Infections

There are many diseases that can affect you in space! The following will come in handy for virologists, traitors, or any unfortunate soul who's come down with a case of brain rot.

Virology 101

Virology is sealed from the rest of the station. You are not on the disposals network, nor do you share the same atmos system

The first, and most important way to prevent 99% of infections, is proper hazard wear, and knowing how to keep the infection from spreading.

The Clothes

Whenever you come in contact with the virus the game will roll a dice to determine where you will get "attacked".

Your body and head are the most likely targets, next hands and then at last feet.

The following will protect you, from the dangerous infections of space, each giving more and more (till total) protection against infection:

• Level-3 Bio Hood
• Level-3 Bio Suit
• Jumpsuit (virologist, CMO, geneticist, chemist, doctor, nurse suit, scrubs, Research Director)
• Latex Gloves
• Sterile mask
• Shoes (White shoes and Galoshes are the best)
• Private (clean) Internals

If the virus is airborne then you need to wear internals or you will very likely get infected. If you are already infected wearing a sterile mask will prevent you from infecting other with your coughing and sniffing.

Isolation

If you or another crew member is infected, do not spread the infection further. Seek the isolation bay of the medical wing, or head to a room no one will enter but yourself and other infected.

Sterilization

Cleaning blood spills from the ground will prevent contact contamination, make sure blood is cleaned from the floor at all time. Any blood splatter out there could hold a dreaded space infection. Contact a janitor if you see blood on the floor, do not interact with the blood if you suspect possible infection chance. Any object or floor that has infected blood on it can infect anyone who handles or touches it.

Sanitization

Rotting things such as gibs or corpses can cause nasty diseases if you touch them. These can override your own viruses if their Transmission is higher than your virus' Resistance. Wearing mask/gloves while interacting with corpses may help prevent infection.

Methods of Infection

The following are the various ways a disease can spread, keep this in mind at all times:

• Airborne - The most dangerous and quick spreading, if you are anywhere within the breathing area of the infected crew member, you have a chance to be infected unless you use internals.
• Touch - Requires you to touch, have been touched, or be extremely close to the source of the infection. Hugging someone or switching places with someone has a chance to spread the infection. The infection will be spread by the skin and bodily fluids of an infected person, but will not survive long in the air.
• Fluid - Lets you infect someone by splashing them with infected blood, using smoke, sharing a drinking glass or them stepping barefoot in an infected person's vomit or blood splatter. Works even if they have internals on. Does not work through hardsuits.
• Blood - The infection will only be spread by ingesting infected blood.
• Special - The disease is not normally contagious and the affected crewman has been infected by a non-human vector source. You can work with the infected without risk yourself unless they expose you to the same vector source that infected them.

Any higher level infection method can infect using any lower level methods. For example, an airborne virus can spread to people with internals on by hugging them.

Natural Recovery and Cures

As of a rework on 12/6/2023, infections from many diseases will eventually cure themselves over time. This does not apply to most of the 'Simple Diseases' listed below or to the Sentient Disease antagonist.

You have several ways to offset the effects of diseases as well as to speed or slow this process.

• Food - Being starved or eating junk food will make you more susceptible to disease and less able to naturally recover. Eating and being well-fed will make you recover faster.
• Mood - Being in a good state of mind (high sanity) will help you recover from disease faster. Being in a bad state of mind (low sanity) will make you less able to naturally recover.
• Rest - Sleeping (or unconsciousness of any kind) will temporarily stop symptoms from occurring and make you recover from a disease faster. Rest loses effectiveness as a way of stopping symptoms from occurring over time but will always assist in natural recovery. Resting in better conditions (in a bed, with a blanket, with a pillow, in the dark, with earmuffs - etc.) all help you recover from disease faster.
• Medicine - Spaceacillin, available at Medical, in biohazard gear closets, and through Cargo, has several effects:
  • It slows the advancement of your disease.
  • It makes you less likely to spread or catch diseases.
  • It stops symptoms from occurring with decreasing effectiveness over time - so it can be used to temporarily buy yourself relief from a bad disease.
  • It increases the speed of natural recovery from disease with decreasing effectiveness over time - so it's best used to help finally kill off a disease, or in combination with other methods listed above, to maximize its likely effect if used in this way.

Natural recovery using these methods will provide lasting resistance/immunity to the disease unless you are starving or malnourished, in which case, it's a coin-flip - if you lose the coin-flip, you may be reinfected even after recovering.

