INTRO: I'm making a speedrunning guide as some people might be having trouble running the game mainly by watching other runs. I picked the game up awhile back and even I had trouble in the beginning before slowly optimizing runs to eventually hold almost 40 records. I'm hoping the guide helps and encourages others to run the game so its not only me running it and maybe even give past runners some advice. This guide is mainly for the Standard plagues tho, ill make guides on Necroa, Neurax, Simian and Shadow viruses when I get to properly learning how to run them.
STARTING: Starting to learn the runs its best to start on casual and try your best to get at least close to the record in the category you want to run. Best to start off in the IL categories instead of any% as those are well optimized and might be hard to get close to if you're just starting. My recommendation is either bacteria or Nano Virus as those are generally easy to run anyway.
Starting any run you want to do the only glitch the game requires you to do in the run by making the game play while you're in the symptoms screen. To do this you just need to select your starting location (everyone starts Saudi Arabia as it’s the easiest to infect the world from) then after as the text box to tell you about your disease pops up spam your 3 key and as soon as the red bubble for your first infected country pops up hit q to bring up the plague menu then 3 again to bring up symptoms
GENES: The genes needed to get WR has been optimized rather well generally you'll run this setup:
Metabolic Hijack Darwinist Teracyte Extremophile Symptostasis
The exception being fungus where you'll run pathostasis instead to make full use of the fungus ability at the beginning.
DOING RUNS: Runs will generally start off with you taking rash straight down into skin lesions as its a really big jump in infectivity. Next take Aneamia and Haemphilla as that can cause a combo with skin lesions to boost infectivity more. Next take coughing and sneezing, then nausea straight into diarrhoea for the chance at even more combos.
You generally don’t really need transmissions other than Water 1 and 2. Birds and Air 1 and 2 to Bio Aerosol can help if you're still learning to run the game but most of my WRs don’t use them.
At some point you're gonna need to get Cold 1 and 2 and at least Drug 1. Taking Drug 2 and going Hot 1 to Environmental Protection helps after you’ve infected the world and are starting to kill everyone off and will help you do so faster. The other abilities are not needed with the exception of mega brutal as genetic reshuffle will save you from being cured and you might need it for WR.
NOTES: Cold 1 and 2 and Drug 1 help you infect Finland, Norway and Sweden a lot easier to get into Iceland and Greenland a lot easier, Drug 2 helps a lot too but is very costly and may cause a time loss.
Its best to check what islands you have infected throughout the run especially after you get necrosis or dysentery as that’s generally when countries will start shutting down ports. If an Islands Port gets shut down the run is over. Spontaneous infection can occur but the chances of it getting you a good run are very slim especially so late in the run.
The bottom left side of symptoms tab is completely irrelevant in speedrunning. They offer no infectivity and you'll kill the word faster then they can cure you if you're doing it properly so getting them is generally a time loss. Only time you will is if you're running Nano Virus as they are free and you don’t want to evolve them as it’s a waste of a free symptom that’s already free to begin with.
The order in how you buy perks will generally be the same with the exception of Prion and Fungus. Prion is very slow so you want lethality right of the bat and Fungus runs PathoStasis so You're generally not gonna buy too many symptoms till its time to kill the world off. Id recommend not attempting to run Fungus or Prion until you get the hang of it.
If there are anymore questions hop into the Plague Discord or leave it as a comment on one of my videos
