7/3/15

Plague Inc. [Submitted Guide] Fungus 5 Biohazard Speed Run (FINALLY!)

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This guide has been written and submitted by Narth. Leave some comments and rate the guide for its future improvements!

Spicy's Comments: Props to Narth for submitting a 5 Biohazard Speed Run guide! and on Fungus at that! It's well written and detailed. Also, I have made no changes to it whatsoever. I promise, I didn't. As always, if it doesn't work once, go try a thousand times more.

Yes, that's right. I finally got under 200 days for a fungus speed run and I am excited to share how. Be warned - this will still require many, many tries to finish.

First, pick ATP boost, Suppression, Patho-Stasis, Darwinist, and Extremophile. According to rumor, suppression helps land transmission even when the border is NOT closed and considering how helpful it seemed to be, the rumor is likely true. The other genes are pretty standard for a fungus run otherwise.

Start in India. Higher population means more to infect at start, and we will be relying on increased water transmission to also help infect our humid starting country.

Wait until the speed run pop-up emerges, then close it and buy Anemia and Hemophilia. Again, rumor has it that if you evolve before the popup it hampers transmission and it would seem the rumor is true.

Buy as many spore bursts as you can. However, do not yet buy a spore eruption. If you buy a spore burst at the same time you buy a spore eruption, they sometimes cancel one another out.

At the same time, buy Rash, Sweating, and Skin Lesions. Do your best to buy these symptoms before you use up spores...the more severity you have when you infect a new country, the more DNA you get from popping each bubble.

Once you have bought all spores up to and including spore hardening, buy Water 1 and Blood 1. Then as soon as possible buy Water 2 and Blood 2. Water transmission will help infect islands which are always a pain and I think it is more reliable than hoping to get lucky with spores and random boats. I chose blood transmission (yet again, because of a rumor) because it would appear that when combined with profuse bleeding (hemophilia and skin lesions combo) infectivity is greatly increased relatively cheap which is very necessary in this run. The combo makes it easier, but even without it, this combination was a HUGE game changer for me. My runs were reduced by an average of 10 days after I started using blood. Plus, profuse bleeding combo adds a bit of lethality early which is nice.

After this, evolve Birds 1 and 2. Another standard and necessary evolution in this run.

Now switch to abilities. Evolve Drug 1 and Cold 1 and look at your lethality and countries infected. If you have managed to evolve some highly lethal transmissions while also infecting most countries, especially islands, skip to the next step. If not, evolve Fever, Immune Suppression, Total Organ Failure and Necrosis...perhaps another high lethal symptom if needed.

Now, evolve Drug 2, Cold 2, Heat 1. Evolve 2 or 3 more lethal symptoms, unless you still have quite a few countries, especially islands, to infect. The most important are going to be total organ failure and necrosis, followed by Dysentery if available (don't buy more than 1 or 2 symptoms to unlock, just get it if mutations get you close), and of course the two hemorrhaging symptoms, systemic infection, fibrosis. Tumors if leftover as well - it is not as lethal as it suggests but it helps.

Once you've evolved the first resistances and raised your lethality, evolve Drug 2 right away, followed by Heat 2 and Environmental Hardening. If all countries are not infected shortly after this, it is a bad sign.

Finally, max out your lethality as soon as possible following my symptom list in the paragraph above the last. Pay attention to what countries are not fully infected. Poland, for some odd reason, was low on infected in my record game. I bought livestock 1 and it immediately infected and killed the country in a few days, basically making the difference between a 4 and 5 biohazard game for me.

Hopefully at this point you will win in under 200 days. What will decide your game is which countries you infect at the start, followed by lucky mutations, followed by good decisions made by the player based on what is happening in game. Greenland, Iceland, Philippines, Caribbean, New Zealand, Madagascar, and Canada seem to give the most trouble in that order. Greenland not infecting at start seems to be a failure every time, and not having at least a few of the others as well.

That's the guide. Good luck!

16 comments :

  1. Yay! Thanks for posting my guide! - Narth

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  2. Proof below! It works! :)

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  3. Wow! You weren't kidding when you said you kept checking my blog to wait for your guide to be posted!


    Thanks again for such a good job on writing a detailed guide! I appreciate the effort!

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  4. Not a problem! I just really enjoy sharing these things and my accomplishments in games, so I probably get a little bit more excited then I should! Haha! I have also really appreciated your other guides and have been trying to find a way to give back... This was it!

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  5. Any idea why the guide is not being well-received? Anyone who has tried this speed run more than once should know that even getting 4 biohazards (under 250 days) is a feat in itself and that there will never be a 5-biohazard-every-time guide unless the speed run is updated to be easier.

    This guide will get anyone 4 biohazards every time...I would think that in itself would be something. I would have killed for a guide like this when I was trying to get it. :(

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  6. I have tried this guide about 10 times now. I ALWAYS failed to infect all the islands. I got super lucky one game and infected like 5 islands with the spores at the beginning, but Iceland still never got infected. Maybe the Caribbean too. I was only even able to finish a game (with 3 biohazards) by saving some spore bursts until only the islands were left so I could actually infect them.

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  7. Is this your first time doing the fungus speed run? It was long thought to be impossible. 10 runs is just simply not enough. This strategy took me months to discover and even then it took perhaps 30 or 40 games before I was lucky enough to get 5 biohazards.

