Endless Boons & Curses

Lucky double-damage hits, and healing from your own damage.

Fun fact: Lifesteal only works on auto-attacks, so it rewards keeping your fire up.

An outer lipid membrane some viruses steal from the host cell as they bud out of it, studded with the virus's own glycoproteins.

Fun fact: Enveloped viruses like flu and HIV are fragile outside the body: soap dissolves their envelope.

Viruses reprogram cell metabolism to siphon off nutrients and building blocks for themselves.

Persistent viruses replicate slowly and steadily without killing their host cell.

Some viral proteins damage the membranes of immune cells that try to grab them.

A quick burst of movement.

Fun fact: Dash through attacks rather than away from them. Watch out for thymocytes, which copy your dash.

A complete, infectious virus particle that exists outside a host cell.

Fun fact: A single infected cell can release thousands of new virions.

The building block of DNA and RNA: a sugar, a phosphate and a base (A, T, C, G in DNA; A, U, C, G in RNA).

Fun fact: Influenza stores its genes as RNA, so it uses U in place of T.

Infections spread faster in cells rich in the nucleotides and energy a virus needs to copy itself.

Lytic viruses burst their host cells, releasing virions and inflammatory debris all at once.

High-affinity attachment proteins help virions stick to and gather around target cells.

Activated immune cells move faster, following chemical trails to the infection.

A raised body temperature triggered by the immune system. It slows some pathogens and speeds up immune responses.

Fun fact: The fever and aches of the flu come mostly from your own immune response, not directly from the virus.

A Y-shaped protein made by B cells that binds to a specific part of a pathogen, marking it for destruction.

Fun fact: Your body can make billions of different antibodies.

Inflammation speeds tissue repair, helping the host recover from damage.

Immune cells exist in resting and activated states. Activated cells are bigger, multiply, produce more weapons and live longer; trained memory cells respond faster on a second encounter.

Fun fact: An activated T cell can divide every 4 to 6 hours, turning one cell into thousands within days.

How aware the host's immune system is of you, from 0 to 100. It's the bar next to the eye at the top of the screen, and the more it fills, the harder the immune system fights back.

Fun fact: Stay out of fights for a few seconds and the bar drains on its own. Refuge rooms drop it fast.

Infected cells can die explosively, releasing debris that harms nearby tissue.

Destabilizing mutations make a virion fall apart easily outside the cell.

A host with strong prior immunity (from vaccination or past infection) fights the virus off faster.