Benign viruses - those with a Severity stat of 0 that show up with a blue smiling face on medical HUDs (see the section on Advanced Diseases below) will not go away by the above methods except:

• if you have taken Spaceacillin, or,
• if you are starving and/or malnourished (usually as a result of eating junk food.)

Take care of yourself!

Additionally, the blood of cured survivors - those who are already immune to the disease and whose blood can be used to make a vaccine (see below) - can be used to 'cure' a disease through direct injection or ingestion. This does not confer lasting immunity to the person receiving the blood, but it can buy valuable time and allow you to stop an outbreak as long as you can keep patients from getting reinfected.

Curing an infection

Every infection is vulnerable to one substance (or combination of two). To find it, you can put an infected blood sample in the PanD.E.M.I.C 2200 machine or use a health analyzer on an infected patient. Administering the substance to the patient (may require multiple injections) should cure them. Alternatively, if you have produced a vaccine, a simple injection should cure the patient.

PanD.E.M.I.C 2200

This machine creates vaccines from the blood of people who have been cured.

How to create a vaccine

1. Take a blood sample from an already cured person, with a syringe.
2. Inject that blood sample into a beaker or bottle.
3. Load the beaker into the machine.
4. Select the vaccine you wish to produce.
5. Take vaccine bottle it produces.
6. Go to chemistry or the holodeck medical emergency program (for the Chemmaster 3000) to distribute the vaccine however you like.

Additional uses:

• Reveals the cure to any infected blood sample, even if the virus is stealthy and don't show up on medical huds.

Simple Diseases

Thankfully, humanity has managed to cure and eliminate almost all of the diseases that plagued its infancy. However, the vast reaches of space have been found to harbor new illnesses that can affect the unprepared staff on Nanotrasen research stations.

