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    The Binding of Isaac How to solve the Adversary: stay close

    January 19, 2021

    The Binding of Isaac How to solve the Adversary: stay close

    How to solve the Adversary: stay close

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 12:40 AM PST

    How to solve the Stain: stop moving

    Posted: 18 Jan 2021 02:46 PM PST

    I just love Ed's games so much I just had to make some Art

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 05:40 AM PST

    How to "solve" the Matriarch:

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 09:35 AM PST

    On today's daily run...

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 05:55 AM PST

    How to solve the Bloat: Get behind him

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 09:17 AM PST

    Finding one random item is already rare ... but THREE in the same room?

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 05:39 AM PST

    Best combo

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 01:59 AM PST

    Is soy milk good or bad?

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 06:14 AM PST

    Time to settle this once and for all

    View Poll

    submitted by /u/De_shnivfla
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    The Keeper as a whole is a flawed, broken, and RNG-heavy challenge compared to everything else. (Essay/Discussion + Mini-Rant)

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 09:40 AM PST

    tl;dr, The Keeper promotes a playstyle that's too unreliable, RNG-based, and gimmicky to be a proper challenge character.

    Introduction:

    After finally beating Hush + Delirium as Keeper after a negative 24 win streak, I realized to myself that it wasn't fun. My run was saved a lucky combination of Fanny Pack, Head of the Keeper, Swallowed Penny, and Piggy Bank, and despite the fact my Keeper gets a penny and I get a bent penny in my item pools, I didn't feel satisfied nor felt like I had any real fun playing as the Keeper, I was just taking out my frustrations on the monsters when I finally got a good run. It then hit me like an out-of-control the truck, the Keeper is flawed, like really flawed. Compared to Edmund's other games, the difficulty there is also paired with a high amount of fun, momentary highs, and excitement to boot, and usually it comes from learning the game and mastering the challenges thrown. Even when looking at other challenges like The Lost, it still brings a similar amount of fun and adrenaline sided with its challenge or never taking a hit (or 2 with holy mantle). Despite of this, the Keeper exists. In this little text post/essay, I will discuss every aspect of the Keeper there is, and possibly ways to fix it. I may say hopeful of a challenge character being buffed, but Bethany is getting a rework that makes her more interesting to play and the Lost got some buffs when Afterbirth came out, so I hope my heart will be in the right place.

    Comparison to the Lost + Benefits:

    The Lost and Keeper both fall in the category of challenge characters, where they have incredible and detrimental downsides that change how you play the game, similar of a "Can you beat X without doing Y run" from VGMyths. Binding of Isaac doesn't really have a way to "master" it, just become an expert in it because of the procedural generated layout of the floors + room, so the game doesn't really expect the impossible out of you, and because of this, these two characters do have upsides.

    For the anyone unfamiliar with the Lost, their stats are:

    • Has one coin and no bomb.
    • Has the D4, Flight, Spectral Tears, and an unlock-able Holy Mantle.
    • Whenever the Lost is not taking damage, their health is always set to half a soul heart and is invisible on the hud, effectively making him a no hit run character.

    And for the Keeper, their stats are:

    • -0.15 Speed, More damage, more tear delay, -2 Luck.
    • +1 unlock-able coin, 1 unlock-able Store Key.
    • Triple shot and an unlock-able Wooden Nickel.
    • All heart drops and forced hearts are converted to flies, certain hearts giving more flies.
    • Their health is replaced with Coin Health and the Keeper cannot have more than 2 coins or any other kind of health. Coin Health always takes 1 full heart of damage no matter what, meaning 2 hits and he's out. Coin Health can be replenished by substituting any coin, and temporary versions of the heart are permanent. They are treated as Red Hearts by most other items and ingame mechanics.

    Because the Lost has no health, this means that he doesn't get the common health upgrades in the game (especially those in boss item pools), but luckily get devil deals for free, effectively forcing him the route of taking Devil Deals, sometimes at a better payout of a pair of 2 heart deals vs. not having 1 health upgrade, compared to normal characters who can't frequently take the amount of deals at that cost with the boss item. The Keeper however doesn't get such luxury, he can usually only take a single 1 heart deal, and usually only if he can ever get to a devil deal since he cannot hold soul hearts, and if the boss item is an HP up, otherwise he'll be stuck at death's door 1 health. What that accumulates to is that if you want a devil deal as the Keeper, you'll need to play perfectly (no hit whatsoever), while having weaker stats, no flight or spectral tears, and you'll have to be lucky to get an HP up from the boss pool or sometimes the treasure pool. It's legitimately insane, and I cannot even believe that Edmund was able to beat Delirium without getting insanely lucky as me.

