Strategy Guides/Shadow Plague

Strategy created by Pravus Gaming

Struggling with the cure?

Destroy the following countries: Greenland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Finland, Botswana, Sweden, Libya, Australia, and New Guinea. This kills 63,641,261 people (0.89 percent of world), but destroys 71 laboratories (20.88 percent of world). If the cure is still too fast, destroy Canada as well.

Dealing with Templars

Evolve Blood Rage, Bat abilities likeTravel Speed, and the Dark Ritual series.

If you're lucky, sometimes there will be fewer Templar bases, and they will be built near your vampire.

The following is a strategy guide for the Shadow Plague, that has been released for Plague Inc. Mobile in the Mutation 13 update.

The Strategy Guide

This will work on all difficulties (but this one is originated from Mega Brutal) as for the most time you will not use a disease.

1. Open Plague Inc. and go onto the Shadow Plague. This strategy works on any difficulty.

2. Genetic Modifications -

• Teracyte - Airports and Seaports are replaceable by your bat!
• Extremophile - The ultimate environment genes!

[Recommended Vampire Genes]

• Mad Scientist
• Socially Awkward Bat
• Berserker

3. Start in Greenland. Soon, you'll see why.

4. With the 19 to 27 DNA points, grasp Therianthropy and Blood Rage. This will ensure your vampire doesn't die and can farm DNA points.

5. Activate a Blood Rage on Greenland. Evolve your Blood Rage tree (in both ways, Dark Rituals work) with the DNA harvested from the 56,000 people dying.

6. Once Greenland's population has been depleted of all life, move to its neighbor, Iceland. Start a Blood Rage there.

7. Templar Defense Industries (TDI, for short) may start to notice your onslaught against humanity by now. Do not move away from Iceland until you have evolved Demonic Fury. After you've evolved Demonic Fury, pause the game and read the next step. (If you feel lucky, then go ahead and kill them all without Demonic Fury)

8. Attack the nearest TDI base. Blood Rage it. Move on to the next nearest TDI base. Repeat. And when your vampire is low on health, Blood Rage a country without a TDI near a TDI country. Be quick—Travel Speed I is advised. TDI bases get stronger by the second.

9. You should be at your final TDI base by the time you are reading this. Destroying the TDI base will take several retreats and regenerations. Keep an eye on your DNA and Vampire Health meters (evolving Dark Ritual 2 is recommended by now). Patience is key.

10. After those TDI bases are finally eradicated, save up 400 DNA points. The symptoms and transmissions, on top of the lairs, will get expensive. Blood raging will take a lot of time. Grief India until you raise the 400 DNA points. Make sure to attack Iceland and the Caribbean until everyone there dies. This will take about half an hour.

11. Now time to plan the ultimate extinction and the end of the world.. Place lairs in: Central America, Turkey, and Indonesia. Unlock all abilities (except for lair bonuses and lair healing). The lairs are to teleport quickly to destroy WHO Laboratories before they can do anything to contribute to the cure progress.

12. Once everything is set, evolve Shadow Blessing, every transmission (except for Zoonotic Shift's chain), and evolve the following symptoms: Dark Pustules, Hypersensitivity, Malignant Pigmentation, Latent Adaptation, Pallor, Weeping Sores, Hyperdontia, Jugular Bite, Shadow Slaves, Muscular Hypotrophy and Masticatory Tension.

13. Always stay in flight, too. Fly to all uninfected countries (remember to prioritize island countries) and make sure to destroy any WHO Laboratories.

14. Congratulations. You've wasted at least an hour of your life completing the 'impossible'. Good job. The game is important to not only you, but to James and to our wiki. Thank you.

Alternate murder plan (anti-cure)

Rather than farming India, you could go and destroy 20.88% of their laboratories while killing off only 0.89% of their population by destroying the following top ten countries. Anyways, this is also a list of countries to target if you are anti-cure.

