really, since often times, its for personal preference.

If you get too much vaccine research, the lack of manufacturing will kill you. If you focus on manufacturing, you might never got to the manufacturing process.

However, there are two strategies that i myself use:

1: Balancing both the paths. The vaccine research and manufacturing, getting both to level 2

This as title goes, balance each research together. Often times, you would have a mediocre speed in completing the game, but its worth the purchase really. Its not like lightning fast wins, but often enough for you to get those wins in a consistent way.

2: Getting full manufacturing, with vaccine research only at level 1

I find this to be rather inconsistent, since the speed often depends on when you are getting that third level of manufacturing. However, this does mean that, if you survive the approximate 180 days for the vaccine to be researched, you would most likely win the game after using censorship + fake news when the research is completed.

Anyway, this is just my own preference. Don't let yourself be deterred by it!

Tips for research/manufacturing:
1: In higher difficulties, it is better to delay the start of vaccine research. As time passes, the resource cost of the research 1 will be reduced from 19 to a minimum of 10 funds.
2: The 3rd research/manufacture initiatives only speed up the research/manufacturing twice (makes research/manufacturing twice as fast). Keep this in mind when choosing whether to spend money on those initiatives.
3: In the response tab, there are 3 initiaties that increase research speed by about 1/3 of the speed. There is also one lone response that increases manufacturing speed by 1/3 of the speed. You can attempt to get those to actually speed up your research, not just from the operation tab!
4: Getting the field research can be a good option if you need that little extra research!

The second one is:

Contact tracing - is it worth it?

At first glance, contact tracing seems useless. It doesn't affect any statistic, and its cost is similar to other responses. The description reads: "Significantly reduce infection in small outbreaks", with Testing Capacity making it "More effective in larger outbreaks".

Is this worth the cost that it would provide?

Short answer:

Absolutely !

Long answer:

Depends on disease type

Why absolutely?

The fact that it reduces infection in a country, means that it will actually reduce the amount of people infected in a country. With higher level of contact tracing, this can reduce the amount of people being infected by a significant margin. It is very significant and you will see its effect once you bought it, and its indeed worthy of the resource you paid for !

Then why depends on disease type?

Some disease type , like fungus, have an extremely long analysis time. Playing beyond virus, all disease will require you to research them. Researching a disease takes time, and you cannot buy response until they are fully analysed. This meant no early access to response like you can do in virus/bacteria, which certainly sets back the thing you needed.

Unfortunately, the real issue with contact tracing is infectivity itself.

Yes, the disease infectivity will hinder the contact tracing progress. If you attempt to use contact tracing while ignoring infectivity, the disease can only be slowed so much until the point of no return is reached, and then contact tracing no longer works because the infected would grow in such a rate that contact tracing provide 0 resistant to the disease spread. Couple with the inability to use response immediately with disease that require analysis, together with the cost of research/manufacturing, contact tracing would be an investment that pays off way too late for it to be worth while. It can significantly hinder disease with low infected people, but not the other spectrum where the initial analysis can already grow the disease to a point where contact tracing is almost useless.

(Some specific case to note: Nano virus have a trait of hack to increase its effectiveness with contact tracing. However, nano virus is a fight for the vaccine, not for stopping it entirely. Its somehow impossible to stop nano virus at all due to its increased effectiveness in all type of environment/climate. Therefore I wouldn't recommend to buy it, although it can be use to a degree of success)

The third one is:

Border monitoring trait - is it worth it?

Border monitoring is rather simple. It decreases the chance for a disease to spread by borders and/or ports, preventing from reaching other country/other border more easily. This is one of those where it is mostly ignored, as it still keeps the disease spreading. As people would ask, why not quarantine the air and seaports?

Really though, that is true. Quarantining the airport/port is generally better. However, the hidden gem here isn't the air trait, nor the sea trait. But its the land border screening trait.

Both air and sea quarantine generate less non compliance, and thus isn't an issue when considering non compliance. However, the land screening meanwhile, helps tremendously when you are attempting to curb the disease's spread on land. Land border's lockdown is not even considered in quarantine because of its cost and the non compliance it generate, and its effectiveness is only on a scale of a continent. Meanwhile, this screening is a worldwide, 1 time purchase, that allows decreased disease spread in the entire world.