    I will admit that getting 3 every time is extraordinarily bad. Just to make sure, have you read the entire guide? Are you being careful with what symptoms you buy? The guide provides guidelines on when to buy which symptoms because each game is so different that you can't just buy this symptom, this one, this one, etc. Fungus speed run is just too complicated for that.

    If you don't infect enough islands in a game, just restart. Like the guide says, there is at least 1-3 islands that if you don't get at the start, will fail your game every time. Read the last big paragraph again and you'll see my take on which ones are the worst. The speed runs are just very unbalanced in how "possible" getting 5 biohazards is.

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  8. The guide is mostly clear and easy to follow. At one point, you say "do this unless you still have a bunch of islands to infect" but don't want what to do if that is the case. But it's easy to follow and understand otherwise.

    And yes, I did read the entire thing. Multiple times. Even with games where I got lucky and got multiple islands right at the start, there was still always one island that wouldn't get infected. Or it just took too long once places did get infected. I tried maybe 20 more games after my post and still couldn't get it. 200 days seems ridiculous for fungus.

    I'm not saying it's a bad guide. Not at all. Just maybe specify right at the spore part that if you didn't get enough islands, just start over.


    One thing I noticed, it's not just Spore Burst and Spore Eruption that can cancel each other out (never happened to me because I heeded your warning). But if I bought multiple Spore Bursts at the same time, sometimes one of them wouldn't work. And buying multiple at a time seemed to increase the chance that the countries infected would be bunched together rather than spread out like we want. Figured this might be worth mentioning.

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  9. In the paragraph following, it says "Finally, max out your lethality as soon as possible following my symptom list in the paragraph above the last."

    Obviously for a guide this is not clear enough because most people speed read guides. If I could edit this, I would change the syntax. For example, your thing about some islands requiring a restart is in the last paragraph. Anyone reading the guide start to finish won't miss that, but it's better to just put it at the start. Technically this guide isn't typical because it's not a step-by-step guide (you have to think for yourself at parts) but getting as close to a step-by-step would be better.

    The spore bursts issue is something I knew about. Not including it was a mistake, but you figured that out so that's good. Now, buying multiple at a time reducing the spread is NOT something I noticed. I will try and test your theory today.

    The problems with infecting all islands and killing fast enough that you mentioned are just how fungus is when you're trying to win quickly. You are absolutely right. Fungus is easy to win, but winning it fast and in 200 days is just ridiculous. It's not designed for speed, and 200 days is absurd...just not impossible. My guide depends greatly on luck simply because it's the only way to get under 200. Believe it or not, the only other strategies I could find online (2 of them) were even worse when it came to islands. If you didn't infect almost all of them, it was an automatic restart. And even then, the writers were only boasting 4 biohazards as best, although one person said he got it eventually.

    In regards to your number of attempts, I am still not too shocked. Most other people whose posts I read online claim they got under 200 basically just kept playing for months and months with a semi-working strategy until they just got lucky. Using this guide, I got it in a few weeks...before that, I had been experimenting for a month or so which is pretty good considering how many posts I've read from people claiming they played hundreds of games and felt lucky to get 4 biohazards (under 250).

    Since you posted, I played a few more games following my own guide and was able to consistently get under 215 discounting restarts if I didn't get Greenland, Iceland, and at least one or two other hard islands. This is really, really good considering my former best strategy was consistent under 240. If you're getting under 210 often, in this speed run that means your strategy is a winning one...just as soon as you get a bit lucky. I am sorry you are having a much harder time and I don't know what you could be doing wrong. If I can I will see if spicy will let me update the guide to be clearer and more concise based on the stuff we discussed.

    I knew getting into this that people would probably not like my guide. But considering how fungus was thought to be impossible to get under 200 days, I figured posting a guide that was only guaranteed to win EVENTUALLY was better than one that only had a faint possibility, which is all we had until now.

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  10. People want a magic guide that will get them five stars in two or three tries, but the fungus plagues do not allow that level of structure.
    I have yet to go under 200 using this, but i have come close enough that it is clear it is a matter of time.

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  11. That's the idea! Thanks!

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  12. Using the strategy I’ve posted at the link below I’ve got
    5 bio-hazards with fungus. So far I’ve successfully done it 3 times, but didn’t
    spent much time with this plague or trying to improve it. There’s definitely
    room for improvement and Narth apparently found a way :)
    Hope my guide will help you, if not with 5 bio-hazards, at least with a new approach on this plague

    http://forum.ndemiccreations.com/showthread.php?tid=2004&pid=6748#pid6748

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  13. best i have dine so far is 228 days 4 stars

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  14. why not post it on youtube

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  15. It would have no audience. I could post it in the comments but it wouldn't be quite as visible if it was in the guide itself. Still, maybe I'll consider it anyway if I can find a good way to take video of my screen.

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  16. Woah, hey! Your guide is one of the guides I mentioned looking at in one of the other comments around here. I took bits of your strategy and one of the other guides I found and added a few of my own touches to make this one (mostly, it's the symptoms that set this one apart, along with other tweaks). In my opinion this one works better more consistently but for the life of me I couldn't tell you why.

    Thanks again for posting!

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