"Herald of the Demon King" is a Plague Inc Custom Scenario based off of the Shadow Plague. You play as a vampire as usual, but there are a number of twists that significantly change how the game is played - the most notable one being that DNA regenerates rapidly up to a point and is reduced when you use special abilities. In other words, it's your "stamina meter".

There are a number of other unique mechanics in this scenario as well.

You can revive your vampire if it dies, but you can't make new ones.

In this scenario, DNA is not just used for evolution and triggering special abilities. Instead, it works like a stamina meter - when you're resting it regenerates up to a maximum level, and it depletes when you use special abilities.

Flying costs more DNA the farther and faster you fly - fly too far when your DNA is too low, and you'll be forced to rest as it replenishes.

Blood Rage gets a number of upgrades that increase its power or give it additional traits, in exchange for draining DNA continuously - when you run out of DNA, it deactivates by itself. Remember that you can deactivate Blood Rage manually by selecting it and clicking the country in which it is being used.

To increase your max "stamina", you'll need to collect souls. At first, this is done by simply killing people: every 1000 people you kill (at first), you get an extra point of regenerating DNA. There are diminishing returns though; each new kill gives you less extra DNA. Later on, you can evolve Energy Vampirism, which lets you collect a smaller amount of DNA based on the number of people you infect; this also has diminishing returns.

You'll notice traits cost a lot more in this scenario, but don't be concerned - once your "level" is high enough, you can evolve them freely and then wait a few days for your DNA to replenish.

There are some traits that grant you infectivity/severity/lethality the "normal" way, but they aren't particularly effective. The key to infecting and killing in this scenario is the "Sacrifice of the Shadow" symptom and its three associated traits: Shadow Corruption, Shadow Torment, and Shadow Harvest, each of which comes in three tiers.

Evolving the associated traits does nothing on their own. However, evolving Sacrifice of the Shadow causes all of the traits you've selected to be "applied" to Blood Rage. When using Blood Rage, your plague will be "supercharged"; once you stop it will return to normal.

Shadow Corruption increases infectivity and Shadow Harvest increases lethality in exchange for draining DNA when active. Shadow Torment restores DNA (though not above your maximum) and can help you offset other Blood Rage abilities, but increases your plague's severity, making people spend more effort on curing it.

Your vampire's global reputation creates a number of impacts on gameplay events. The Templar's funding will increase as your notoriety grows, and they will set up new forts over time, eventually covering nearly the entire world.

Conversely, you can actually improve your reputation by evolving certain traits and performing certain actions. If your reputation is good enough, the Templar will find it hard to expand and the public may even start attacking Templar forts on their own!

Note that for all reputation-improving abilities, the positive impact you make weakens as your existing reputation (both local and global) worsens. Once the public starts to hate the vampire, it will generally become impossible to turn the trend around. If you want a PR victory, you're going to need to keep your early-game atrocities hidden from the public eye. Starting in a low-interest country like Central Africa is probably your best bet.

This is just your standard vampire stealth mechanic, but with a few extra properties. Most important, it can be devolved - you can enter and exit stealth mode as it suits your purposes. It will also reduce your DNA per soul, which can be problematic early on when you are trying to gain enough DNA to evolve the first few useful traits. One strategy if you're trying to stay stealthy is to evolve Night Cloak when using Blood Rage, then devolve it when you've gotten enough kills and are ready to evolve a new trait.

The "Appeals" transmission infects people in the country where the vampire is as long as they are not using Blood Rage. It also impacts the reputation of the vampire. The higher the infected percentage of a country is, the stronger this impact will be. The Appeals trait by itself will actually make the vampire's reputation worse, but after evolving some more traits they will be able to offset some of their wrongdoings.

This lets your vampire create a TV program and broadcast its message while resting in a lair. While broadcasting, worldwide infectivity will go up, and the vampire's reputation will be impacted in every infected country, similar to how Appeals works.

Morals improves reputation through Appeals slightly; not enough to offset the vampire's presence entirely but helps to mitigate it. It also functions similar to Night Cloak in that killing will reduce your reputation less. However, it also reduces your attack power a bit. The stealth mechanic does not stack with Night Cloak, so you'll have to decide which suits your purposes better. (Generally, Morals is better once you can afford it, although Night Cloak has a second use in the endgame.)