Disease Name	Vector Name	Source	Description	Spread	Required Organ	Cure
Alien Parasite	Xenomorph	Alien impregnation	A facehugger has implanted an embryo inside of the body of the victim, which will grow until it kills and destroys the body while spawning a larva.	Special		Surgery
Zombie Infection	Romerol	Syndicate Uplink	A rare infection, which lies dormant in the victim. If the victim dies before it is cured, it will rise as an aggressive zombie, who will then transfer the infection to anyone it manages to scratch. The infection consists in a tumor located inside the head.	Special		Surgery
Beesease	Apidae Infection	Syndicate Uplink	If left untreated subject will regurgitate bees.	Contact		Sugar
Brain Rot	Cryptococcus Cosmosis	Virus crate, random events	An infection that causes mental degradation.	Contact		Mannitol
Cold	XY-Rhinovirus	Virology, random events	Still around since the dawn of man, this disease is relatively harmless, causing fatigue and a runny nose. Will progress to the Flu when untreated.	Airborne	Lungs	Rest and Spaceacillin
Cold 9	ICE9-Rhinovirus	Admin fuckery	A rare disease that will progressively lower the victim's body temperature in addition to respiratory symptoms.	Contact	Lungs	Spaceacillin
Flu	H13N1 Flu Viron	Virology, random events	A common illness, causes fatigue, high fever, and muscle toxicity. Rarely fatal, quickly spread.	Airborne	Lungs	Spaceacillin
Anxiety	Excess Lepidopticides	Virus crate	Will cause feelings of anxiety and cause the victim to cough butterflies.	Contact		Ethanol
GBS	Gravitokinetic Bipotential SADS+	Admin fuckery	An extremely dangerous illness caused by contagious micro-singularities that will cause the human body to be torn apart from the inside. The initial phase begins in the lungs and mimics flu symptoms.	Contact		Sulfur and Synaptizine
'Fake' GBS	Gravitokinetic Bipotential SADS-	Unknown, possibly unused	A somewhat neutered version of the GBS+ virion. Early stages will mimic flu symptoms, but advanced stages are notably devoid of serious harm to the patient.	Contact		Sulfur and Synaptizine
Jungle Fever	Kongey Vibrion M-909	Admin fuckery	One of the most feared diseases in the galaxy, this is a disease carried by primates. A single bite or scratch is enough to fully infect a human. The result is spontaneous genetic reversion, and the affected individual will also become a monkey.	Special		Bananas, Death Squad
Magnitis	Fukkos Miracos	Virus crate, random events	An infection of magnetic bacteria that build up in the body. As the disease progresses any metallic items not bolted down near the infected person will be pulled toward them, even objects as large as canisters. Ingested iron will draw the bacteria to it and allow them to be excreted normally.	Contact		Iron
Pierrot's Throat	H0NI<42 Virus	Virus crate, random events	A brain disease that was brought back with the original explorers of Clown Planet that damages the basal ganglia, victims will have an uncontrollable urge to HONK.	Airborne	Tongue	Bananas
Retrovirus	N/A	Admin fuckery	A DNA-altering retrovirus that will constantly mutate the genetic code of the host. Symptoms vary wildly from blindness to incredible fits of strength and green skin.	Contact		Rest or Mutadone
Space Retrovirus	S4E1 Retrovirus	Random events	A DNA-altering retrovirus that will copy the DNA of the first infected and apply it to every other infected.	Contact		Mutadone
Robotic Transformation	R2D2 Nanomachines	Roburgers, odd pizzas	A rare infection that slowly transforms the infected into a cyborg.	Special		Copper
Spanish Flu	1nqu1s1t10n Flu Viron	Admin fuckery	A rare and deadly form of flu that causes an incredibly high fever. Those infected will die of internal burns without treatment or religious conversion.	Airborne	Lungs	Spaceacillin
Wizarditis	Rincewindus Vulgaris	Hacked MagiVend	A rare illness, causes spontaneous robe growth, randomly speaking incantations, and finally random teleportation.	Airborne		Manly Dorf
Xenomorphic Transformation	Rip-LEY Alien Microbes	Admin fuckery	A rare infection caused by xeno-microbes, changing the infected's DNA to that of a xenomorph. Symptoms include severe pain and progressive insanity.	Special		Glycerol and Spaceacillin
Heart Disease	N/A	Random event	The game categorizes it as a virus, and it progresses in stages, like a virus, so it's listed here.	N/A	Heart	Electric Shocks, Heart Replacement Surgery
Fungal Tuberculosis	Fungal Tubercle bacillus Cosmosis	Nuke Ops Uplink, Strange Seeds	A rare highly transmittable virulent virus. Few samples exist, rumoured to be carefully grown and cultured by clandestine bio-weapon specialists. Causes fever, vomiting, lung damage, weight loss, and fatigue.	Airborne	Lungs	Convermol and Spaceacillin
Gondola Transformation	Tranquility	Raw Gondola meat	Consuming the flesh of a Gondola comes at a terrible price. Produces Pax within the victims body resulting in pacifism, lessened motor control of the arms, and eventually turning the victim into a Gondola.	Special		Condensed Capsaicin (pepperspray)

Advanced Diseases

You are able to create your own advanced disease with different symptoms, which can have buffs, debuffs and other effects. You can only be infected with one advanced disease at a time, but you can also have several simple diseases at the same time as an advanced.

You will start out with two advanced diseases, the cold and the flu. The cold will have the sneeze symptom and the flu will have the cough symptom. They have almost no effect if they infect people, but you need them to acquire more symptoms.

The Pandemic can create culture bottles (basically copies) of existing viruses, so you won't run out while experimenting.

Modifying Symptoms

To obtain a new symptom you need to mutate an existing virus. This involves adding a chemical to the virus, which will generate a new symptom. Rarer and harder to acquire chemicals will yield more potent symptoms. You will start with enough chemicals to create a powerful disease, as long as you use them carefully. You can also insert an isolated symptom into your main virus, by moving 1 unit of the isolated culture to the main mix with a dropper. It will not work every time and may need to be repeated a few times.

Basic chemicals

These are the basic chemicals for virus mutation. You can either add them directly to a virus to obtain a random level symptom, or mix them with other ingredients to get advanced chemicals, that will give you a specific level symptom.

• Virus Food: You can make virus food with Water and Milk. Virology lab has its own Virus Food Dispenser. Mixing this with a disease will give that disease a symptom of level 1 to 2.
• Unstable Mutagen: You can use mutagen to mutate your disease and give it a symptom of level 2 to 4. Virology starts with a 30u bottle of mutagen.
• Liquid Plasma: Plasma can be used to mutate your disease to give it a symptom of level 4 to 6. Plasma in liquid form is generally in very limited supply, unless mining and chemistry cooperates with you. Virology starts with a 30u bottle of liquid plasma, and in some station layouts with extra plasma bars.

