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The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth |OT| Pixel Heart Mother

I've been playing this game since it came out for PS4, probably averaging a run or two a night, and it's easily one of my favorite games of the year.

Only thing that bugs me is it still feels like more luck than skill when I manage to win a run.

I've been trying to use the different rooms more often, for awhile I was just finding the item room and heading for the boss since the other rooms felt pointless to me. Honestly they still do to an extent, for example it seems like more than half the time I use a sacrifice room I either don't get a chest before I run out of hears, or it'll have like a key or a couple pennies or something like that.

I was ignoring the shop for awhile too, I've been trying to take better advantage of that but it seems like most of the $.15 items are passive ones that are really hard to tell the effect of. In fact, after putting quite a bit of time into the game I don't think I know what any of the passive items do aside from the worms, which are really obvious.

Do most people bother bombing random walls to find the secret rooms? Again, I've been trying to make that a habit but it usually feels like a waste to me, I'll spend a ton of time finding rooms and all I'll get is a few spare keys or maybe a silver heart or two.

Absolutely love the game but I wish I had a better grasp on how I can get better at it.
A few hints:
1) if you open a shop but don't want any item in it, put them in the donation machine.
2)ignore sacrifice rooms, they are probably the worst part of the game.
3) if you feel strong enough, explore all the rooms. You can always use the extra supplies, and sometimes you can just straight up find items.
4) secret rooms are not random: they are usually found surrounded by 3 or more other rooms (except boss rooms) and all the rooms MUST have clear paths to the wall (no rocks, no gaps, no spikes).
5) trinkets are not clear at first, but you only have to experiment with them. ( or look at the wikia :p)
 

ElTopo

Banned
Finally beat The Tank and Darkness Falls. Darkness Falls was a big pain in the ass because I'd get a shit load out.

Anyone manage to beat Suicide Kings? That is some bullshit right there.
 

Haunted

Member
"1" and "6" dice rooms can be really confusing if you don't have a good grasp on pretty much all the possible items and their combinations in the game. :lol

I've only ever used them when I was in real dire straits and had to save a botched run. If things are going well, the risk of rerolling into shit absolutely isn't worth it, imo.
 
A few hints:
1) if you open a shop but don't want any item in it, put them in the donation machine.
2)ignore sacrifice rooms, they are probably the worst part of the game.
3) if you feel strong enough, explore all the rooms. You can always use the extra supplies, and sometimes you can just straight up find items.
4) secret rooms are not random: they are usually found surrounded by 3 or more other rooms (except boss rooms) and all the rooms MUST have clear paths to the wall (no rocks, no gaps, no spikes).
5) trinkets are not clear at first, but you only have to experiment with them. ( or look at the wikia :p)

Thanks! One more thing I'm curious about is how often people use pills.

So far the only time I risk them is if I'm really desperate or if I'm at the vey beginning of a run and I can just restart if I get Tears Down or something like that.

Seems like a majority of them either harm you by lowering a stat, or only kind of useful in some situations like Explosive Diharrea, or just do nothing like Puberty. Seems like it's almost never worth the risk to maybe get lucky and get a stat increase.
 
Finally beat The Tank and Darkness Falls. Darkness Falls was a big pain in the ass because I'd get a shit load out.

Anyone manage to beat Suicide Kings? That is some bullshit right there.

A couple of things with Suicide King:

Try and get something that generates flies (I think Guppy's Head is the easiest to get when there are no item rooms). Flies scale off your damage, and do a crap ton of damage in the challenge since Ipecac is so strong.

Ring worm/whip worm will up your shot speed a lot and make it way easier to hit things with Ipecac without having to shot curve back on you.
 

Meia

Member
If I get curse of Darkness in Sheol one more time I'm going to flip. Tired of losing runs to that pointless crap. ><
 
Thanks! One more thing I'm curious about is how often people use pills.

So far the only time I risk them is if I'm really desperate or if I'm at the vey beginning of a run and I can just restart if I get Tears Down or something like that.

Seems like a majority of them either harm you by lowering a stat, or only kind of useful in some situations like Explosive Diharrea, or just do nothing like Puberty. Seems like it's almost never worth the risk to maybe get lucky and get a stat increase.

Unless your run is going very poorly, always use pills. As you get further, you can stop using them. In the floors after mom's fight you can get hematemesis, and it can really screw you over.
Keep in mind that range, tears, and speed down lower your stats by an inferior amount compared to their positive counterparts.
 