    Speed:

    In a bullet hell game like BOI, speed is everything. Remembering enemy patterns, avoiding hazards, going from room to room, even speed running to reach boss rush or the Hush, its one of the 3 main traits every RPG focuses on alongside offence and defence. The Keeper has -0.15 speed, and alongside a bad starting DPS thats worse than the default triple shot, you need to be lucky and hope you get a good speed upgrade to help you with everything in this game. The worst part is that he doesn't have flight, so he will waste more time than usual avoiding floor hazards and manoeuvring around pits, but he's still getting a vanity noose.

    Coin Health + Decay mechanic:

    Keeper's Coin Health is the name of the game, and that game is heavily weighted on luck. The main problem with coin health as a whole is the limitation of the 2 hearts + you cannot have any other type of hearts, making you susceptible to lack of devil deals. It was already discussed that the Keeper can't take devil deals often because he has health that isn't shielded and he only can really take devil deals if he can supplement with an HP up, but what's worse is the bad implementation of the Decay mechanic (where the pickup hearts are converted into flies). Let's say the Keeper picks up and HP upgrade while at his max 2 coin heart limit, how many flies would he get? Would he get 10 since 1 eternal heart is 5 flies and an HP up is essentially 2 eternal hearts? Maybe it's just 3 flies because its 1 heart? Nope, nada, not a single flying fuck. While most players exchange their HP up for an item in the devil deal, and the Lost doesn't even get an HP up but can take free devil deals, the Keeper cant utilize the coin health or the decay mechanic properly unless you get lucky. Also while this seems petty, the amount of flies from each heart seems cheap. 6 flies from a golden heart, if I was able to get a golden heart that'd be a godsend for the Keeper, but here its literally 2 uses of Guppy's head.

    Starting Items:

    The last thing I can talk about are the Keeper's unlock-able starting items; his wooden nickel and his store key. The wooden nickel is basically a 1 room charge 50/50 of dropping any coin, usually a penny. The wooden nickel is practically the only way you're able to play as the Keeper, and it's insane to think that this has to be unlocked by beating Isaac first as him. What's worse is that because its a 50/50 (luckily unaffected by the luck stat and the Keeper's -2 luck) it usually allows you to take an expected value of 0.5 hits a room, compared to the Lost who is guaranteed to take up to 1 hit a room with his holy mantle. This also means curse rooms are a no-go unless you have enough bombs to go in or have some contingency plan for your black carpet visit. The store key isn't as great either, and for a few reasons. If you take a look at the item pools in BOI, you'll notice two types of item themes they'll follow, gameplay, or cosmetic. For example curse room item pools are associated with curse or evil-like items, angel rooms focus on defensive and holy items, golden chests have items that are part of the head, are a head, or bags, and devil beggar items focus on drugs and evil items. The shop however focuses on items that support builds rather than make them (and also has items that are common to find in the real world), similar to the game-play affect of trinkets, with very few combative items. If you played TF2, Overwatch, or really most MMOs or DOTAs, you'll know that stacking nothing but supports with no defence or offensive capabilities is not going to result in victory. While the Keeper's wooden nickel usually can give out a nickel or a dime, and typically he is able to get more many than most other characters early game, whats the point if he can't buy good items?

    Conclusion + My balance suggestions:

    To summarize what I said, the Keeper has shit manoeuvrability, shit offence and ways to get offence, shit defence and ways to get defence, shit starting items, all of which can only be remedied by being lucky most of the time. Out of all of the challenges Edmund has thrown in his career (Super Meat Boy, End is Nigh, DLC-less Lost, Delirium), this is by far the worst due to how only luck is able to save this character unless you are an absolute god at this game, which is near impossible due to the randomized floor layouts, items you get, rooms, and sometimes, the enemies themselves. When you watch a streamer or youtuber play BOI, you'll see them play one of the characters for fun, like Judas for glass cannon strats, Azazel for a good early run, ??? or the Lost for a game constantly on the edge, but I bet that you have NEVER seen someone play the Keeper for legitmate fun and not for their completion marks. So what would I do in order to remedy this salted lemon in the potato-peeled wound? Well I have quite a bit of buffs and nerfs I would apply if I had access to Isaac's game, whilst still making him a relatively tough challenge character.