Once you evolve this, you will be able to gain DNA points from the living infected - although only about 1/1000th of what you would get from the dead. Of course, it's easier to infect large numbers of humans than it is to kill them. Also, you won't lose the energy from living souls when you summon the Demon King or devolve Blood Pact. If you plan on fighting the Demon King, you're going to need this evolved.

Free Will significantly improves reputation. You'll want to evolve this if you're aiming to get public appeal. It also allows you to keep Energy Vampirism functioning while fighting the Demon King.

This is the first ability you unlock, and it is the ability that allows you to gather DNA from the souls of the dead. Devolving this will weaken you significantly unless you've evolved Energy Vampirism and infected a lot of people, but if combined with Free Will it will significantly improve your reputation. Losing the urge to drink blood is your final step to becoming a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire.

When trying to get a good reputation score, you'll want to keep the following in mind as well:

• Keep Blood Raging to a minimum. If you must Rage, do so in a low-interest country, and have Night Cloak or Morals active.
  
• Avoid destroying labs or Templar bases. It won't completely destroy your reputation, especially if you've already got public support, but it will impact it.
  
• It's better to have one country hate you a lot than a lot of countries hate you a little.
  
• Deaths caused by the plague do not generally hurt your reputation (although they do make the cure go up faster, which means you'll have to destroy labs, which will hurt your reputation.)
  
• While evolving Appeals and Media Broadcasts early helps you infect the world faster, it may be best to wait until you can at least afford Morals before evolving these traits.
  
• Keep an eye on the news feed when moving around. If your reputation in a country is good, a blue news item like "Vampire Ethics Seminar in (Country)" or "(Country) Welcomes Vampire's Return" will show up.

Yes, teleportation has two stages in this scenario. In the first stage, you can only warp from one base to another base, making moving around the world a lot more interesting - you can't just instantly teleport to the country closest to where you want to go, sometimes you'll want to fly to the base closest to your location first in order to teleport to your desired location, and it also means flying to unexplored areas can leave your existing bases vulnerable.

The second stage is just the regular Shadow Portal from the base game, you can teleport from anywhere. This is one of the most expensive abilities, you'll unlock it near the end of the game.

This ability lets you slow down cure research, in exchange for reducing your DNA per soul. Note that this works by reducing the apparent souls you have collected, which is calculated before determining the diminishing-returns effect. You can reach the 10000 DNA cap with Suppression Spell active, you'll just have to kill or infect more people to get there.

This lets you leave "traps" while attacking a Templar base, which will detonate when you leave the country and deal a bit of extra damage. The longer you continually attack the base, the stronger the detonation will be. Time you spend in the country without attacking will cause your traps to decrease. It's not really that strong, but it can give you a little extra edge in close matchups, and timed right it can let you destroy a base while sacrificing a little less health.

One of the most powerful (and expensive) abilities you'll evolve, you unlock this by evolving Demonic Fury and Travel Speed 3. It lets you deal heavy damage to a Templar base by flying at it - the longer your flight, the greater the damage will be. It's handy for taking out those last few stubborn forts, once you've evolved everything else. It also works against the Demon King, though given the nature of the fight you probably won't get a chance to use it effectively.

There are three "Infernal" abilities that impact the countries you place bases in, giving bases extra strategic roles. Infernal Miasma passively infects people, Infernal Horde passively kills, and Infernal Flame passively destroys cure research. Infernal Horde will also assist you if you're fighting a Templar base in the same country.

Each Infernal ability makes your bases easier to spot, causing drones to destroy bases faster and also spawn more frequently. Evolving all three will subject you to a non-stop barrage of drones, so think carefully about which ones you want to evolve! You'll need all 3 in order to summon the Demon King.

You can summon the Demon King at any point once you have more than 1000 DNA points by evolving all three Infernal Abilities, evolving the Infernal Gate, then standing on a lair and waiting for all the DNA you gained from dead humans to drop down to zero. You will still keep any DNA gathered from Energy Vampirism.

Once summoned, all work on the cure will stop - the cure bar will instead represent the Demon King's health. The Demon King will move around the world, attacking any Templar forts remaining and landing in other countries to feast on the citizens and regain health. He will flee from danger and has a hidden stamina meter that limits how quickly he can keep running away before tiring out.