Advanced Chemicals

Using these will allow you to both save time and resources when trying to acquire the symptoms you want.

• Virus rations: Virus rations can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 1 symptom. It is made by depleting Virus food with Synaptizine.
• Mutagenic Agar: Mutagenic agar can be used to mutate your disease to give it a level 3 symptom. It is made by mixing Unstable mutagen and virus food together.
• Sucrose Agar: Sucrose agar can be used to mutate your disease to give it a level 4 symptom. It is made by mixing Sugar or Saline Glucose Solution and Mutagenic agar together.
• Weakened Virus Plasma: Weakened virus plasma can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 5 symptom. It is made by weakening virus plasma using Synaptizine.
• Virus Plasma: Virus plasma can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 6 symptom. It is made by mixing liquid plasma with virus food.

Uranium Gels

These chemicals require large quantities of liquid uranium (obtained by grinding uranium bars). You'll require the help of mining to make these.

• Decaying Uranium Gel: Decaying Uranium Gel can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 6 or 7 symptom. Despite its name, it will not decay into nothingness or deplete itself over time (outside of circumstances that would cause normal chemicals to do that). It is made by combining 1 virus food with 1 liquid Uranium.
• Unstable Uranium Gel: Unstable Uranium Gel can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 7 symptom. It is made by combining 1 virus plasma with 5 liquid Uranium.
• Stable Uranium Gel: Stable Uranium Gel can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 8 symptom. It is made by combining 1 plasma with 10 parts liquid Uranium and 10 parts liquid silver or gold.

Synaptizine

Synaptizine, aside from being a base chemical, will remove one random symptom to any virus it comes in contact with. It's important if you intend to isolate a specific symptom. For example, if you mutate your Cold virus and it acquires the Toxic Filter symptom, you can try and add synaptizine to it to create a virus which only has the Toxic Filter symptom.

Formaldehyde

Formaldehyde will neuter one random symptom when mixed with a virus. This disables its effects while keeping the attributes intact. This is useful for meeting threshold values without making the virus deadly.

Tips and Techniques

Dropper

When you're adding a chemical to a virus, you only need to add a single unit of it. This means you can use a dropper to add a single unit at a time, instead of using a syringe and wasting 5 units at a time. Since Liquid Plasma and Mutagen are in limited supply, it is a smart move to conserve your chemicals. Remember, you have to use the dropper in your hand once to set its transfer value to 1 unit.

Mixing in Beakers

While your first instict may be to create a new culture bottle, adding a chemical to it and scrapping the whole bottle if it's not the symptom you want, it is a slow process due to the Pandemic's cooldown. A better way is to instead keep a culture bottle, an empty beaker, and a bottle of your desired chemical; add one unit of culture to the beaker and then mutate it with the chemical, and check the result. Then repeat until you have to replicate the culture bottle: this allows for 20 uninterrupted tries before having to make a copy.

Chemical Efficiency

You don't always have to isolate every single symptom you want into your virus and then begin the slow process of combining them one by one. You start with just 30u Synaptizine and Unstable Mutagen on your workplace (Plasma amounts vary per map, but you also have a 30u liquid plasma bottle as backup inside your chemfridge) and once those run out, you have to beg chemistry (or mining) for more. To prevent this, once you got your first wanted symptom isolated, create a sample bottle out of it and use THAT bottle to combine with the other chemicals until you get your first symptom AND your desired second symptom on it, create a bottle with those two, use THAT new bottle to combine with the next chemical for your third symptom and so on. E.G: If you want your virus to have Viral Evolutionary Acceleration, Eternal Youth and Self Respiration, you combine your Rhinovirus blood sample with 1u of Mutagenic Agar until you get Sneezing and Viral Evolutionary Acceleration on your bottle. Isolate the V.E.A. symptom and create a sample bottle of it. Then take 1u from the V.E.A. bottle and combine with 1u of Weakened Virus Plasma until you get Eternal Youth. Create a sample bottle of V.E.A.+Eternal Youth, and begin using it to combine with 1u of Plasma Virus until you get VEA+Eternal Youth+Self Respiration.

Isolating Symptoms

To isolate a single symptom, combine equal units of a blood sample with one of the two symptoms you want to isolate with equal parts of synaptizine (ideally you should always work with 1u at a time) and slap the beaker unto the PanD.E.M.I.C to check if it got isolated. You can then hit the create culture bottle button to make a bottle with just one symptom, or eject it as is and neuter it if it's a bad symptom you only want stats out of.