You will get addicted by this trait alone. A well hidden gem. Buy it when you can afford to have it without losing the game (Do not neglect your important research/lockdown trait for this)

Sadly still not enough to stop bio weapon

Disease specific symptom and response 1 (Covering easy difficulty disease. Bacteria, Virus and Parasite)

Now, let us begin this section with 4 disease: Bacteria, Virus, Parasite, Fungus (most hated)

All disease have 2 unique symptom. I will ignore 2 specific unique symptom. Mainly, well understood (don't need analysis), and obvious symptom (able to see spread of disease). These 2 symptom helps the player establish the fundamental and serve as a tutorial helper, rather than actually makes the disease harder to be done/makes the disease unique. However, those 2 symptom will be shown here.




The same response will not be repeated for all of the other diseases. Eg: Bypass safety measure.

Bacteria

The simplest of the bunch. Really is a tutorial for the cure mode on how to find, research, manufacture and using response. Usually do not serve any problem at all. Does not have any unique trait in response.

Virus

The first time you are introduced to the fog fully. You can no longer see how the disease spread, and you have to actually manually find the disease. Even though 'the fog' existed in the bacteria disease, this is the first time you would be introduced fully to the fog, and an important point where you learn how to investigate countries.

Virus starts off with a unique symptom:

Highly Asymptomatic

This symptom reduce the effectiveness of contact tracing. Although it doesn't render the contact tracing useless, the subtle difference can be seen when using contact tracing. It certainly will have a huge impact on if you would buy contact tracing at all.

There is 2 unique response for the virus. Mainly, public warning and public alert.

Both of these 2 does what the description says. Public warning gives you some authority, while public alert reduces non compliance. Nothing much to say about it.

Parasite

This is the first disease that would introduce you to the analysis phase of a disease. At the analysis phase, all response, and disease specific response, together with vaccine/manufacture research will not be available to be purchased. This isn't a problem for this disease, but will become extremely problematic for latter disease. This is the disease where you don't have any safety net anymore, and even though it isnt hard (being 1 unique symptom can be cured entirely), still is the first start of the many 'hard' disease to be vaccinated.

Parasite starts off with 2 unique symptom:

Water transmission

It can spread more easier in poor region. This can cause poor country to be fully infected before you can even do anything to it. Dangerous if ignored, but the unique trait can remove this debuff.

Symbiotic relationship

Vaccine are harder to be developed. This meant more research is required to find a vaccine. Not a huge issue with time once the disease is under control, but something to take note for.

There is 2 unique response for the parasite. Medical aid 1 and Medical aid 2

Medical aid is used to reduce, and even remove poor country bonus infectivity after purchasing. As a purchase to remove the parasite's unique symptom, it is certainly useful to buy it all, just for removing the buff that parasite gets.

Disease specific symptom and response 2 (Covering normal difficulty disease. Fungus and Prion)

Fungus

This is the first disease where its unique trait cannot be removed by any means, and it doesn't help that it buffs the disease considerably throughout the course of the game, instead of a instant boost. This is the one that could stumble a lot of people if they aren't careful about what they did.

Fungus starts off with 2 unique symptom:

Fungal Spores

Fungal spore allows them to instantly infect countries, even without planes. Similar to spore burst usage in plague inc, but more frequent. Unique trait can only lessen its effect, but not remove it entirely.

This also provides a con to the disease, as with fungal spore, the fungus is unable to travel on boat/planes as easily as other disease, meaning its not even necessary to buy lock air/sea access, since it hinder the fungus progress innately to spread through air/sea. However, be warned that it can still spread through land just as easily as other disease.

Fungal Blooms

The actual cause of people losing against this disease. Infection rate will increase as time goes on, allowing fungus to grow exponentially if not contained by its antifungal unique trait. This can be seen if you keep your eyes on the infectivity rate. Its effect is drastic and can instantly 'set countries on fire' due to how fast the countries get infected.

Beware of the point of no return when fighting against this disease. It will reach that point relatively quickly due to its increasing infection rate, and it can risk you a ton of authority loss.

Fungal bloom also provides infectivity boost over humid climate, which means even faster infection rate in humid region, something which to keep note for.

