Jayne Staymates' Guide To Virology : Being A Good Virologist

[Alipheese]

NOTE: THIS IS SUBJECT TO UPDATES AS THE CODE TO VIROLOGY IS CHANGED AND I FIND BETTER WAYS TO DO THINGS AND UPDATES.

First off this is based on my extensive experience playing as a virologist, and what I have found to be the fastest, easiest, most efficent way to be a GOOD virologist.

The Job:

Spoiler:

First off, lets go over the job.
The virologist is to create custom viruses to help the crew in whatever way they can.
Virus' can have many different effects and combinations of effects.
You use the pandemic machine to create these viruses.
Using provided bottles of chemicals you use them to mutate the viruses in order to have the effects you want.

Virus Stats:

Spoiler:

Viruses have 4 important stats to keep in mind when making a virus.
Stealth, Transmission, Stage Speed, and Resistance.

Stealth is the stat that determines what can detect the virus. The lower the stealth stat the easier it is to detect the virus.
Stealth is only important when it is at 1-4. As 1 and below is detectable by everything, 2-3 the virus is hidden from medhuds and health scanners.
At 4 and above the virus is hidden from even the pandemic machine you use to create it. Thus you wont know if you have a virus in the sample in the machine.

(Note: This doesn't seem to be the thing anymore or something is seriously messed up codewise.)
Transmission is the stat that determines what mode of transmission and how fast it transmits to others. The lower the stat the worse mode of transmission and worse transmission rate.
Transmission similar to stealth only really matters from 1-5. 1 requires it to be spread from blood, from consumption or injections.
2-4 the virus will spread from just a bump or passing contact with someone in the hall. 5 and above will spread passively from being airborne.

Stage Speed is the stat that determines the chance per tick for the virus to advance a stage.
The higher the number the faster the virus will advance and will do whatever it was made for, faster.

Resistance is the stat that determines the cure of the virus. The higher the resistance the more rare of a material you will need to cure the virus.
1 - Table Salt, easily obtained from the bar or kitchen. If those are gone chemistry will take awhile to make some.
2 - Sugar, extremely easy to obtain, more so than salt.
3 - Orange juice, extremely easy to obtain from the bar or botany.
4 - Spaceacilin, easily obtained from medbay.
5 - Saline-Glucose, a drug thats only available from medbay and in short supply.
6 - Ethanol, easily obtained from chemistry.
7 - Leporazine, an annoying drug to create from chemistry.
8 - Synaptize, a drug that chemistry must make as the only amount of it is in the virology lab.
9 - Lipolicide, an annoying drug that takes a decent amount of time for chemistry to make.
10 - Silver, lets hope the miners are idiots.
11+ - Gold, lets hope the miners are idiots.

Symptoms:

Spoiler:

Symptoms are the things that give your virus its effects, without them, your virus is nothing but blood.
Symptoms are capped at 8 symptoms per virus and set up into different Symptom pools as I like to call them, sets of symptoms you may get from a certain chemical.
There are 8 symptom pools, 1-8. The number is relatively meaningless as 1-6 are all spread into even uses.
Only 7-8 are the advanced symptoms, doing what the others can but better and more effect.

Due to the number of symptoms I will not speak of each individually.

There are the basic symptom pool of ones like itch, headache, fever, shivering, etc.
They dont do anything well besides being symptoms to use to buff stats.

Then there are the changing symptoms, alopecia, vitiligo, voice change, etc.
These are mostly to just mess with apperance and other various small things.

We come to the harmful symptoms, necrotizing facsiitis, ARDS, etc.
They are the symptoms for traitors or the virologist who wants to be a dick.

Finally the healing symptoms, regeneration, toxin filter, self-respiration, etc.
These are the symptoms that will heal your damage, which brings us to the next section.

Healing Viruses:

Spoiler:

Most of the time (when your not a traitor) you will want to make a virus that will heal people.
There are many symptoms that provide benefits to those that have the virus.
For the matter of healing, theres a large array of damage types to heal.
Below is a table of the different damage types you will need to know about to create a well made healing virus.
The symptoms that heal these damage types are as follows below them.

