It’s not easy to destroy all of Earth’s inhabitants. Bacteria may be one of the earlier modes in Plague Inc, but it’s still pretty tough. You’ll need skill and a little luck to successfully infect everyone with your disease. Evolving your disease too early will cause it to lose traction, but evolve it too late and you risk a cure foiling your evil plans.
Casual mode is a little too easy. Sick people are given hugs, nobody washes their hands, and research doctors are all golfing. Normal mode is where the challenge comes in. Doctors are working and people are taking some precautions to maintain proper hygiene.
We’ve put together a guide to help you achieve world domination.
Early game: Start strong
Ideally, you want to start in a country with a large population and as many airports and seaports as possible so your disease can spread more easily. India and China are good candidates because of their size. Saudi Arabia has both a seaport and flights to every other airport.
Another successful strategy is to pick a country that’s notoriously hard to infect. You don’t have to worry about infecting Greenland or Madagascar if you start there, but this will greatly slow down the start of your game.
As you obtain DNA points, you’ll unlock the ability to upgrade your disease. In the early stages of the game, prioritize evolutions that make your disease more contagious rather than more deadly. Dead people can’t infect anyone else. Avoid evolving too quickly, because this can draw attention to your disease and kick off a search for the cure.
Try these Transmissions and Abilities to start:
- Water 1
- Bird 1
- Air 1
- Drug Resistance 1
- Bacterial Resilience 1
Occasionally, your disease will mutate and develop symptoms randomly. When these mutations pop up, consider whether or not you want to keep them or devolve them. Again, you want to make sure your disease flies under the radar for as long as possible.
Mid-game: Spread the disease
Once your disease has taken hold in a few countries, you need to spread the infection. These Abilities will be key:
- Bacterial Resilience 2
- Bacterial Resilience 3
- Cold Resistance 1
- Cold Resistance 2
Endgame: Reach Total Organ Failure
Once you’ve infected most of the world, it’s time to change strategies. Evolve symptoms that branch into more deadly ones. If you’re running short of DNA points, consider devolving some of the transmission methods you chose early in the game. You’ll only get back 2 DNA points for each, but transmission methods aren’t useful at the end of the game; your points are better spent elsewhere.
By this point, researchers are working on the cure. The main way to stop them is by bursting blue bubbles, but evolving abilities like Genetic Hardening and Genetic ReShuffle will set back cure progress a great deal.
The deadliest evolution path gets your disease to Total Organ Failure in four steps:
- Coughing
- Pneumonia
- Pulmonary Fibrosis
- Total Organ Failure