What happens next depends on your actions.

You can side with the Demon King and help destroy the remaining Templars, if any are left. If you devolve Free Will (or never had it in the first place) the Shadow Plague's infectivity will max out, causing it to spread across the world and finally killing everyone who remains.

If you evolve Defiance and use Blood Rage in a country where the Demon King is rampaging, you will attack him. This will cause the Demon King to stop attacking the Templars and instead focus on consuming countries. Once he gains full health, he will kill off the Shadow Plague and then yourself, just like the cure. (If the Demon King is not fighting you, even when he reaches full health the cure will not take effect.)

While fighting the Demon King, it is important to keep up a relentless assault - having full stats, as well as bases around the world you can teleport to, is essential. You'll have to decide whether it's worthwhile to let a country be consumed (if it's a small country and you won't make it in time) or to attack. The Demon King will quickly flee from any powerful attacks, but his stamina is limited, and as he tires out he will find it harder to consume citizens and regain health. Eventually countries will begin fighting back, damaging him further, and you will be able to deal the finishing strike.

When the Demon King is defeated, you will get a huge boost in DNA, allowing you to evolve Throne of the Demon King, which boosts your combat and movement stats tremendously and allows you to basically go wild.


If the Demon King is defeated, the Templars are gone, and your public reputation is poor, you can basically do whatever you want. Evolve Sacrifice of the Shadow to full power and then infect the whole world, evolve Shadow Slaves to win, or just kill everyone, or claim Throne of the Demon King and mess around, doesn't matter. People will still be working on the cure though, so make sure you either enslave or destroy the world first.

If the Demon King is defeated, the Templars are gone, your public reputation is good, and you did not use Shadow Slaves, humanity will accept you.

If the Demon King is defeated, the Templars still exist, your public reputation is good, you did not use Shadow Slaves, and you helped defeat the Demon King, the Templars will finally accept you.

If the Demon King is defeated, the Templars still exist, and the above conditions were not met, the Templars will use the Demon King's corpse to produce a new cure. This will happen extremely fast and will probably cause you to lose unless you manage to get Throne of the Demon King first and then go on a relentless assault...you'll still probably lose.

Starting in a low-interest country is probably your best option, since it will allow you to get a lot of souls without alerting the world too much. I suggest Central Africa.

In the early game, an easy way to start off strong is to Blood Rage up to 40 DNA, get Shadow's Blessing, then continue to rampage until 50,000 deaths, letting you regenerate up to 50 DNA and unlocking Visitations. Then, evolve the first level of Shadow Harvest and Sacrifice of the Shadow, and proceed to rampage in your starting country, racking up a heavy number of deaths. If you're going for PR 200,000-500,000 is a good number, letting you get Morals? or even Free Will before leaving your starting country. If you're planning on taking an aggressive route you can even go up to 1,000,000, letting you evolve the first few attack levels before you start fighting.

Remember that abilities that reduce your DNA per soul (Night Cloak and Suppression Spell) can be devolved temporarily in order to evolve new abilities.

A good reputation make the higher difficulties a lot easier. Remember that as long as you have positive reputation, the Templars will not be able to expand beyond their first few forts. It's hard to maintain a positive reputation in the higher difficulties, but not as hard as fighting the Templar at their full potential.

If you plan on playing aggressively, Suppression Spell is a must-have, especially on higher difficulty levels. You'll need to infect more to get the same value, but cure research rises fast once the Templars have expanded across the world.

Using Dynamic Entry repeatedly to destroy forts isn't as fast as using proper attacks, but Templars won't retaliate against it. If a Templar fort has built up to maximum, it's your best bet. Don't forget to add Night Cloak for the damage boost.

Don't get greedy with forts. While you can revive if you've infected enough people, it takes time (making it likely that one or more of your lairs will be taken out), your Suppression Spell will be deactivated (causing the cure to rise much faster while waiting), and if you plan on facing the Demon King, having fewer living infectees will weaken you.

Summoning the Demon King stops all cure research. While performing the summon in order to help you fight against the expanded Templars is a risky venture (if you're having trouble with Templars, it generally means that you have a poor reputation - so if the Demon King dies, you'll die with him) but it could be worthwhile if you're in a pinch. The Demon King actually gets stronger the more dead people there are.