The main 4 types: Brute, Burn, Suffocation, Toxin.
Regeneration, Tissue Regrowth, Self-Respiration, Toxic Filter
Flesh Mending, Heat Resistance, Apoptoxin Filter(1)

The secondary types, or bodily damage types, Blood, Brain, Hearing, Sight.
Weight Even, DNA Restoration, Sensory Restoration, Ocular Restoration.

Then the teriary types, Cellular/Clone/Genetic, Radiation.
Flesh Mending, DNA Restoration.

1 - Advanced Symptoms that heal even better.
Knowing what damage you need to deal with you can determine what symptoms you want in your virus.

(Now those symptoms are the only ones that heal but with just healing symptoms your virus wont be powerful.
-XDTM whom coded virology says that healing speed has nothing to do with stage speed, which it says it does
but irregardless I disagree and may be completely wrong on this and should not be quoted for this one thing.)
Symptoms like Fever, Shivering, Itch may increase the stage speed and by that, should increase stage speed.
So with the trade off of these buffing symptoms it is not the worthwhile of the annoying messages.
It'd be better to use the few good buffing symptoms: Eternal Youth, Viral Evolutionary Acceleration.
As personally I mainly, untill the idea to make this guide have made healing viruses.
I will have a section to harmful symptoms and plague samples at a later date added to this guide soon.

Guide To Making The Virus:

Spoiler:

This part is based on, and how I make my viruses. Pictures will be added soon.

First start off with grabbing your dropper and setting it to 1u. You only need 1 unit of a chemical to mutate the virus.
Dump the box of beakers onto the floor within reach when youre against the pandemic machine.
Dispense the rhinovirus out of the machine and put it in the pandemic machine and make a culture bottle.
That culture bottle is now the backup and we will put it on the table next to the pandemic machine in the far corner.
Now eject the bottle, that bottle is now the test bottle.
Gather the chemicals you need from the machine or elsewhere and lay them out on the table and grab some beakers.
Now mix up the chemicals you need for your virus using 10u increments. So for plasma virus, 10u plasma in a beaker and 10u virus food.
Take the dropper and get 1u of your mix you made and put it in the test bottle.
Put the test bottle in the pandemic machine, and see do you have the symptom you want.
If you do, make a new culture bottle and place it below the other one, so you have a desending column.
If not, empty and eject the test bottle, use the dropper and get 1u of your backup bottle and put it in the test bottle and then 1u from your mix and put that in the test bottle.
Repeat this process till you have your virus done.
Once your virus is done name it.
Next make a culture, put it in the freezer or locker in your lab and lock it.
Then make another culture bottle and then grab a syringe from the box in your lab.
Draw once from the finished virus and use the syringe to switch to injection and inject yourself if its a healing virus.
As the creator you always get the first injection, always.
If its a plague, put it in your pack for use later.

That is the process I go through when making my viruses. It is fast, effcient, and simple.
Note that I do not seperate each symptom as I know what virus I want and I make it fully in one go.
Unless if the round is going to last a long time, it is not worth time or effort to seperate each symptom.

Healing Virus Samples:

Spoiler:

Here are a few of the healing viruses I make myself so you may use them too.

Full Heal Virus:
Round-Start version; Heals all damage types besides clone damage.
-Sucrose-agar: Unstable Mutagen + Virus food + Sugar/Saline-Glucose.
Ocular Restoration,
Weight Even.
-Plasma Virus: Plasma + Virus Food
Regeneration, (Replace with Flesh Mending to heal clone damage.)
Self-Respiration,
Tissue Regrowth,
Toxin Filter.
-Weakened Plasma Virus: Plasma Virus + Synaptizine
DNA Restoration,
Sensory Restoration.
Will heal every simple damage type besides clone damage at round-start till you get materials from miners to get Flesh Mending.