1. Greenland (Lowest amount of people per laboratory—18,828)
2. Iceland
3. New Zealand
4. Norway
5. Finland
6. Botswana
7. Sweden (Last country with under 1,000,000 people per laboratory)
8. Libya
9. Australia
10. New Guinea
11. Baltic States
12. Canada
13. Central Europe
14. Zimbabwe (Last country with under 5,000,000 people per laboratory)
15. Bolivia
16. Morocco
17. Kazakhstan
18. Spain
19. Madagascar
20. Italy
21. UK
22. South Africa
23. Angola (Last country with under 7,500,000 people per laboratory)
24. Peru
25. Middle east
26. Poland
27. France
28. Central America
29. Saudi Arabia
30. Korea
31. Caribbean
32. Argentina (Last country with under 10,000,000 people per laboratory)
33. Afghanistan
34. Germany
35. Iraq
36. Ukraine
37. Balkan States
38. Japan
39. Turkey (Last country with under 15,000,000 people per laboratory)
40. Sudan
41. Central Asia
42. Algeria
43. Iran (Last country with under 20,000,000 people per laboratory)
44. Egypt
45. --- WORLD AVERAGE --- (20,954,541 people per laboratory)
46. Colombia
47. Mexico
48. Philippines
49. Russia
50. Brazil
51. USA
52. Central Africa
53. Pakistan (Last country with under 50,000,000 people per laboratory)
54. Indonesia
55. S. E. Asia (Last country with under 100,000,000 people per laboratory)
56. East Africa
57. West Africa
58. China
59. India (Highest amount of people per laboratory—242,835,836)

Records using this strategy (with Mad Scientist, Socially Awkward Bat, Teracyte, Extremophile and Berserker)

• Score: 190,030
• Days: 2,257
• Cure %: 1%
• Biohazards: 5

By DiseaseMaster7

This strategy is based off of Pravus Gamings strategy, composed for a faster Mega Brutal:

Genetic code:

• Brawler
• Budget Bat
• Mad Scientist/Witch Doctor
• Aerocyte
• Extremophile

1. Start in Greenland. Immediately evolve Night Wraith and Blood Rage.
2. Start a Blood Rage in Greenland. Evolve Therianthropy as soon as you can. You'll need it in the future.
3. Once Greenland has been cleared of human life, move to Iceland, and start a Blood Rage there. Evolve Dark Ritual 1.
4. The Templars will begin to notice you shortly after you invade Iceland, or even before you finish Greenland off. Wait until they create their Bases.
5. Once the Templar Bases have appeared on the map (indicated by a blue castle-like icon), immediately go after the Templar Base closest to you. Evolve Adrenal Surge when you can.
6. Travel from country to country, wiping out the Templar Bases. When you get to the last Base, if you haven't already, evolve up to Shadow Blades and Demonic Fury. It's a toss-up as to what countries will have Templar Bases. The bases might be close together, far apart, or on islands. Evolve Lair and set up a Lair closest to the country housing the last Templar Base. You will have to retreat multiple times to your Lair to either heal or fight off a Templar Drone. Buy Lair Healing 1 if necessary.
7. Once you kill off the last Templar Base, return to Iceland. Continue your interrupted Blood Rage until Iceland is devoid of human life.
8. Move on to the Caribbean. Start a Blood Rage there, and don't do anything until all the humans have been killed off.
9. Move to Madagascar and do the same there. When you can, place a Lair in the following countries: United States, Brazil, Central Africa, Central Europe, and China. If your first base is close to any of these countries, there's no need to plant an extra base there. Evolve Travel Speed 1 and 2. They'll come in handy later.
10. Once Madagascar's been wiped clean, despite the cost of creating all the bases, you should have over 600 DNA Points. Fly to Australia, and while your vampire is in the air, evolve all of the Transmissions, including the Zoonotic Shift transmissions. Evolve Blood Gift, Dark Cloud, Shadow Trail, and Corrupted Air. Once you have the DNA Points, evolve Heat Tolerance, Anti-biotic Tolerance, and Cold Tolerance.
11. Evolve Dark Pustles, and continue the symptom evolution until you get to Shadow Slaves. If you wish to use this strategy to unlock the Sadomasochism achievement, do not evolve this symptom.
12. At this point, the WHO Laboratories will begin popping up. Eliminate the labs as soon as they pop up. Evolve Vampiric Awakening to create more Vampires. With all the Abilities and Transmissions purchased, the world will become rapidly infected. Plus, the Shadow Slaves symptom, if evolved, has a bonus effect: Thralls will work to destroy WHO Laboratories.
13. Evolve Vampiric Awakening as many times as you wish. Also, evolve as many Symptoms as you want. It's very likely that you'll be able to unlock multiple achievements in the process.
14. Congratulations. You've defeated the world through the Shadow Plague, and have unlocked the Vampire Master achievement. -DiseaseMaster7

Original Strategy by Yo It's Spicy, Modified by Treehugger0123

Since Spicy's original guide (Found here ) repeatedly failed for me, I modified it somewhat until I found something that works. It's not the fastest strategy in the world, but it has higher odds of succeeding with 5 biohazards on Mega Brutal.