Neutering Symptoms

To neuter a symptom, you combine 1u of your isolated symptom with 1u of Formalehyde, and the symptom gets "neutered", meaning it won't cause whatever effects they have, but will contribute to the virus' overall stats with theirs. That means that Fever (Neutered) will not make the subject "feel hot", but it will grant the virus no stealth bonuses, +3 resistance, +3 stage speed and +2 transmission. This is recommended to make your virus a completely "positive" virus by only having good symptoms or their ones neutered, which will make them appear with a blue smiley face on your doctor's medical HUD's, and also drastically reduce your chances of getting lynched.

Multiple symptoms

A virus can have up to six symptoms. Trying to add a seventh symptom to a virus will instead make it replace one random existing symptom.

Understanding stats

After you're done mixing your disease, stats from the symptoms are added together to make disease stats. Viruses with no symptoms have a default of 0 in every stat (except for those created by the Sentient Disease antagonist - which have an additional buffer to their Stealth stat and require careful monitoring to catch their spread.)

• Stealth: If stealth is 2 or higher your disease will be hidden from medHUD and scanners. Generally it will also hide the warning signs of symptoms before they activate.
• Transmission: Improves the chance each tick to spread the virus, increases the amount of protection you need to prevent infection, determines the infection vector, and is needed to override other viruses.
  • The infection vector is calculated based on the disease's transmission stat. 3+ lets the virus spread via fluid contact, 7+ lets the virus spread via skin contact, and 11+ allows the virus to spread via the "airborne" infection vector. All advanced viruses can spread via the "blood" transmission vector. Note that these infection vectors are all cumulative; a virus with a transmission stat of 4 will have both the blood and the fluid contact transmission vectors. The sneezing and coughing symptoms (and the threshold effects of a few other symptoms) force sporadic airborne spreads (sneezing spreads the virus in a cone, while coughing spreads the virus in all directions, but considerably less far from the host than sneezing does), but do not otherwise affect this.
  • When infecting someone who already has a virus, if the infecting virus' Transmission is higher than the other virus' Resistance, the latter will be overridden by the former.
• Stage speed: Increases the chance of advancing a stage each tick. It will be 2% or stage speed, whichever is higher.
• Resistance: Makes the virus harder to cure; determines the required chemical to cure, decreases the chance of it being cured each tick when in contact with the cure, and defines how resistant the virus is to being overridden by other viruses.
• Severity: A hidden statistic. The sum of severities of active symptoms, the virus's total overall stats (not including stealth,) and the fraction of symptoms on the virus out of the total possible symptoms (i.e. 1/6 or 6/6) determine a virus's severity; it affects the color of the medHUD icon, ranging from blue for positive viruses, to flashing red for extremely deadly diseases. It also determines the rate of natural recovery and how quickly a virus might self-cure.
  • The chance of it being cured every tick is 7.5 - (resistance / 2), but will always be between 5 and 10.
  • The cure is determined by [resistance - (amount of symptoms / 2)]. One chemical from the tier is randomly picked.

Resistance tier	Possible cures
1 or less	Copper, Silver, Iodine, Iron, Carbon
2	Potassium, Ethanol, Lithium, Silicon, Bromine
3	Table salt, Sugar, Orange juice, Tomato juice, Milk
4	Spaceacillin, Saline-glucose solution, Epinephrine, Multiver
5	Oil, Synaptizine, Mannitol, Space drugs, Cryptobiolin
6	Phenol, Inacusiate, Oculine, Antihol
7	Leporazine, Mindbreaker toxin, Higadrite
8	Pax, Happiness, Ephedrine
9	Lipolicide, Salicylic acid
10	Haloperidol, Aranesp, Diphenhydramine
11 or more	Modafinil, Anacea

• Required Organ: Another hidden stat. Some viruses and symptoms require a certain organ to have any effect. A robotic organ will give immunity to that virus/symptom unless the virus has Inorganic Biology.
  • Virus transmission also requires certain organs: airborne transmission requires lungs, ingested transmission requires a stomach, blood transmission requires a heart.
  • Organs removed from someone who is infected will be infectious, robotic organs will not be infectious unless the virus has Inorganic Biology.

Symptoms Table

Hover over the thresholds to see the effects of each.