There is 4 unique response for the Fungus. Micron Ventilation Filters, Antifungal 1,2,3, and the introduction to a new response thats can be available after fungus: Bypass safety measure.

Micron Ventilation Filters do what it does. It decreases the amount of spore burst the fungus can do in X amount of time. It is useful to still buy it if you don't want new country to be infected.

Antifungal (unique trait (not to be confused by the response trait called advance antifungal))

This is the trait that can only stop fungus. However, its stopping method, unlike medical aid which removes the extra infectivity completely...

It can only resets the infectivity generated over time !

No matter how much you buy it, even if you buy all 3 of them at the same time ! Imagine you start of with 50 infectivity, and you gain 1 per day..., you would get about 80 infectivity after 1 month passes

Anti fungal would only be resetting the disease already gained bonus infectivity, which only will reduce the infectivity to 50(via previous example) . The base value of the infectivity don't get changed, and it only resets the bonus infectivity.

Whats more, is that

Buying anti fungal does not stop the generation of extra infectivity, at all !

Don't buy 3 level of those anti fungal as you think it can reduce the generation. No, it does not. After the 3 levels, you might as well say the extra infectivity are permanent because there is no other way of reducing the bonus infectivity except reducing it via response/lockdown. And even then, response/lockdown only reduce the infectivity by a percentage, which means it will still keep on growing...

Bypass safety measures

This is also the first time you are introduced to a trait that can success/fail. Bypass safety measure, after purchasing it, gives either a flat 20% boost, or reduction depending if you succeed/fail the event.

To have a consistent game, it is highly unrecommended to buy this trait, unless you rely on wins by winning the lottery that is.

Its not that you cant try though. Since its a flat reduction, not an increase to the cap at which disease can be fully research, you can buy this when the research progress have progress lesser than 10%, and the reduction will only be that amount of percent, rather than 20 flat percent drop in research.

You can also use it as a gamble when you are about to lose...maybe it might work.

Note: It can be used in the manufacturing stage also, be mindful of that

Prion

Prion is really unique on its own, in which that its lethality is nearly impossible to reduce, even with response that decreases lethality by a percentage. It meant that reduction in lethality is almost impossible to perform, and any lethality reduction trait would almost does nothing aside from doing 1 unique function that would be explained below. It is also harder to develop a vaccine against it, even though there is no indication for the increased difficulty in developing vaccine.

Prion starts off with 2 unique symptom:

Long incubation:

The long incubation is the only saving grace against prion. Long incubation prevents death from happening instantly due to its insane lethality at the start.

However, it also have a backlash. Due to its insanely long time for death/recovery, it means that infected people would generally stay infected until they die or recover, and more infected people means the disease can still spread as normal. This mean that unlike any other disease, prion infection generally stay longer, infected faster, and can lead to the point of no return easily, even with intervention from response. This often lead to huge panic authority loss, and you can easily lose the game if even 1 person dies before you have all the unique trait prepared to counter the authority loss from panic.

You can extend this duration by using extend incubation, which each would extend the time before death by approximately 1 months.

Terminal disease:

This gives the prion its lethality. Because of the low chance of recovery, it is certain that a person will die, even if the lethality would be set to just 1. This also means that, by buying fatality decreasing response, you can buy some time indirectly because people can't recover and the lacking in fatality also decreases the chance of a person dying on a daily basis.

There is 6 unique response for the Prion. Rapid analysis, Extend incubation 1,2, Reassure infected 1,2, Neural Enhancers.

Extend incubation increase the time before the death comes in, and reassure infected reduce the panic authority loss once the death sets in. All of which are crucial to buy, especially extend incubation. Buy all of the extend incubation as first priority, as you will definitely need the time to get the prion under control !

Rapid analysis is rather important as well, as the faster analysis save you important time for you to buy the important unique trait. You can try without it, but its highly unlikely that you would win without it.

Neural enhancer meanwhile, allows countries that has been infected to have increased speed in research to counteract the prion's action that slows down research speed. This can be ignored, but as countries get infected, this becomes more useful, so its rather beneficial to not ignore it.

