The Binding of Isaac

[Jake55778]

I just had a rather interesting run and felt compelled to share.

(Warning, large .gif)

Spoiler! :

Sacred heart, Tough love, Loki's horns, Mom's eye, Cupid's arrow, and plenty of assorted damage ups. No Polyphemus though, picking it up would have cost me my chance at Sacred heart, although I'm happy not to have lost my maxed out fire rate.

[Wildwill002]

Done any of the challenges yet? Some are ok but others are brutal

[Jake55778]

Did all of them a while back. I prefer vanilla runs most of the time though. The unpredictability is what keeps the game interesting.

[J4Numbers]

Those teeth...
Also...
>Fires up Steam.

[J4Numbers]

I... uh. That went amazingly well.
2nd try, got to the Chest and beat blue baby in one.
Christ... I must have been overpowered as hell.
Guppy, The Mark, Mutant Spider, Small Rock... I don't even know what else I got.

[Jake55778]

One shot? That's impressive.

I think I had a run recently that might have been able to do that, but the game crashed while I was in the chest so I never actually got to try. Mom's knife plus literally every single damage up except for: Lump of Coal, The Mark and The Pact. I also had a small damage down from taking Skinny Odd Mushroom.

Against Isaac 1 hit was equal to around 80% of his health, but that was before picking up Money=Power, Stigmata, Large Odd Mushroom, and Common Cold.

[J4Numbers]

... Damn you, Jake. You've got me going on it again.
Again, I managed it on the first try with some really good bits.
robo-baby, stem cells, vampire bat, baby fetus (woo), health up x 5, 1UP (not used), Mr Boom, Cube of Meat, Ghost baby, the mega-boom thing... not sure what it's called, blood bank, dead cat (not used), magic 8, Lard, Guppy's tail, white pony and poison bombs.

Some might say that it was overkill to kill Isaac with 5 bombs...

They'd probably be right.

[Jake55778]

I don't take Dr Fetus or Epic Fetus these days. They don't have any interesting synergies, if you've beaten the game with them once then you've seen pretty much everything they have to offer. Tear effects on the other hand have all sorts of weird quirks and interactions that can still surprise me even after 400+ hours with the game.

Some combos with interesting effects:

• Loki's Horns + Mom's Eye = Tears always shoot in all four directions
• Muligan/Guppy + Technology 2 = Insane number of flies spawned
• Cupid's Arrow/The parasite + My reflection = Tears pass through enemies then return, hitting them twice
• Scapular + Nun's Habit = Infinite spacebar item usage. (Can be used to get almost any item if you have the D6 and enough patience. Add in the IV bag and the D20 for even more items)
• x10 Luck Up (pill) + Tough love = Always fire teeth (Add ipecac for exploding teeth)
• Technology + Wiggle Worm = Crazy laser
• x5+ Sacred heart = Tears fire backwards (A little hard to set up but it is possible without cheating. It involves using the D20 to get a bunch of items from chest inside a curse room, then rerolling them for devil/angel room items. if you pick up everything else in the pool eventually Sacred Heart will be the only thing that spawns and you can start getting duplicates.)
• Bloody Penny (trinket) + IV bag/Blood bank = Infinite money
• Scapular + Cursed Skull (trinket) = Really annoying immortality

Some other interesting tricks:

• If you take the portable slot machine or a wheel of fortune card into a room, play until a black fly spawns, and then leave without killing it, it will refresh that room causing all enemies to respawn. Doing this on a boss room can let you stack up upgrades or get an early lvl 4 Cube of Meat.
• If you take the portable slot machine or a wheel of fortune card into a super secret room that contains an eternal heart then any red heart drops you would normally get via gambling will instead become eternal hearts. You can use this to quickly reach 12 red heart containers.
• Red heart containers can stack past 12, however only the ones on screen can be filled. The excess ones are only counted if you use them in a deal with the devil or trade them for soul hearts using guppy's paw.
• If you place a bomb and then leave the room before it explodes when you re-enter the room it's blast radius will have increased from 2 squares to 3.
• In order to get an angel room or fight The Fallen you need to have already seen a devil room at some point in your run. However the stat that tracks this does not reset between games. If you play another run immediately without closing the game window then you will have the option to get angel rooms/the fallen right from the start.
• Don't take mutant spider or inner eye if you have Mom's Knife/Technology/Ipecac. Mutant spider halves your damage in exchange for giving you 4 shots at a time. Assuming you hit with at least 2 tears this is still normally a damage up. However for items that only count as a single tear you don't get the benefit of the other 3 shots, meaning it simply halves your damage with no benefit. The only exception is if you have brimstone, then it will multiply your damage by 4 but also your charge time.

[Jake55778]

I just 3 shot Isaac using normal tears. No Brimstone, no Knife, just Sacred Heart and a boatload of damage ups.

Spoiler! :

[Jake55778]

Giant wiggle laser:

Technology scales in size based on damage. It can get out of hand with enough upgrades

Possibly the best starting luck I've ever had:

Scapular, Crate, Pentagram, Cupid's Arrow, Coat Hanger, and Habit. Infinite re-rolls by the 4th floor. This is looking like it'll be a good run.

*edit* I should stop abusing the D6 + Habit + Scapular + D20 + Curse room combo so much. This is the 3rd run in a row I've crashed by depleting the item pools completely before reaching Blue Baby.

[J4Numbers]

Three runs in a row. The first one was poor, collecting absolutely nothing on the first floor.
The second one, I played as ??? and managed to get to Mom's heart before copping it.
The third one, just got past Mom before dying.

I missed the D6 in the second run through...

[Wildwill002]

Currently 80% off on steam

http://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/

[J4Numbers]

Ok... wow.

2nd floor as Isaac, went into a single curse room and immediately got Guppy's tail and Guppy's head, which I put back and re-rolled into dead cat...

Still on this run and I'm just waiting for the catch in this massive piece of luck...

[Jake55778]

By the 3rd floor:

Yay for range up pills!

[Lord_Mountbatten]

I find these .gifs really confusing

[Jake55778]

In what way? Is it something I can fix?

[Lord_Mountbatten]

It would probably help if I'd played the game, but I'm not sure what I'm seeing. Stuff shoots out and circles one of the creatures loads? Where is Isaac?

[Jake55778]

Isaac has a lot of items that modify the projectiles you shoot in various ways, many of which stack with eachother. After 500+ hours with the game I've beaten it enough times that rather than playing to win I mostly just aim for rare or interesting item combinations. When I get something unusual I tend to make a gif of it.

As a reference this is what your projectiles look like by default:


Oh and Isaac is the 'creature'. Certain items also change his appearance

[Invunarble]

Projectiles and objects and matter and feces and other assorted objects flying everywhere!

[Jake55778]

After 519 hours I finally got 'Platinum God' (The achievement for collecting all the achievements). I've had everything except 'Dark Boy' (Take no damage on the Depths) for months. Since most of my runs involve attempting to break the game these days it's rare that I reach the Depths without damaging myself for rerolls.