Symptom	Stealth	Resistance	Stage Speed	Transmission	Level	Required Chemical	Required Organ	Effect	Threshold (hover mouse over for details)
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome	-2	0	-1	-2	7	Decaying Uranium Gel/Unstable Uranium Gel		Causes heavy suffocation damage. Becomes even more lethal if the mob has more than 120 suffocation damage.	Stage Speed 8, Transmission 8
Alopecia	0	1	2	2	4	Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar		Causes rapid hair loss.	None
Alkali Perspiration	2	-2	-2	-2	7	Decaying Uranium Gel/Unstable Uranium Gel		Causes the affected mob to burst into flames periodically, while also giving them small doses of Napalm and Chlorine Trifluoride. If wet when bursting into flames, the victims will also explode. Explosions can happen in stage 4 and stage 5.	Resistance 9, Stage Speed 8, Transmission 8
Autophagocytosis Necrosis	-2	-2	1	-2	7	Decaying Uranium Gel/Unstable Uranium Gel		Causes the mob's cells to decay rapidly, causing brute damage, constant bleeding and elevated hunger.	Stage Speed 7, Stealth 5
Chills	0	2	3	2	2	Unstable Mutagen/Virus Food		Cools down your body. Won't reach damaging levels unless thresholds are met.	Stage Speed 5, Stage Speed 10
Choking	-3	-2	-2	-2	3	Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar	Lungs	Causes spikes of oxygen deprivation. Deals damage based on stage speed and stealth.	Stage Speed 8, Stealth 4
Coughing	-1	3	1	2	1	Virus Food/Virus Rations	Lungs	The virus irritates the throat of the host, causing occasional coughing. Each cough will try to infect bystanders who are within 1 tile of the host with the virus.	Resistance 11, Resistance 15, Stage Speed 6, Transmission 7, Stealth 4
Confusion	1	-1	-3	0	4	Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar		Makes the affected mob be confused for short periods of time, making them walk in random directions.	Resistance 6, Transmission 6, Stealth 4, Stage Speed 6
Deafness	-1	-2	-1	-3	4	Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar	Ears	Causes intermittent loss of hearing.	Resistance 9, Stealth 4
Disfiguration	2	0	3	1	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma		Causes the host's face to crumble and cave in, disfiguring the host to appear as "unknown" to others until cured.	None
Dizziness	0	-2	-3	-1	4	Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar		Shakes the affected mob's screen.	Transmission 6, Stealth 4
Dormant DNA Activator	-2	-3	0	-3	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma		The virus bonds with the DNA of the host, activating random dormant mutations within their DNA. When the virus is cured, the host's genetic alterations are undone.	Resistance 8, Resistance 14, Stage Speed 10, Stealth 5
Eternal Youth	3	4	4	-4	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma		Makes you never physically older than young adulthood and prevents death by old age. Should be used for buffing your disease.	None
Facial Hypertrichosis	0	3	2	1	4	Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar		Makes you grow a massive beard, regardless of gender.	None
Fever	0	3	3	2	2	Unstable Mutagen/Virus Food		Heats up your body. Will not reach damaging levels of heat unless resistance thresholds are met.	Resistance 5, Resistance 10
Hallucigen	1	-4	1	-1	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma		Makes the affected mob have hallucinations for short periods of time. Available in Virus Crates.	Stage Speed 7, Stealth 4
Headache	-1	4	2	0	1	Virus Food/Virus Rations		Displays an annoying message! Should be used for buffing your disease.	Stage Speed 6, Stage Speed 9, Stealth 4
Inorganic Biology	-1	4	-2	3	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma		The virus becomes able to affect inorganic species, such as Golems or Plasmamen.	None
Hyphema	-1	-4	-4	-3	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma	Eyes	Inflicts eye damage over time. Causes blindness if left unchecked.	Resistance 12, Stealth 4
Itching	0	3	3	1	1	Virus Food/Virus Rations		Displays an annoying message. Should be used for buffing your disease. Can do slight brute damage if the stage speed threshold is met.	Transmission 6, Stage Speed 7
Metabolic Boost	-1	-2	2	1	7	Decaying Uranium Gel/Unstable Uranium Gel	Stomach	Doubles the host's metabolism speed, making them process chems much faster than normal, but also increasing their hunger tenfold.	Stealth 3, Stage Speed 10
