If you’ve not yet played Plague Inc. ($0.99) by Ndemic Creations yet, you better think about it, as while the whole “world infection" genre is nothing new, Plague Inc. absolutely nails it on iOS devices. It’s only gotten better with recent updates too, as they’ve added a whole slew of new diseases and ridiculously difficult achievements tied to those diseases.

A recent update brought us the Necroa Virus, which allows players to infect the world with a zombie outbreak. Of course, you could turn everyone to zombies, or, if you want to satisfy the requirements of the “Not Another Zombie Game" NAZG achievement… You’d kill every human on Earth with the Necroa Virus without turning them in to a zombie. TouchArcade forum member and Plague Inc. fanatic Botoshel figured it out. In fact, if solving these sorts of puzzles in games suits your fancy, check out the Plague Inc. forum thread where you’ll find all sorts of people who are similarly all about this game.

Now, if you want to figure out the NAZG achievement by yourself, stop reading now. This guide is a 100% solution to unlock the achievement. You’re still at the mercy of the random number generator powering the game, so it’s not going to work every time, but I’ve been able to duplicate Botoshel’s method with the following steps:

Start a normal Necroa Virus game in India with the following genes equipped:

• Cytochrome Surge to get bonus DNAfrom popping blue cure bubbles.
• Aerocyte to increase the changes of your plague spreading by air.
• Spliced Activation to decrease the DNA cost of active abilities.
• Creationist to decrease the change of your plague mutating.
• Xerophile to give your plague a bonus in arid climates.

From there, head to the Transmission screen and evolve “Saliva 1" first. As soon as you have the DNA, evolve both “Zoonotic Shift" and its followup “Bat 1" to spread your plague using bats. From there, sit back and pop DNA bubbles while your infected total climbs towards 100,000,000. What you’re looking for is a news story in your feed that mentions rabid bats.

If you cross 100,000,000 infected and don’t see a message regarding rabid bats, start over. Once you do see the news story, head over to the Abilities screen and start evolving “Drug Resistance 1," “Genetic Hardening," “Gene ReShuffle 1," and “Gene ReShuffle 2" as you get the DNA to do so. Once you’ve got all your resistances in order, go back to the Transmission page and devolve “Bat 1" once you can afford to do so.

Once again wait popping bubbles until you see a message about WHO starting a rabies eradication initiative and then film about rabies becoming a global hit. At this point, evolve “Gastrointestinal Expansion" in Transmission followed by both “Cold Resistance 1" and “Cold Resistance 2" in Abilities to spread your disease.

If everything is going as planned, you’ll just be sitting and waiting for your disease to spread as it remains completely undetected. This can take a while, especially across both Russia and Greenland which both seem exceptionally stubborn. Turn your sound up, and do something else- Stopping to pop the bubbles that appear.

Once you get the popup that says the whole world is infected, high tail it to the Symptoms screen and dump all of your DNA into:

• Insomnia
• Fever
• Photophobia
• Coma
• Acute Encephalitis
• Hyper Salivation

Things will be happening fast now, as you’ve got the entire planet infected and now suddenly everyone is dying. Subsequent popups will appear about a disease being found, and a cure starting. Be patient, and wait for the popup that says your disease is “a form of Rabies."

At this point, as soon as you have the DNA for it, devolve “Zoonotic Shift." People will begin dying, and cure research will progress well. However, this last-minute devolve will cause the existing research to be wasted which should line up well with the death count being high enough that there’s not many people left to continue working on a cure at any reasonable pace.

From here, you just sit back and relax. The game should be on cruise control now for complete world destruction without you doing anything. In my experience, the last few survivors are very stubborn and can take quite a while to die. But, just make sure your iOS device is plugged in and let it do its thing.

Now, in my experience trying to duplicate the steps to unlock this achievement, I’ve discovered a few things. First off, if you experience any mutations it’s best to just start over. It’s vital for your plague to remain very far under the radar. Mutating symptoms is a good way for the opposite to happen. Sure, you can devolve symptoms away but you need tons of DNA for when the whole world is infected to break out the whole bullet list of symptoms above.

Additionally, the pertinent rabies messages are not popups, and rather are just yellow colored news stories that will appear in your news ticker. Unlocking this achievement from start to finish will take you around an hour, as spreading your plague with this method will take a very long time. Also, as mentioned, without actually turning people to zombies the killing process will also take quite a while.

Thanks, Botoshel!