Disease specific symptom and response 3 (Covering very hard difficulty disease. Nano virus and Bio weapon)

Nano virus

Nano virus is a classic example of: Rush kill code, or lose. The nano virus have very high performance in any type of climate that, normal infectivity reduction does not hinder nano virus at all. Even lockdown does almost nothing and really, the fact that infection is so quick that games is almost decided in a matter of 100-200 days, compared to other disease longer time needed.

Nano virus starts off with 2 unique symptom:

Rogue experiment

Corrupted Kill-code

Really though, these 2 symptom basically explains the nano virus weakness. Instead of vaccine and manufacturing, nano virus needs a kill code only. Thus it does not need manufacturing. Rogue experiment meanwhile, allow you to inject hacks into the nano virus that is accessible after buying Develop kill code.

There are 3 pairs of hacks, which will be explained individually.

There is 11 unique response for the Nano virus : Develop kill code, Kill-code Supercomputing, (Emotion dampening, Location tracking), (Scramble Heat/cold resistant), (Cycle suspension, cryptomining), together with 3 other hack unlocking trait (costing only 1 resource) that i won't be explaining

Developing kill code is a certain way of dealing with nano virus. In fact, buying both kill code upgrade is necessary to win nano virus. Otherwise, nano virus will easily overrun you entirely.

Meanwhile, the 3 separate pairs of hacks. Since you can only buy 1 of the 2, i m going to do some analysis for them.

Emotion dampening VS Location tracking

Emotion dampening reduces authority loss from infected/dead, while location tracking increases effectiveness of contact tracing.

Emotion dampening is rather good, since it does what it does, buying you time. It gives you more time directly, rather than needing to actually buy additional contact tracing for it to be effective. However, it is based on preference, so i cant say much. Try it on your own and see what is the best fit

Scramble Heat resistant VS Scramble cold resistant

Scramble heat resistant reduces infection in hot countries, while scramble cold resistant reduces infection in cold countries.

Heat resistant vs cold resistant is often a balanced choice...if not for india being a hot country. It was supposed to measure between kill code research to abandon people, or focus on people and abandon wealthy country which slows down the kill code research. But right now, Scramble heat resistant is often the preferred choice. (Although, you might need scramble cold resistant on the occasion that the disease started in Norway or somewhere there, but thats only the real exception)

Cycle suspension VS Cryptomining

Cycle suspension stop all nano virus's activity for a month, while cryptomining allow you to generate (more) resource over time.

Cycle suspension is powerful by itself. Its like a mini fake news that stops all infection, and can be used anytime to its fullest effect, while cryptomining is only useful if you can afford it early on. If you cannot afford cryptomining within the first 45 days, always go for cycle suspension.

Bioweapon

This will be the first time you learn of true despair.

Yes, that is true. You will learn that not every disease can be cured. Bioweapon is one of those disease that simply can't be stopped under all means.

Bio weapon starts off with 2 unique symptom:

Annihilate gene

Unfortunately, this is not the one that ruins games with bio weapon. In the long run however, this will take off games which you normally would had stabilized the disease from. But you will never get to the long run due to...

Genetic harvesting:

Yes, this. Genetic harvesting is the main ones that makes this disease type op. For each new country that it infects, increases the infectivity and lethality. It initially doesnt seems like much...until you realize there is over 100 country that exist

Yeah...maybe the naming should had been reversed.

There is 4 unique response for the Bio weapon:

Declare Armageddon just gives you enormous amount of authority. Even though its a lot, its not even comparable of what you would be losing in bio weapon.

Expectation management is a lock on authority loss. A cap limit, to be precise. A country can in theory, loss you a lot of authority due to panic/death. Expectation management caps the limit of how much authority you can lose in a country, which definitely helps in the bioweapon disease type.

Meanwhile, there is the extreme measure 1 and 2. Both of which enables your field operative, and only your field operative, to kill people directly. This does cost a lot of authority, but its crucial if you want to win with a cheese strat in mega brutal bio weapon.

5 General useful tips (for those that don't want to read long essays)

1: It is unwise to spend too much money on quarantine/non compliance stuff, although they are useful.

Unless you are waiting for analysis (like prion, fungus (due to high infection rate at the start of the game), bioweapons), do not bother buying them unless you want to try to use quarantine action to your advantage.