Do most people bother bombing random walls to find the secret rooms? Again, I've been trying to make that a habit but it usually feels like a waste to me, I'll spend a ton of time finding rooms and all I'll get is a few spare keys or maybe a silver heart or two.

Absolutely love the game but I wish I had a better grasp on how I can get better at it.

Secret rooms are always adjacent to as many rooms as possible (3 or 4) and are usually far away from the boss. They're never next to a boss room and may rarely only have 2 rooms adjacent to them.

Super secret rooms are adjacent to only one room, and are usually near the boss room. They're never adjacent to the boss room.

Hope that helps. Secret rooms are a pain when you don't have access to the map.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Secret rooms are always adjacent to as many rooms as possible (3 or 4) and are usually far away from the boss. They're never next to a boss room and may rarely only have 2 rooms adjacent to them.

Super secret rooms are adjacent to only one room, and are usually near the boss room. They're never adjacent to the boss room.

Hope that helps. Secret rooms are a pain when you don't have access to the map.

Don't forget that secret room entrances
are never in areas that require flying to reach, so if one of 3 walls is impossible to bomb on foot, that area isn't the secret room

Unless your run is going very poorly, always use pills. As you get further, you can stop using them. In the floors after mom's fight you can get hematemesis, and it can really screw you over.
Keep in mind that range, tears, and speed down lower your stats by an inferior amount compared to their positive counterparts.

Hematemesis is super safe if you have less than 4 filled hearts anyway, and acts effectively as a healing item if you have only a couple filled hearts but empty red contains.

A couple of things with Suicide King:

Try and get something that generates flies (I think Guppy's Head is the easiest to get when there are no item rooms). Flies scale off your damage, and do a crap ton of damage in the challenge since Ipecac is so strong.

Ring worm/whip worm will up your shot speed a lot and make it way easier to hit things with Ipecac without having to shot curve back on you.

Boomerang also scales on your damage and will OHKO almost anything in that challenge
 
Hematemesis is super safe if you have less than 4 filled hearts anyway, and acts effectively as a healing item if you have only a couple filled hearts but empty red contains.

Yes, but once I was in front of mom's heart with like 8 heart containers, and used a pill against my better judgement. It only gave me 2 hearts back :p
 

marrec

Banned
Secret rooms are always adjacent to as many rooms as possible (3 or 4) and are usually far away from the boss. They're never next to a boss room and may rarely only have 2 rooms adjacent to them.

Super secret rooms are adjacent to only one room, and are usually near the boss room. They're never adjacent to the boss room.

Hope that helps. Secret rooms are a pain when you don't have access to the map.

This may be anecdotal, but I've also found this with Secret rooms:

If there is a possibility that it's adjacent to a challenge/shop/sacrifice room then that's where you should bomb first. More often than not I use that metric to find the secret room on larger maps with multiple possibilities.

Again, completely anecdotal, but I've put enough hours into BoI vanilla and rebirth to convince myself of a pattern.
 

I Wanna Be The Guy

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Ok Mega Satan is fucking ridiculous. It's waaaaaaaaaay too long and just frustrating to die on it. Especially considering it doesn't even have a goddamn health bar so I dont even know if I was close. It pissed me off when I thought I beat it only for it to turn in to another form. I'm just gonna youtube this thing and see how close I actually was.

Aaaaaaand it turns out I was pretty damn close. This makes me feel even worse.
 

Meia

Member
Suicide King, make it to the heart, I kill it, BUT it just happened to spawn the big bouncing around black ball that releases small spiders when each part dies. Needless to say, died to it and promptly threw my controller.
 

SerTapTap

Member
This may be anecdotal, but I've also found this with Secret rooms:

If there is a possibility that it's adjacent to a challenge/shop/sacrifice room then that's where you should bomb first. More often than not I use that metric to find the secret room on larger maps with multiple possibilities.

Again, completely anecdotal, but I've put enough hours into BoI vanilla and rebirth to convince myself of a pattern.

More importantly, secret rooms leading into curse/shop/item rooms can let you use bombs instead of health/keys if that's what you have more of. I love bombing into a curse room.

Ok Mega Satan is fucking ridiculous. It's waaaaaaaaaay too long and just frustrating to die on it. Especially considering it doesn't even have a goddamn health bar so I dont even know if I was close. It pissed me off when I thought I beat it only for it to turn in to another form. I'm just gonna youtube this thing and see how close I actually was.

Aaaaaaand it turns out I was pretty damn close. This makes me feel even worse.