Starting Genetics

• Berserker—More people killed with Blood Rage.
• Socially Awkward Bat—Blood Rage started as soon as you enter a new country. These two will make things much faster.
• Suppression—More useful than Aquacyte because part of this strategy involves wiping out most of the islands anyway.
• Xerophile—You'll want the plague to spread fastest in whatever countries are top research contributors, and since that's randomized, a little in everything is better than all in one and nothing in everything else.
• Witch Doctor—More healing from lairs. This combined with the former two and max Dark Ritual (more on that later) will allow you to heal very quickly in laired countries.

Stage 1: The Beginning

This part is more or less the same as Spicy's.

1. Start in East Africa.
2. Evolve Blood Rage and Dark Ritual.
3. Start Blood Rage and wait for the "Vampire feeding attracts attention in East Africa" popup.
4. Evolve Therianthropy and fly to Zimbabwe.
5. Evolve Night Wraith and Adrenal Surge.
6. Continue evolving abilities until you get the "Blood Cult leader tracked in Zimbabwe" popup.
7. Fly to Botswana.
8. Evolve Lair
9. Continue evolving abilities until you get the "Templar Industries reveals global vampire threat" popup. *NOTE* Sometimes this will take long enough that you'll wipe out Botswana in the process. If this happens, fly to Central Africa before your vampire starves.
10. Fly to Central Africa if you haven't already and wait for the "Templar Industries activate military protocols" popup. This is when their military bases will appear scattered around the world.

Stage 2: Vampire vs. Templar

Here's where you need to start taking out these bases. Keep an eye out for any in or near these countries:

• Central Africa
• SE Asia
• Central Europe
• Mexico

We're gonna want to set up lairs in these countries later on, as doing so will put every country in the world within travel distance (assuming maxed flight) of a lair. So if any Templar bases spawned in or near these countries, save them for last because the lair will be useful to get to and from them quickly with Shadow Portal.

1. Once you've narrowed down which one you'll save for last, pick another one and fly to it. Blood Rage should destroy it in seconds.
2. If your Vampire is still at at least 3/4 health, fly to and destroy another base. If not, fly to one of those four countries, make a base there, and wait to heal. Then attack another base.
3. Before going any further, evolve at least Shadow Blades, Demonic Fury, Shadow Portal, and Lair Healing I. Preferably, you should evolve Lair Healing II, Dark Ritual II, and Dark Infiltration before attacking a third base.
4. Once you've taken down a third base, do not attack any others until you've evolved every ability in the Abilities section and set up bases in all four of the above mentioned countries. It's also recommended that you save in case your Vampire dies.
5. Taking on bases from this point forward will have to be done in a "hit-and-run" style—your vampire will now take damage faster than the bases will, so you'll have to teleport back to a base every so often to heal. Once your health gets to around 1/4, that's your cue to fly back. It is not recommended that you have the game sped up for this part, as doing so will make it harder to have your Vampire retreat before it dies.
6. Make sure you keep an eye out for drones, too. Fortunately, Socially Awkward Bat and Shadow Portal makes dealing with them insanely easy, as you can teleport to wherever they are and destroy them as soon as they enter.
7. The last base will require some patience, as it will require a lot of back-and-forth between your target and the healing lair—sometimes up to 10 tries. If you have a lair in the country, you can safely teleport to any other lair and heal there, since Shadow Portal will allow you to teleport back instantly. If the closest lair isn't in the country but instead in a neighboring country, fly to that lair whenever you need to heal. With max Lair Healing and Dark Ritual, as well as the selected genes, you should just barely heal faster than the base. You can further decrease the needed time by using the active ability hotkey (which should be X) instead of clicking.

Stage 3: Preparation for the Plague

Once you've taken out all of the Templar bases, the next step is just eliminating the problem island countries that are a pain to spread to. In no particular order, fly to and eliminate these countries:

• Greenland
• Iceland
• Caribbean
• Madagascar
• Philippines
• New Zealand
• New Guinea

You don't need to worry about the vigilante popups or any emergency measures the countries are taking; the healing from Dark Ritual should be sufficient to heal faster than you take damage. Keep in mind that your Vampire will start to starve once a country is eliminated.

