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Plague Inc. Parasite - Infection Guide
Butcher79
Parasite is a unique type of pathogen as it starts with much higher severity stats and cannot gain passive DNA points. A higher severity helps it spread faster and slows down the cure, but can also result in it being caught by the government faster, so managing this is key. In this guide, we will help you beat Parasite on Normal difficulty by providing you with some tips and tricks, as well as a general strategy that you can follow.
HOW DOES PARASITE WORK?
«Symbiosis» — the ability of the pathogen «Parasite», due to which the parasite reduces its visibility.
The parasite cannot passively gain DNA points by spreading the infection. It also has a unique symbiosis ability that reduces its severity while increasing infectivity.
Unlike other types of pathogens, you will get most of your DNA points from the appearance of orange bubbles. This is both because you don't take passive information and because you get more points by bursting the orange parasite vials.
PROBLEMS
The Parasite's unique challenges are to allow it to spread without being seen and to control your initially small number of DNA points. It differs from other types in that the beginning of the game is often more difficult than the end.
Also, while not really a problem, it is one of the slowest types of plague. It can take a while to infect the whole world and you won't have a whole bunch of DNA points to play with until the end, meaning that patience is pretty much a requirement.
PARASITE STRATEGY
So, you want to win with a Parasite on a normal level, but struggle with its unique stats? Well, we can get you with that. While playing, we found that it is much slower than other types, and this largely depends on its initial severity, which you should reduce initially. This means that your infectivity stays lower than usual until you reach it.
Here is our strategy:
- ♦Start in a central country - preferably cold, but it doesn't matter much
- ♦Get symbiosis 1 and 2
- ♦Get Air 1 and 2 and Water 1 and 2
- ♦Get Extreme Bioaerosol
- ♦Get Cold Resistance 1 and 2 and Medicine Resistance 1 and 2
- ♦Wait until the whole world is infected - this may take some time, so you will have to be patient.
- ♦ Pop all bubbles and transfer all mutations at once
- ♦When the world is 100% infected, transfer everything except drug resistance 1
- ♦ Get total organ failure by following the symptom tree towards the middle. We prefer to go the route of Insomnia as it has the biggest impact on productivity by slowing down healing.
- Watch the world crumble. Spend your remaining DNA points on all levels of Gene Hardening and Gene Rearrangement to slow down healing.
This is the safest and most reliable way to win with the Parasite on normal difficulty, but it's not the only method. If you are looking for something faster, see below.
PARASITE STRATEGY: THE FASTEST
If you are not interested in the safe path, we have a faster alternative strategy. It's not as reliable and there's a chance of error, but we've managed to get past this strategy relatively easily.
Here is the strategy:
- ♦Start in a cold country like Finland
- ♦Get Air 1 and 2 and Water 1 and 2
- ♦Get Extreme Bioaerosol
- ♦Get Heat Resistance 1 and 2 and Medicine Resistance 1 and 2
- ♦Get bird 1 and 2
- ♦Get Cold Resistance 1
- Getting Symbiosis 1, 2, and 3 is expensive, but will help it spread faster and go unnoticed
- ♦Wait until the whole world is infected and pop all the bubbles. The world is likely to discover the disease before it is fully infected
- ♦ Pass it all
- ♦Get total organ failure by following any of the symptom traits in the middle
- ♦When the world dies, spend extra points on hemorrhagic shock, necrosis, dysentery, internal bleeding, and systemic infection in order of priority.
GENERAL TIPS
If you'd rather develop your own strategy than follow one, or just need more information about what we've posted above, this section is for you. We're going to throw away a few tips we picked up while strategizing for this type of plague.
- ♦The spread of infection is difficult and expensive. Starting in a hot, poor country, it will spread the fastest, but it will be difficult for you to infiltrate Greenland later in the game.
- ♦ Symbiosis 1 and 2 can help you stay undetected while giving you a small bonus to infection spread rate. From our experience, however, this is mostly an unnecessary trait in the norm. You can easily wipe out humanity before they find a cure without it, but you'll have to manage your strategy on the fly.
- ♦Communicate any symptoms as soon as they appear if you are using symbiosis. Level 1 symptoms won't have much of an impact on your game, and many of them can help spread infections faster, but it increases the chance of you being discovered, which defeats your purpose of getting Symbiosis.
- ♦ If you are starting in a hot country, prioritize cold hardiness and vice versa. This can seriously hinder your ability to spread the disease. We also recommend starting in a poorer country while you are focusing on transmissions as they will spread faster. This way you will get points faster to get drug resistance 1 and 2 so you can sneak into rich countries.
- ♦Once the infection starts to spread, you can accumulate some serious DNA points by popping bubbles. Keep this in mind: the type of parasite is not the type of pathogen that you'll be happy with when blistering. They are your blood for DNA points.
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