Ouch, yeah the last form is pretty short. I don't think hurting the hands actually reduces HIS health BTW, so if you can't pierce, focus on the head. Still a fairly long (but fun IMO) fight. I wish I had more reason to go after it, since getting the key is hard/impossible in many runs. Don't forget to clear out The Chest/
DArk Room
before fighting him, it's easiest if you have all the pickups you can get. Also, you can fight him AFTER the end boss for the floor if you want, just don't touch the chest.
 

Newt

Member
Alright, so I got the Dice Room with a 6 and now I'm super confused.

I apparently can no longer shoot after hitting this room. However, occasionally when trying to shoot, it'll generate a red portal-looking thing and my beam will fire out of it. But it's completely unreliable and I can't figure out how to get it to trigger.

Other than that, if I stay in a room long enough (15 seconds or so) with enemies, I'll suddenly turn invincible and will be able to kill them by running into them.

Also, when I lay bombs, it creates a huge clump of powerful tears.


http://i.imgur.com/zNcEvuC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DSQCwU3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/S8Q7yko.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lrUxtfo.jpg

WTF was randomly generated by that dice room???
Remember, 6 changes all your items. You got brimstone and anti-grav.


The 15 seconds thing is probably Taurus.
 
Unless your run is going very poorly, always use pills. As you get further, you can stop using them. In the floors after mom's fight you can get hematemesis, and it can really screw you over.
Keep in mind that range, tears, and speed down lower your stats by an inferior amount compared to their positive counterparts.

Well, that's good to know, I was assuming that whenever a stat went up or down it was always by one "point."


Secret rooms are always adjacent to as many rooms as possible (3 or 4) and are usually far away from the boss. They're never next to a boss room and may rarely only have 2 rooms adjacent to them.

Super secret rooms are adjacent to only one room, and are usually near the boss room. They're never adjacent to the boss room.

Hope that helps. Secret rooms are a pain when you don't have access to the map.

I think I'm pretty good at finding them, the problem is they rarely seem worth the time. Even when I've used items that fill out the map and gone to all of the secret room in a floor, usually the best things in them are keys and coins, and never enough to really feel like it's making a difference in a run.

Have I just been unlucky?
 
I know this has already been asked but is there still no work-around for the PS4 save bug? I have to keep deleting my save and downloading it again. It's a real pain in the ass. I bought the game on Steam too but I've made the most progress on the PS4 and don't really want to have to start from scratch again.
 

Double

Member
Question to you guys - some time ago they was something about getting a price cut for Rebirth when owning the original Isaac. I didn't follow the release, was/is this a thing?
 
I think I'm pretty good at finding them, the problem is they rarely seem worth the time. Even when I've used items that fill out the map and gone to all of the secret room in a floor, usually the best things in them are keys and coins, and never enough to really feel like it's making a difference in a run.

Have I just been unlucky?

Pretty much everything was nerfed for Rebirth, meaning that you may possibly find nothing interesting in them but it usually does pay off, even if just a little bit, to find them. On rare occasions you may get a boss battle with one of the sins, which are almost always worth it.
 

desverger

Member
Just had the most ridiculous run ever:

Azazel, all the speed, all the hearts, not a single goddamn damage up.. but, homing tears, concussive tears and ludovico.

Managed to beat the Dark Room, but that sure took ages! I was basically sitting in a corner of the room, waiting for my wobbly ludovico to confuse the enemies and chip their health away..
 
Just had the most ridiculous run ever:

Azazel, all the speed, all the hearts, not a single goddamn damage up.. but, homing tears, concussive tears and ludovico.

Managed to beat the Dark Room, but that sure took ages! I was basically sitting in a corner of the room, waiting for my wobbly ludovico to confuse the enemies and chip their health away..
How does Ludovicho work with Azazel?
 

dLMN8R

Member
You got brimstone+anti-grav tears+ a lot of tears down by the looks of it, infamy makes it hard to tell when the laser is charged. You also got taurus (progressive speed upin a room which then makes you invincible). Lastly, you got the sad bombs, should be pretty nice against bosses.

I was playing as Azazel so I already had brimstone. And yeah, looks like I had Infamy.

Taurus makes sense, that describes what I was seeing.


The biggest confusion though was that my ability to fire tears (in this case my Azazel Brimstone shots) was completely unpredictable. I don't think it was anti-grav tears, I've had those before and this was different.

In this case, no matter how long I charged my Brimstone shot, it was never actually guaranteed to shoot. It made it completely unwieldy.
 