Once this is done, you should have at least 600 DNA points. If you don't, fly to Japan (of the remaining island countries, it is the most populated and has the most research facilities) and feed there until you do. Now to put them to use. It might be a good idea to save again before evolving Shadow Blessing

Stage 4: Unleash the Plague

Once you've evolved Shadow Blessing, go to the Abilities page and purchase every ability that just unlocked, then go to the Transmissions page and evolve every transmission except Zoonotic Shift and anything linked to it—they increase the cure speed which isn't good. Then, go to the Symptoms and, in no particular order(you should have enough for all of these), evolve the following:

• Dark Pustules
• Hypersensitivity
• Malignant Pigmentation
• Latent Adaptation
• Nocturnal
• Anaemia
• Pallor
• Weeping Sores
• Photophobia
• Hyperdontia
• Jugular Bite
• Shadow Slaves
• Muscular Hypotrophy
• Masticatory Tension
• Vampiric Awakening

If you have any leftover DNA, feel free to spend it on other infectivity-increasing symptoms.

Once this is done, things start to happen very fast.

1. Once you get a red biohazard bubble from Japan, fly to the remaining island countries—Australia and Indonesia—and infect them.
2. Keep checking the World Map (E key) for what countries are the top research contributors. Fly to them using your Shadow Portals to make most of the journey and stay there until the country is at least half infected, then check the World Map for the new highest contributor and repeat the process.
3. If any research labs pop up, immediately fly to them and destroy them.
4. If a new Vampire spawns, go to the Disease menu and re-evolve Vampiric Awakening. Don't worry about letting the new Vampire heal up first—it'll heal from Dark Ritual and Socially Awkward Bat anyway, so you can just put it to work straight away.

Eventually, every country will be overwhelmed and you'll have won.

Strategy 4 (originally created by a Wikia Contributor)

Meant to be used for Mega-Brutal.

Genetic Code

• Shadow Genes: Frugal Researcher (optional)
• Travel Genes: Aquacyte (optional)
• Blood Genes: Brawler (required)
• Flight Genes: Budget Bat (required)
• Environment Genes: Extremophile (optional)

Starting Countries per Continent

• North America: USA or Canada
• South America: Brazil or Bolivia
• Oceania: Indonesia, New Guinea, New Zealand or Australia
• Asia: China, Kazakhstan or Central Asia
• Africa: Central Africa or East Africa
• Europe: Central Europe, Balkan States or Poland

Strategy

1. Start by evolving Lair, Night Wraith, Therianthropy and Blood Rage in that order.
2. Place your first three lairs as soon as possible in any of the countries suggested above (maximum one per continent).
3. Use all surplus DNA on evolving Adrenal Surge, Dark Infiltration, Shadow Blades & Demonic Fury.
4. The Templar will most likely set up their HQs before you manage to evolve Shadow Blades.
5. Once the Templar are active, evolve Dark Ritual 1 & Lair Healing 1.
6. Take a note on how many HQs are activated. If they are more than 7, restart the game. You need 6 or 7 for this to work.
7. Destroy the three or four (out of six or seven respectively) HQs that are the furthest away from any particular lair. You need to have one lair that is at least close enough to the last three remaining HQs. If they lairs spawn in an inconvenient spot, restart.
8. Once you have only three HQs left, start doing hit 'n' run attack on all three without destroying any of them.
9. Make sure you evolve Shadow Portal so that you can annihilate any drone attacks. All of your lairs must survive.
10. Keep all three HQs in a close-to-death status. Once all three are below 20%, attack and destroy the furthest one away.
11. Keep evolving the Blood Rage tree as soon as you can afford it.
12. Continue performing hit 'n' run attacks on the remaining two lairs. Keeping them at low HP means that the airplanes arriving at them will not make their strength unbearable to deal with.
13. Once both HQs are below 20%, destroy one of them.
14. Finally, heal up and destroy the last one.
15. Congrats! The HARD part is over. Let's move on to the BORING part.
16. Maximize your Lairs and put one in each continent. You need to have a maximum of 6 in order to finish the game smoothly.
17. Once your hubs are all set up, place your vampire in any of your six Lair countries, enable Blood Rage and start harvesting DNA.
18. If the "Hunter Drones Released" or the "Special Forces Hunt Vampire" messages are listed in the country's profile, get the heck out! Your vampire might be randomly killed.
19. Keep harvesting DNA and jumping from Lair to Lair until you have evolved every single Ability and you have stockpiled 700+ DNA on top of that.
20. Once you have 700+ (half an hour of patience and boredom later), evolve the Shadow Blessing Symptom and evolve Vampiric Awakening so that you can send multiple vampires to any annoying islands.
21. Evolve the new Abilities that were previously hidden and evolve every single Transmission at least once.
22. Evolve all Symptoms up to, and including, Shadow Slaves.
23. Use all freshly generated DNA to add additional symptoms. With some luck, you will have enough DNA in the end to not only win this but also unlock all the Shadow Plagues related combo achievements.
24. Use your vampire soldiers to spread the plague to any island country that is evasive.
25. The world should be infected relatively fast, and the cure will most likely never manage to progress beyond 35%.
26. Congrats! You've done it!