V1 Healing Virus:
-Mutagenic-agar: Unstable Mutagen + Virus Food
Viral Evolutionary Acceleration,
Viral Self-Adaptation.
-Sucrose-agar: Mutagenic-agar + Sugar/Saline-Glucose
Weight Even.
-Plasma Virus: Plasma + Virus Food
Regeneration,
Self-Respiration,
Tissue-Regrowth,
Toxin Filter.
-Weakened Plasma Virus: Plasma Virus + Synaptizine
Eternal youth.
This fast, quick, round-start healing virus will allow you to heal your wounds in a strong, fast round-start virus.

Plague Samples:

Spoiler:

(To be written.)

[Swindly]

10 - Silver, lets hope the miners are idiots.

Chemistry can also produce silver.

[Steelpoint]

Here's my personal guide of how to make the best healing virus within 15 to 20 minutes, based on RNG and mining.

Round start, quickly run out of viro, grab a bottle of Saline-Glucose Solution from a vending machine (Use this as a Sugar substitute for Viro Recipes) then hide back in Virology.

Your ultimate aim is to get the following symptoms: Apoptoxin Filter, Flesh Mending, Heat Resistance, Self-Respiration, Sensory Restoration, Deoxyribonucleic Acid Restoration, Weight Even and either Sneezing or Ocular Restoration (depending on if you want extra healing or if you want your virus to spread naturally)

Get a Rhinovirus Bottle and make two culture bottles, toss one into your vendor in case you fuck up.

Get a bottle of synaptazine and toss it in your pocket, use a dropper on 1 unit transfer on a culture bottle to get rid of one random symptom.

-----
Time to get the Level 6 Symptoms


Get a Plasma Bottle from your vending machine and leave it within reach.

Grab a syringe, get five units of liquid plasma and five units of Virus Food (from the wall), this makes 'Virus Plasma' which gives you Level 6 Symptoms only.

Using a dropper set to 1 unit transfer, add a unit to a Rhinovirus Culture Bottle, then check what new symptom you got.

You are aiming to get: Self-Respiration (to breath in no air environments)
If you get : Regeneration, Tissue Regrowth or Toxic Filter, save a copy for later just in case, don't bother trying to isolate the symptom

-----

Time to get the Level 5 Symptoms

With a syringe, get 5 units of plasma and 5 units of virus food. Then add 5 units of synaptazine. This makes 'Weakened Virus Plasma' which gives you Level 5 Symptoms only. Use any remaining Virus Plasma from earlier.

You are aiming to get: Sensory restoration (fix hearing loss, make you immune to smashing bar bottle on your head, etc) and Deoxyribonucleic Acid Restoration (Heal brain damage, heal radioation, get rid of non-power SE mutations)

-----

Time to get the Level 4 Symptom

With a syringe, get 5 units of Unstable Mutagen and 5 units of Virus food. Then add 5 units of Saline-Glucose Solution. This makes 'Sucrose Agar' which gives you Leve 4 Symptoms only.

You are aiming to get: Weight Even (To never have to eat again)
Optional you want to get: Ocular Restoration (Get this if you don't intend to add 'sneezing' to your virus, this heals eye damage)

-----

Time to get finally get the LEVEL 8 SYMPTOMS!

Level 8 symptoms are funny enough the easiest symptoms to get, the only difficulty is getting the resources.

Get six 50 unit beakers from Virology. Get exactly 8 sheets of Uranium from Mining. Go to Chemistry and ask them to fill three of the beakers with uranium (for 150 Uranium) and the other three with silver (for 150 Silver), bonus points for getting 20 units of extra liquid plasma.

Go to virology and grab your 100 unit beaker from the back room grinder. With a syringe, fill the 100 Unit beaker with 5 units of plasma. Then start adding 15 units of Silver, then Uranium, to the beaker. This will produce 15 units of Stable Uranium Gel, which is how you'll get your symptoms.

Take your beaker. SET THE FUCKING BEAKER TO 5 UNIT TRANSFER!!!, then grab one of your health viruses, then pour in 5 units at a time into the same culture bottle.

If you followed my steps, you'll get the following: Heat Resistance (rapidly heals burn damage and makes you space proof), Flesh Mending (rapidly heals brute damage) and Apoptoxin Filter (rapidly heals toxin damage).

-----

Grab all your health viruses, make backup copies of each, and start adding them to a empty beaker. Once you've got six viruses in one beaker, take that and save a culture bottle of it.