Camwi

Member
Hey guys, does anyone know if turning into Guppy will still unlock items for beating bosses as certain characters?
 

dLMN8R

Member
How does Ludovicho work with Azazel?

http://bindingofisaacrebirth.gamepedia.com/The_Ludovico_Technique

Brimstone: Instead of firing a blood laser, Isaac now controls a circular beam of blood.

oooooo pretty


A few hints:
1) if you open a shop but don't want any item in it, put them in the donation machine

Do you mean donate your money instead? You make it sounds like you can put the item in a donation machine, but I don't think that's possible.
 

Haunted

Member
Thanks! One more thing I'm curious about is how often people use pills.

So far the only time I risk them is if I'm really desperate or if I'm at the vey beginning of a run and I can just restart if I get Tears Down or something like that.

Seems like a majority of them either harm you by lowering a stat, or only kind of useful in some situations like Explosive Diharrea, or just do nothing like Puberty. Seems like it's almost never worth the risk to maybe get lucky and get a stat increase.
Always use all ??? pills is my motto. There are as many good ones as there are bad ones. For every Luck up there's a luck down, for every health down and bad trip there's a full health and health up. And the balance only shifts further in your favour as you get luck up items/upgrades or PhD.

Identifying them early when the floors aren't as tough means you have a better chance of knowing what you're getting yourself into when you find one later on.
 

Haunted

Member
I think I'm pretty good at finding them, the problem is they rarely seem worth the time. Even when I've used items that fill out the map and gone to all of the secret room in a floor, usually the best things in them are keys and coins, and never enough to really feel like it's making a difference in a run.

Have I just been unlucky?
Just unlucky, secret rooms can contain some really good stuff. From 9+ coins to [black] hearts to a crystal ball machine to a number of pills to a random item from a pretty strong pool...I think they're well worth seeking out. Not spending half your time looking for the entries, mind you, but you'd be foolish to skip them if you know exactly where they are.
 

Altazor

Member
I just finished my most successful run, it was OP as fuck lol.

"Money = Power" + "Midas Touch" + 57 coins + 2 Pretty Flies + Sister Maggy + Mongo Baby + a couple of "DMG up" thingies after some bosses + unused The Sun tarot card... equals Mom's Heart beaten in 5 seconds. That was fun as hell.
 
How to win:
Step 1. Get Leech
Step 2. Get Gnawed Leaf
Step 3. Stand still, become invincible, and have Leech slowly kill every boss
 

Newt

Member
So I feel like it's better to rush to the boss rush room, rather than to explore every room (including secret rooms). The exception is if you're not strong enough, don't have a teleport, or don't have a revive item.
 

Haunted

Member
I feel like the expansion will have
a different boss spawn after the big door in the Cathedral. Mega Satan appearing in Sheol and the Cathedral doesn't really make sense, I feel like there should be a heavenly counterpart to him or something.
 

aku:jiki

Member
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS! I was on my last run for the night, feeling annoyed with the game, and I finally got my stupid Godhead! It did nothing for my build as I had Epic Fetus, but at least I'm finally a real platinum god!

The game had to taunt me one last time... I had Sharp Plug, D6, Wafer and 12 hearts. First angel room I spent 11.5 hearts rerolling without seeing it, damn near killing myself in the process, and the game started cycling non-angel items. I pressed on and the next floor had no angel room at all, next one after that had a devil room and then finally on Womb 1 I saw the last angel room. Blew up the angel to get 2 item pedestals and spammed the Sharp Plug. It started on angel room items but quickly went to the item pool. I gave up and just kept spamming to kill myself and then, among random item room items and with only 2 hearts remaining, Godhead!

(They really should fix the way angel rooms troll you so hard by randomly jumping in and out of the correct pool. That just doesn't seem right at all, no other pool does that as far as I know.)

I feel like the expansion will have
a different boss spawn after the big door in the Cathedral. Mega Satan appearing in Sheol and the Cathedral doesn't really make sense, I feel like there should be a heavenly counterpart to him or something.
Speaking of bosses and the expansion, did anyone see that they found a "lost" boss in the code? It's called Sisters Vis and is a giant version of the laser-spewing vaginas, I guess. It was supposed to show up in Sheol.

Edit: I wonder if this is the remnant of an idea to extend the game even more, adding alternate bosses to Sheol/Cathedral to create variation since they want (or wanted) to add a level after Chest/DRoom? It'd be weird for Sheol to have an alt if they didn't have something like that in mind. That might be the exact reason it was removed, though...