Strategy by Anonymous for Casual and Normal (not sure about others)

The genes I used were Aerocyte and Extremophile. I did not use any unique genes.

1 - Start in Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Notice how people are dying, but no one is infected. It may seem tempting, but DO NOT evolve the "Shadow Blessing" yet. This starts the plague. This will have both the Templar and the WHO on your trail.

2 - Go to the Vampires tab (replaces Abilities) in your disease interface. Immediately evolve Blood Rage (you'll need it soon) and Therianthropy (you'll need it now). Upgrade Blood Rage as much as possible on both sides. Therianthropy can be upgraded as you go along (Shadow Portals are not used, however. Just upgrade the travel speed ones). If you think it may help, you can also evolve Lair Building, but I did not use any lairs.

3 - Perform a Blood Rage on your starting country. Wait until about 5,000 to 15,000 people die. Then, use Therianthropy and fly your vampire east. The countries you land in do not matter. Perform a blood rage on them as soon as you arrive.

4 - At this point, people will notice the killings, and associate them with the Blood Cult. Continue flying around, as this increases the time before the Templar discover you.

5 - When the Templar set up base, 4 to 7 countries will be outlined in blue. They will have a fortress icon on them, and a sound effect will play. When this happens, it would have been best to evolve Demonic Fury and and at least Lair Healing 1, though 2 is preferable. If it is not evolved yet, do so ASAP, as the Templar grow stronger daily. If a popup claiming that a base is prepared for anything shows up, you're doomed. Restart.

6 - It is preferable to have at least Travel Speed 1 by now. Fly to the countries fortified by the Templar and perform Blood Rage on them. The last base is the most experienced due to survivors escaping to them, so you may have to retreat. If so, Blood Rage your retreat nation to regain HP. Please note that you may have to do this multiple times in order to destroy the final base.

7 - (optional) Once the Templar have been demolished, if you wish, you may fly to low-population countries and consume their population via Blood Rage. If you do so, however, it would be preferable to stick to Greenland and Iceland.

8 - It's finally time to unleash the plague. Go to the Symptoms tab and evolve Shadow Blessing. At this point, you should have overflowing DNA points from your Blood Rages. Use these to evolve a Vampiric Awakening and the following symptoms; Nocturnal, Anaemia, Pallor, Weeping Sores, Hyperdontia, Jugular Bite, and Shadow Slaves. The remainder should be spent in the Vampires tab on the Blood Gift tree, all the way to Corrupted Air. If you want, you may spend the few remainder on transmissions, if you are still paranoid about your disease's spread.

9 - Your disease will immediately get spotted, and WHO labs will start popping up. Fly your vampire over to these countries and Blood Rage them. This becomes easier once your second vampire is created. Heal them via Blood rage, and then begin flying the two around the map to the nearest labs and destroy them. There are labs being created even after the initial, so be careful.

10 - Your cure's speed will be hit hard after you collapse the WHO initiative. However, countries will still try to work on the cure. If you are having trouble, evolve the lower branch of symptoms (they postpone the cure) and Blood Rage those countries. At this point, every Blood Rage almost completely infects the country. Continue this until everybody is either dead, infected, or a vampire.

Gallery

Tips

• If you wish to avoid having to evolve Night Wraith and save your DNA Points for other Abilities, a useful country to start in is Peru. The country has a small population (2 million), and is a Poor Country, which makes it especially useful in Who Cares. Bolivia is also an excellent country for starting in Who Cares due to it being the poorest country in the world (only 2 Cure bottles).
• Using Blood Rage to wipe out countries with high Cure ability, such as Iceland or Sweden, will allow you to attack the world with greater impunity and less worry about the Cure Effort decimating your vampire(s).
• Island Countries, even the ones with little ability to contribute to the Cure Effort, can be a thorn in your side. It is advised that the Island Countries are to be devoured as soon as the Templar are exterminated.
  • Wiping out Indonesia is optional, as the country doesn't contribute too much to the Cure Effort, and it shares a land border with S.E. Asia.
• When starting in Greenland, move to Iceland as quick as possible before Templar set up bases, or else Iceland will be one of them.

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