Now add a seventh virus to that breaker, if it sticks and does not delete any other virus (33% chance) then save a culture bottle as a backup. Now add the final eighth virus to that beaker, if it sticks and does not delete anything else as well (66% chance) then CONGRATULATIONS, WINNER ARE YOU!

You have created the most powerful healing virus in the game, now go give it to the crew or hoard it for yourself.

[TribeOfBeavers]

I prefer to use 1u of the base virus, then do 5 x 1u drops of virus plasma (or whatever) into it, rather than checking and reseting after each individual symptom. It speeds up searching for specific symptoms, especially in the levels that only have a few. You can't have duplicate symptoms in a single virus, so the odds of finding what you're looking for increase per drop you add. Once you get something you want, just use synaptizine to get rid of the unwanted symptoms until you're left with the one (or more) you wanted from that batch.

[XDTM]

I stand by what i said for nonscaling healing symptoms.

I'll post a guide later on how to get full healing suite in 5-10 minutes; it's become far easier with more max symptoms and a nicer stealth threshold for the pandemic.

[Nabski]

I prefer to use 1u of the base virus, then do 5 x 1u drops of virus plasma (or whatever) into it, rather than checking and reseting after each individual symptom. It speeds up searching for specific symptoms, especially in the levels that only have a few. You can't have duplicate symptoms in a single virus, so the odds of finding what you're looking for increase per drop you add. Once you get something you want, just use synaptizine to get rid of the unwanted symptoms until you're left with the one (or more) you wanted from that batch.

I understand why you would do this, but fuck I hate synaptizine. My issue with what you're doing is you have to fight RNG once for the symptoms (if you don't add them all), then again to remove them.

My personal preference is

Leave the beakers in the box.

Fill 5x1 with the base sample.
Add 1 to each of the 5.
Check if they have something good, eject/empty otherwise.

You get some duplicates, but I personally find the doing it in patches and switching between mixing and checking less makes it faster.

Plague Samples

Spoiler:

Fuck you I'm not sharing my shit. But really you want at most one or two harmful symptoms, enough stage speed from accel/youth/lvl virus's to act,
and a cure that isn't salt. Or make something with super high stealth and at least one unclear symptom so they can't math out the cure.

I personally like making two plagues at once, with similar symptoms but different cures. Once the cure for the first one is found start spreading the second. Best way to do this is mess with the virus food ones.

[TribeOfBeavers]

I understand why you would do this, but fuck I hate synaptizine. My issue with what you're doing is you have to fight RNG once for the symptoms (if you don't add them all), then again to remove them.

That's fair. I've always had terrible luck with the last symptom never showing up when I do them individually, so I prefer this way. The rng isn't that bad with the synaptizine, it usually ends up being a 1/3 chance or so to hit the one you want by the end as you'll generally have multiple beneficial symptoms. I rarely use more than 20u total when making a basic healing virus.

[Nabski]

I understand why you would do this, but fuck I hate synaptizine. My issue with what you're doing is you have to fight RNG once for the symptoms (if you don't add them all), then again to remove them.

That's fair. I've always had terrible luck with the last symptom never showing up when I do them individually, so I prefer this way. The rng isn't that bad with the synaptizine, it usually ends up being a 1/3 chance or so to hit the one you want by the end as you'll generally have multiple beneficial symptoms. I rarely use more than 20u total when making a basic healing virus.

I typically use about 15 units of virus plasma to make the default heals each type (I typically just make sneezing, brute, burn, toxin, oxygen). Sometimes I'll get lucky and get it in the first round or two of my 5 sized batches.

The fact that you have a base virus that you can't roll those symptoms on again is really what makes it happen in a timely manner.

Looking at 3 sets of virus in a row where it removed sneezing instead of necro is just frustrating to me and I swear it feels like synap is rigged against you.

[DemonFiren]

It's BYOND RNG.

[XDTM]

BYOND RNG is really noticeable when spamming a single level, you'll almost always have one or two symptoms that just don't appear even if you drop 30u straight while another one or two keep appearing.