Mind Restoration	-1	-2	1	-3	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma		The virus strengthens the bonds between neurons, reducing the duration of any ailment of the mind. Heals brain damage, and can cure mild and heavy traumas if upgraded.	Resistance 6, Resistance 9, Transmission 8
Narcolepsy	-1	-2	-3	0	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma		Makes the host drowsy and prone to falling asleep randomly.	Transmission 4, Stage Speed 10
Necrotic Metabolism	2	-2	1	0	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma		The virus becomes able to affect corpses and undead races, instead of lying dormant.	None
Necrotizing Fasciitis	-3	-4	0	-3	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma		Causes brute damage over time. Fatal if left untreated.	Resistance 7, Transmission 8
Nocturnal Regeneration	2	-1	-2	-1	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma		Heals brute and burn damage if the host is not currently exposed to light. Heals brute damage more quickly than burn damage.	Stage Speed 8
Plasma Fixation	0	3	-2	-2	8	Stable Uranium Gel	Liver	The host absorbs plasma in the air, their lungs, and/or their bloodstream, using it to stabilize their temperature and heal brute, burn, and toxin damage.	Transmission 6, Stage Speed 7
Polyvitiligo	-1	3	1	2	5	Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma		The virus replaces the melanin in the skin with reactive pigment, by adding random crayon powders (which won't actually recolor the host) and color powders (which WILL recolor the host) to the host.	None
Radioactive Resonance	-1	-2	0	-3	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma		Heals brute, burn, and toxin damage while the host is irradiated. Higher radiation levels increase the healing speed.	Transmission 6, Resistance 7
Regenerative Coma	0	2	-3	-2	8	Stable Uranium Gel		Causes the host to fall into a death-like coma when heavy brute or burn damage is taken, then rapidly cures their wounds.	Stealth 2, Resistance 4, Stage Speed 7
Self-Respiration	1	-3	-3	-4	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma	Lungs	Quickly heals oxygen damage, negating the need for air.	Resistance 8
Sensory Restoration	0	1	-2	2	4	Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar	Ears, eyes	Restores mob's senses by fixing eye and ear damage.	None
Sneezing	-2	3	0	4	1	Virus Food/Virus Rations	Lungs	The virus causes irritation of the nasal cavity, making the host sneeze occasionally. Sneezes from this symptom will spread the virus in a 4 meter cone in front of the host.	Transmission 9, Stage Speed 17, Stealth 4
Spontaneous Combustion	-1	-4	-3	-4	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma		Sets your body on fire periodically.	Stage Speed 4, Stage Speed 8, Transmission 8, Stealth 4
Starlight Condensation	-1	-2	0	1	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma		Heals brute, burn, and toxin damage while exposed to starlight. Heals toxin more efficiently. Actually being in space intensifies the effect.	Stage Speed 6, Transmission 6
Tissue Hydration	0	-1	0	1	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma	Liver	Heals brute and burn damage if the host drank water recently, or if they're wet. Heals burn damage more efficiently.	Resistance 5, Stage Speed 7
Toxolysis	0	-2	2	-2	7	Decaying Uranium Gel/Unstable Uranium Gel	Heart	Purges all chemicals at a fast rate from the bloodstream.	Resistance 7, Stage Speed 6
Viral Evolutionary Acceleration	-2	-3	5	3	3	Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar		Massively buffs the evolutionary cycle of viruses, causing it to be faster acting, better at infecting, but more easily detected and cured.	None
Viral Self-Adaptation	3	5	-3	0	3	Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar		Massively buffs the adaptation of viruses, causing it to be stealthier, harder to cure but slower acting.	None
Voice Change	-1	-2	-2	2	6	Plasma/Decaying Uranium Gel/Virus Plasma	Tongue	Changes the voice of the affected mob. Causing confusion in communication. Available in Virus Crates.	Transmission 14, Stage Speed 7, Stealth 3
Vomiting	-2	-1	-1	2	3	Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar	Stomach	Forces the affected mob to vomit! Makes the affected mob lose nutrition and heal toxin damage.	Resistance 7, Transmission 7, Stealth 4
Weight Loss	-2	2	-2	-2	3	Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar	Stomach	The virus mutates the host's metabolism, making it almost unable to gain nutrition from food.	Stealth 4