1a: If you are experienced to control your budget/non compliance, use some quarantine options, since the majority of quarantine option can be refunded for full amount of resources spent

2: Don't buy the research immediately.

In higher difficulty, the vaccine research is more expensive and it's better to wait a while after its price had dropped (the price will drop after a while as you progress through the game). Do not neglect it.

3: Buy manufacturing as soon as you can afford it without losing the game.

Manufacturing is a different story, and will require a lot of time to be completed, even if you had already funded it. Those additional time necessary for manufacturing will directly impact your ability to win/lose a game. Your best bet is to fund manufacturing after the cure is around 20% or so.

3a: Nano virus don't have manufacturing, but allow you to hack the virus itself.

Buy those hack and use your advantage against the nano virus.

I would even suggest to skip the response action entirely until you buy all viable hacks (except the one where you stop the nano virus for a month).

4: Try everything, and use them all !

Do not try and neglect anything that you think doesn't affect anything at all. You may find a pleasant surprise when you tried them all out, and developed a general strategy for how to control the disease.

5: Don't simply buy the censorship immediately when you started losing authority.

Enjoy this picture of authority :)

You will lose a lot more authority if you didn't complete the cure by the time the censorship ends. Rather, lose the authority (its ok) and buy the authority upgrade (all 3 of them) first before you must use the censorship. This will be the difference between 10+ days, and can be the difference of finding the cure/losing the game.

Only buy censorship/fake news if you know you will lose before you can afford any authority upgrade.

All Combo List

The current combo of everything as listed in achievement

Happy frog:

Censor +Field research (By K2)

Shut down everything:

Fixed. Use force lockdown on every continent, and the achievement should pop up with a news. Checkpoint enforcer is necessary unless you want the hard way of letting the disease infect every country.

Human arent meant to fly:

Shut down all air plane in all 5 continent (tested myself). Checkpoint enforcer is required to make your life better unless you prefer to do the hard way

Rules are for loser:

Mask + Fake news (by K2)

Weapon X:

Steroid treatment and censorship/fake news (by tenko) (available via nano virus or bio weapon only)

Report thy neighbour:

Mask + Public awareness (by K2)

We're here to help:

No hand washing, ppt 1 response at all. Easily achieved by not buying anything in response . Infection control in the field ops tab should also not be purchased at all, though unsure about that

In it together:

Vaccine research 2 + Manufacture 2 (by K2)

Note: Censorship/fake news needed to be active, if a pop up shows up announcing the censorship/fake news ended, the combo probably will not work. Unsure if it would work after the censorship/fake news expires, but can be tested, but most likely it wouldn't work

Best case scenario, is to just restart the game/load if censorship/fake news ended

Note: From a reliable informant, It might be possible that censorship/fake news required achievement can be achieved by both censorship/fake news, not necessarily just censorship/fake news individually. Though you could still follow the guide to get the achievement if you are unsure if its true or not.

All of the activated achievement will pop up with a news

Silent note: HWMTF and SDE doesn't work on mobile. Suspect it might be an achievement issue than anything else. Will be removed when a fix is issued to it

one day I will get myself some good picture for what to buy and for the pop ups, but it will take a while. Take this with a grain of salt

This guide is made , tested and copied from the plague inc discord server, so names have been credited to the people in the discord server, that bring up some combo in here.

Extra note: You should play the game normally first before using these combo, as usually some of these event can be (accidentally) completed during normal play, which is a good thing. Do not refer these combo as absolute truth as the combo can be wrong entirely (even with a good 10+ event test)

Please use this guide for help with combo. This guide can still be useful, but have been severely outdated and really, you have better ways of finding combo in other guide than using this. They have a pretty nice guide for achievement after all.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=583661612

The end...?

I guess this is the temporary end of this guide for the cure mode really. Unless other stuffs comes up, like new disease type, etc, this might be what i could offer for the guide.

Anyway, i hope you find this guide useful, and until the next update, i guess you can... get on playing?

(i do have intention of putting down cure combo here, but it seems to not be appropriate place to put down. And its actually incomplete yet, due to one more achievement being the utter most suffering to find it)

Meanwhile, if you do find any problem on the guide, leave a comment on the guide itself. Would certainly appreciated if you do find anything wrong with it (and i will fix it if i have the time for it).