    • Buff (the biggest and most important one): Keeper can have a maximum of 3 coin hearts (but still starts with 2) by default, allowing him to take 2 heart devil deals without instant death, and putting him on the edge with 1 coin heart and a good item.
    • Buff: The Keeper's vanity noose (coming in Repentance) will fully form and give him flight upon entering the Womb (or possibly cathe/shoel), allowing for a bit more movement options if he has been lacking them before the run.
    • Buff: Double the amount of flies from all decaying hearts. Double red hearts become the equivalent of 2 red heart of flies (4 normally, 8 with double flies). Collecting an HP up while at the maximum amount of hearts gives the equivalent of 2 eternal hearts of flies (10 normally, 20 with double flies).
    • Buff: Empty Vessel works on the Keeper if they have just 1 coin heart.
    • Buff: The Wafer and Zodiac's Cancer will increase the maximum amount of coin hearts by 1 and give an HP up.
    • Fix: Fix Maggy's faith not giving any eternal hearts, jesus christ. I WANT MY FLIES.
    • Change: The decay mechanic only works when the Keeper touches the heart to convert into the flies, preventing him from auto-collecting all the flies in the room. When the Keeper touches a heart, it contributes to items that activate on heart pickup such as immaculate conception, maggy's bow, and allows dark bum or the jar to pick them up, or for a D20 affect to occur on them if needed.
    • Change: Wooden Nickel instead of having a 50/50 of giving a coin, instead gives a coin every second use of it, allowing for more calculated plays, especially when using things that sacrifice health like curse rooms or devil beggars.
    • Change: The Keeper can only have a maximum of 6 coin hearts at a time, unable to go past that from effects such as Greed's Gullet (and the suggested Wafer + Cancer hp extension buff idea)
    • Nerf: Swallowed Penny only has a 33% of activating on the Keeper. Orange champions still take coins without dropping them on the floor.
    • Nerf: All sources of healing are disabled, and are instead replaced with 1-3 flies each time it would've occured, such as Pyromaniac, Placenta, Charm of the Vampire, and Leech.

    Really if only one of these suggestions were to be implemented, I'd want it to be the maximum of 3 coin hearts so 2 heart devil deals are an option and so it isn't immensely brutal to be on the edge because of the 50/50 wooden nickel, and maybe the change in the decay mechanic, but I feel I'm getting too hopeful for a character designed to be challenging getting buffed, despite that challenge coming from all the wrong reasons. Really I'd like to hear what you all think about the Keeper and ways he could buffed (either as something for Repentance or as an idea for a workshop mod), and I hope you enjoyed my analysis on the Keeper, and why he flat out sucks to play. All I can hope is that the Keeper, while still being a difficult challenge character, can atleast be fun to play as sometime.

    submitted by /u/armscratch
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    IAMERROR 2x blood dono, 2x beggar, 2x bed

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 05:08 AM PST

    Pentagram icon is just Sonic seen from above

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 07:12 AM PST

    Ah yes the lost

    Posted: 18 Jan 2021 04:43 PM PST

    I'm about to get binding of Isaac on switch Friday so I joined the subreddit so hello

    Posted: 18 Jan 2021 05:07 PM PST

    My sister drew Azazel

    Posted: 18 Jan 2021 11:23 AM PST

    I cicled 2 times mom's box to get the butter trinket for god sake what a breaking run

    Posted: 18 Jan 2021 08:35 PM PST

    Chaos is so cursed

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:41 AM PST

    Is Delirium your favorite TBOI boss?

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:17 AM PST

    Let's ignore for a moment how much of a dickhead that thing is, and let's think for a moment about the boss itself. Is Delirium your favorite? I remember people thought he sucked (because of the bugged animations) back when Plus was released but it's been quite a while now and I wonder if people actually likes that cum skull now. I personally love it.

    View Poll

    submitted by /u/iDontaeCareFAM
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    1000 hours in this game and this is the first time I've seen a room full of coins in the chest

    Posted: 18 Jan 2021 02:29 PM PST

    Have a Heart

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:10 AM PST

    I'm doing the Have a Heart challenge and was wondering what ways I can obtain health. I had a quick look at the wiki to find out the most beneficial items/pills/cards.
    In amongst it all there's this: "

    • Obtaining the 📷 Habit or 📷 Sharp Plug from a shop allows Placebo or Blank Card to be used at will without any fear of death.

    Can anyone tell me if this is a mistake? I just don't see how it would as Habit gives +1 charge when being hit, and Sharp Plug takes two hearts to use your 0 charged spacebar item.

    submitted by /u/AceX1990
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    Monstro

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 01:23 AM PST

    I proceeded to break the game with D20 for my first time, and then forgot to bring 99 cents to the greed fight.

    Posted: 19 Jan 2021 12:08 AM PST
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