General Tips

• If you happen to run out of plasma, chemistry sometimes has an extra bar you can ask for.
• Sugar can be hard to find, but you can use Saline-Glucose from any NanoVend Plus for Sucrine Agar.
• Wearing protective clothing is not necessary during virology research, but you should wear it in event of an outbreak or while experimenting on monkeys.
• If you're dealing with a virus too stealthy to analyze, you can try making a very infective virus to override it.
• Have in mind the disease you want to make before you start searching for symptoms: knowing the level of the symptom you're looking for may save you time and materials.
• Generally, you should only use mutagenic chemicals that will give your symptoms from only a single possible tier (in other words, use weakened virus plasma or virus plasma instead of just plasma). The exceptions to this rule are the decaying uranium gel (only if you're rolling for level 7 symptoms) and virus food chemicals, since they are much, much cheaper to make than more exact chemicals of their tiers. It should be noted that one bar of uranium can be mixed with other chemicals to get you 20u of decaying uranium gel, but only 4u of unstable uranium gel.

The Black Death

Being a traitor virologist opens you up to a whole variety of cruel and interesting ways to create chaos on the station. Here's some tips to allow you to spread your worst creations.

• Here is where statistics become important: you need Resistance to avoid the cure being salt, you want Transmissibility so your virus can spread, Stage Speed so it acts before the victim is cured, and Stealth to avoid it being noticed too quickly. The Severity of your virus determines how quickly and aggressively natural recovery will affect your virus after somebody is infected. You won't have them all on a single virus, so choose the direction you want to go with.
  • A high stealth will allow the virus to incubate before the victim notices and make it less likely for medical staff to notice on scans or HUDs.
  • A high resistance will make the cure so rare that it won't realistically be available to everyone. Beware of vaccines, though.
  • A high stage speed will cause your virus to progress at extreme speed, giving targets less warning before acting.
  • A high transmissibility will allow you disease to spread itself without your help; it will also make it so you need more clothing to protect from infection.
• While it might seem a good idea to put many harmful symptoms on a virus, its stats will be lowered to the point it won't act before it is cured. Stick to one or two harmful symptoms, and add neutral ones to buff its statistics.
• Because severity is a function of the number of symptoms, whether or not they are active, and the overall stats of your virus, making viruses with fewer than the total number of symptoms and selectively neutering some of them may give you more effective combinations. The only way to check severity in-game is with the use of a medical HUD, and the combinations are too many to discuss in depth - experiment with varieties of 'weaker' viruses to find more potent combinations.
• All symptoms give out messages to the infected before they reach the stage where they activate. People will be aware of what is hindering/killing them. Consider investing in stealth to prevent this if your virus uses symptoms that benefit from stealth.
• Going around outside of virology with a biosuit will alert people that you don't trust your own virus: you might want to infect yourself with a harmless resistant virus, so people can see that you're infected as well, while you'll be immune.
• Remember that live and walking infected spread more than corpses. Consider making a disease that hinders many instead of one that kills a few. Although dead people can't work on a cure.
• Monkeys or other humanlikes can carry viruses and often receive less immediate suspicion than somebody in a blood-soaked biosuit - especially if the virus doesn't have immediate obvious symptoms.
• Blood spills and infected glassware (beakers, cups) can spread the virus if it has the Fluid transmission vector or better. You don't need to be around for these things to work.
• A syringe gun filled with infected blood is a good way to spread viruses if you can't trick the crew.
• Sabotaging the Pandemic is usually a good idea, as it can create a vaccine for a cured virus which is cheap and easy to distribute, even if the virus is extremely resistant.
• Destroying all of your viruses (and the ones in your chem fridge) other than the one that you are going to use before you release your doomvirus by dumping the containers holding them out onto an adjacent tile and then using a spray bottle of space cleaner on the resulting pile of blood can be a good idea, since clever CMOs/players can infect themselves with one of your prototype viruses to overwrite your main doomvirus with a less harmful virus/version of it (provided that the less harmful virus's transmission stat is higher than your doomvirus's resistance stat).
• Sabotaging the holodeck computer is also a good idea because its Emergency Medical simulation also contains a Pandemic.
• Sabotaging chemistry can stop them from making most of the chems that can cure viruses.
• Adding your virus to food the chef has cooked is a good way to spread your virus.
• Curing one virus may be easy. Curing many viruses at the same time - especially when they all require different vaccines and cures - may be hard.
• Naming your virus is a great way to take credit for your accomplishments... or to frame your local virologist. Viruses without names will be 'unknown' until named in a Pandemic or otherwise associated with a named virus.