So I feel like it's better to rush to the boss rush room, rather than to explore every room (including secret rooms). The exception is if you're not strong enough, don't have a teleport, or don't have a revive item.
Disagree. A chance at two item room pool items at the cost of finding every secret room and going to every shop, etc, isn't anywhere near worth it, IMO. Maybe if the boss rush had a special pool with mostly damage ups or something, and a few bad items for good measure, but rushing your ass off for Spelunker Hat and Gemini is not worth it.
 
D

Deleted member 125677

Unconfirmed Member
How many endings are there? I just beat
mom's heart
on the Vita version, and I have a feeling I'm just getting started :D

Spoiler-tag the answer for others pls
 

SerTapTap

Member
How many endings are there? I just beat
mom's heart
on the Vita version, and I have a feeling I'm just getting started :D

Spoiler-tag the answer for others pls

16

There's an ending list in the stats thing BTW. I forget if it actually lists all of them at the start or what
 
Today's going to be a good day. I did it. I finally beat isaac with blue baby. To start off, i got ipecac in the first item room so from there bosses were infinitely easier. Great pills kepy dropping like multiple pretty flies, range ups, and a ridiculous amount of health ups. Boss rush spawned so i thought id at least entertain the idea. I picked up the quad shot and cleared it in a minute or two. From there, i just kept wiping rooms making sure to keep my distant. Eventually i get to isaac and beat him without even getting touched.

Feels fucking great man. Now to ride off into the sunset, close my laptop, and enjoy my birthday weekend festivities.
 

Kid Ska

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
Welp, that's all of the hard mode unlocks with the regular characters. I guess it's time for the secret character now... fuck. I've been dreading this.
 

autoduelist

Member
Questions:

1) Do I need to avoid damage on Sheol/Cathedral and Dark Room/Chest to get the Dead Baby trophy or just Dark Room/Chest.
This trophy has been vexing me. I have come SOOOOO close, but I haven't seen an OP build in ages.

2) 3rd form boss in Chest is bothering the daylights out of me -- he teleports right on top of me, no matter what. I've tried moving constantly, I've tried standing still when he raises his wings, and I've tried reversing direction when he raises his wings... and invariable, he plops right on top of me every time. Which is really annoying because i'm going for Dead Baby, and that means a whole new game. Also note I haven't had any OP builds in ages so it's not like I can get a 1 second kill (unless I found a card, which i haven't). Is this avoidable? It must be, but it's driving me crazy and takes a whole game to get to.




edit.... can confirm trophy did not pop taking no damage on chest but some in cathedral. definitely not hit in chest, as i used emperor card with 1 heart on a hard ??? run. used a spike plus guppy head to load up on flies before leaving cathedral since i only cared about no damage


Yeah, rotten baby isn't worth the heart it costs. The fly will sit around doing nothing a lot of the time and the damage is negligible most of the time. I'll argue all day that almost all baby's are completely worthless most of the time and not worth taking.

You guys crazy. Rotten Baby is awesome. Absolutely awesome. I'd take him over any other familiar except Dark Bum. Lil' Brimstone is a possible 3rd, depending on build.
 

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
Hey, what's that webpage which looks at your steam isaac achievements and puts, in graphical form, all the missing achievements and associated unlocks/conditions for you?

I used to have it but lost it :(
 

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
Is there an item or something that makes your tears disappear, except for the shadows? Or is it a bug? It's happened a couple times, I haven't really worked it out.

Also, is there a point to the donation machine once you get to 999 coins? I was surprised to see it reappear with a count of 0, after exploding IIRC.
 

Leezard

Member
Is there an item or something that makes your tears disappear, except for the shadows? Or is it a bug? It's happened a couple times, I haven't really worked it out.

Also, is there a point to the donation machine once you get to 999 coins? I was surprised to see it reappear with a count of 0, after exploding IIRC.

Oh, yeah, there is a point. If you only fill it to 999 and don't put in another coin, it will stay at 999 coins and you can use it with bombs to deposit coins.
 

aku:jiki

Member
Huh, I thought Brimstone cancelled out everything? I just picked up Tech 1 while playing as Azazel and ended up with a medium-speed but strong tech laser. What was very weird was that I picked up a Tears Up pill, the only tears up item I found, and it instantly made the laser rmega-fast but retained the damage, so I basically had a Tech 2 with Brimstone damage.

Found all the guppy pieces in the same run so that was good times.
 
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