Advisor?

No, thats for your own to think. Advisor is certainly useful, but the advisor can be fairly unique, and each have their own performance for the way it would change the game.

Advisor cannot really be compared to other advisor, although some can be better than others. But its power is best for you to think what your weakness is, and using advisor to cover the weakness you have.

Edit: An update for the guide have been planned, but until i m free to do so, This guide will remain as it is. The next update will be
- Updated graphics (PC version of everything)
- What does x advisor do (i will still not give any recommendation to any particular advisor, just what they do, etc)
- More new stuff? (you can expect some new news pop up in some places?)

The update will be in progress, it has not yet begin, but it will be prepared very soon once i have some free time

Screw assignment even though i still need to do it no matter the rant

Actual video section (if you do want to watch it)

Majority of the video listed here contains no commentary.

You may contact me if you want your video to be on this list to be added, if you are certain that it is the best example for this section of the video that serve as a tutorial.

The mega brutal bioweapon cheese by: transportowiec96

really though, props for them to discover this so early on, even in beta, that allow clearing of bioweapon MB before K2 become god

The Lockdown only run by myself, all disease except bioweapon, in mega brutal.

(you can alter and buy more useful thing than only lockdown)

The all disease in mega brutal run performed by K2

It is a little outdated considering nano virus got a huge buff, but it is still useful nonetheless

Godly mega brutal wins in bioweapon by K2

(no comments)

Nano virus wins in MB

(just in case you dont think K2 can win in nano virus in MB since the buff)

Update log

V 1.00: Completed the guide. 2020.01.12

started spellchecking, edited the first two sections 2021.01.24

V 1.10: Updated the guide with a combo list. 2021.01.28

Adjusting minor wording and added more description. 2021.02.01

Adjustment to PC images only. Mobile Images will be removed slowly but surely (rip)

[shadyneko]

Obviously i may close down the guide temporary as i see fit. Though it might just be happening as a maintainence where you can see the changes if i saved it and might be some cut out words. But well, you might have to bear with it for some time if i do decide to go that route

[shadyneko]

well, tbh, this have been way long overdue. So let me put this in now.

I will be updating this guide in about a month. I had been delaying it for various reason, but now when i have the actual time to do it, I think i will do it. Obviously some section may stay, but many would probably be changed accordingly.

Honestly though some of the less important stuff (like combo) i might just lead you guys to another achievement hunting list where they also explain everything in detail.

Basically
1: Overhaul of the images to pc version if applicable. Mobile version of images may still stay
2: Improvement to strategy explaination (obviously its still gonna be covered with lots of text. At least now with a better pacing in general)
3: To find out once again if the things are the same (Retrying to beat MB as before)

Obviously if anyone have any suggestion for improvement to the guide, leave it here. However, i will only take the ones thats determined by myself

[Police Car]

I only play the plague inc evolved one not the original 1 one the PC lol

[Wooferwoof]

We're here to help is a case of Murphy's law, Try to get it and it doesn't happen, play normally trying to defeat prion and it happens
At least I have it now
Nice guide though

[shadyneko]

tbh, i will be testing all of it again real soon. Maybe in a week or two later when i will be getting clearer images for pc version for all images. Dont worry about the guide for now, it would probably be updated the same time as i updated the guide

[Wooferwoof]

We're here to help is extremely luck dependent (less chance than research boost for bypass), broken, or all sources are wrong (like how the wiki says you need to get infection control)

[shadyneko]

(well, there is an exception if literally the author of the video themselves decide that its better to create another similar video to the cure mode but in pc version, though most likely they wont be doing that)

[shadyneko]

Because the guide was actually created when the cure mode is completed in mobile and PC was in beta (and in beta theres some limitation on what could be posted/what could not). Though the screenshot would be fixed, videos probably wont be fixed considering its still a reliable video to follow

[hman690]

why are all the videos for the diseases on mobile?

[Totoroszek]

I've just managed to beat nano but it was sooo close, one more authority drop before code was at 100% and I would lost. As for the bio weapon, I did let the world die and funny enough I didn't get the achievement for beating bio weapon but I got both "Doomsday Save" and "Anti Vaxxer" achievements.