Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

[Mangela Lansbury]

I never played Binding of Isaac much, but because it was free on PS+ it's turned into the game I play before bed on my Vita. I only got through my first Boss Rush last night (I had no idea what the fuck was going on), so I felt like I could finally join this thread... but looking through it, I don't think that's the case. There's a lot more to this game than I thought there was!

[TurboPubx-16]

Feel free to ask for tips! And don't feel bad if you have to look at a wiki.

 

I got Guppy, Lord of the Flies, max luck + Triple Tooth Shot (all tears are teeth)-slowing-poison-horror-splash damage tears with big flies today. It started with Cain and Infestation. I usually don't like the items that only proc when you take damage, but combined with the Portable Bloodbank, Portable Slot machine and the Fanny Pack I started to generate unlimited amounts of everything. The game goes nuts once you max out your luck. Picked up the D6 and took it to the Chest, and that's when things got really crazy.

[Problem Machine]

Ludovico technique + brimstone + guppy. An infinite stream of flies for as long as I hold the beam on them.

 

Also, holy shit is guppy's paw insanely powerful. The fact that it got a huge nerf with the hp cap in Rebirth and is still so potent is remarkable. You can basically just quadruple your health bar in the end-game

[TurboPubx-16]

Has anyone seen my D20?

 

[Bjorn]

Ha!  That's awesome.

 

I've been trying for a max luck run, and haven't even got close yet.  The runs where I for sure get a Luck Up Pill, I don't end up finding enough (or being able to duplicate or manufacture them) to actually get it all the way up. 

 

Azazel vs the Dark Room is my last non-Hard unlock I have left, and for some bizarre reason I cannot get to the boss with him.  He should be the easiest run, and yet things just keep completely falling apart for me in Sheol, leaving me too weak for the Dark Room. 

[GraysonEvans]

My first heart kill happened when I got choco milk, tammy's head and polymorphus. I walked into the fight with a charge shot and used tammy's head. instantly dead.

[Problem Machine]

Haha excellent. I got Tammy's head on Azazal a bit ago and went through just instantly clearing rooms with his wheel of death. Good times. I love how Tammy's head goes from being close to worthless to completely game-breaking depending on your build.

[Bjorn]

Weirdly enough, I have not seen Polyphemus yet.  It's probably the only item that starts unlocked that I haven't seen. 

 

I just had a cool run with the Blue Baby.  Have been trying him on Hard, and got a Basement XL start, which had a Forget Me Now plus a surprising amount of money for a Hard beginning.  Was able to get two boss items, another treasure and a couple of store items, then use the FMN to reset the level, which became a regular Basement I, so I got to get all the items from both Basement levels again.  Nothing game breaking, but making it to Caves I just had a bunch of decent stuff, which ultimately let me get all the way to the Chest. 

 

The Paperclip is now my favorite trinket on Hard.  Keys are so sparse that having a trinket that lets you open gold chests without a key is amazing. 

[Problem Machine]

Oh my god the guillotine. Never again.

I'm not generally prone to motion sickness, and yet somehow a top-down 2d game made me feel slightly motion sick.

 

edit: In my first challenge run, I got soy milk on basement 1 and then libra on basement 2... which apparently increases your lowest stat to match your highest stat (maybe?), so I had soy milk firing speed with essentially max damage. Also due to some weird quirk the tears were firing in such a way that if I stood close to an obstacle they would go over it, so basically a slightly weaker form of spectral tears.

It was not a difficult run.

[mikemariano]

I never played Binding of Isaac much, but because it was free on PS+ it's turned into the game I play before bed on my Vita.

 

I play in bed on my laptop but this game is so stressful!  I really should stop.

[winknugget]

I had an entertaining run today. It started off terribly because I had not idea what soy milk does. I made past the basement 2 boss (Gurglings) with a half heart left and not loving my chances, but the item room on Caves 1 was Libra, and the resulting combination was a ridiculously overpowered build that made the rest of the game trivial by comparison. I managed to catch the 2nd half of the run, including boss rush and mom's heart, thanks to the PS4 game DVR or whatever.

 

 

This video was not really intended for public consumption, and starts with me struggling to get past some piles of poop.

[Problem Machine]

Getting server not found on that video, but I got Soy Milk + Libra earlier today and it is pretty insane.

edit: Nevermind some dumb connection stuff on my end

 

Ah, yeah, I'm lucky I didn't run into that poop problem. I think you might have been able to hit it if you moved as far away from it as possible, since the combo seems to go over nearby obstacles but still hit far away ones.

[TurboPubx-16]

Weirdly enough, I have not seen Polyphemus yet.  It's probably the only item that starts unlocked that I haven't seen. 

 

I just had a cool run with the Blue Baby.  Have been trying him on Hard, and got a Basement XL start, which had a Forget Me Now plus a surprising amount of money for a Hard beginning.  Was able to get two boss items, another treasure and a couple of store items, then use the FMN to reset the level, which became a regular Basement I, so I got to get all the items from both Basement levels again.  Nothing game breaking, but making it to Caves I just had a bunch of decent stuff, which ultimately let me get all the way to the Chest. 

 

The Paperclip is now my favorite trinket on Hard.  Keys are so sparse that having a trinket that lets you open gold chests without a key is amazing. 

 

Dorking out here, not real spoilers, just dorky crap:

The Isaac experts have been working on finding out item rarity and the nature of items marked as "special" etc. and so far the findings show that Poly is the most special and rarest item in the game; if you are going to find Poly, it is overwhemingly likely that it will either be your first item, or the very last item after you have rerolled through the entire pool, right before the point where the game exclusively gives you Breakfast, Breakfast, Breakfast.  If you're curious, try to catch http://www.twitch.tv/richard_hammer when he is doing a breaking run. The things this guy does are astounding. Tears so big that the center pixel of the orb takes up the full resolution of the screen.

 

Regarding the Forget Me Now, you are basically describing the perfect set up with that item and I am incredibly jealous. Fuck you! Good job! Fuck you!

 

Oh my god the guillotine. Never again.

I'm not generally prone to motion sickness, and yet somehow a top-down 2d game made me feel slightly motion sick.

 

edit: In my first challenge run, I got soy milk on basement 1 and then libra on basement 2... which apparently increases your lowest stat to match your highest stat (maybe?), so I had soy milk firing speed with essentially max damage. Also due to some weird quirk the tears were firing in such a way that if I stood close to an obstacle they would go over it, so basically a slightly weaker form of spectral tears.

It was not a difficult run.

 

I deal with the Guillotine because it is a damage-up. It is awkward and dumb but since it's a damage-up I am forced to take it. 

[Griddlelol]

So, what happens after you beat 

 

mom's heart?

 

Is that the end? Or is there another super special thing I don't know about?

[Problem Machine]

Each time you beat it you unlock a new item/facet of the game. After a certain number of times, new things will start happening.

[Bjorn]

So, what happens after you beat 

 

mom's heart?

 

Is that the end? Or is there another super special thing I don't know about?

 

If a Devil or Angel room appears, you should definitely check them out.

 

Dorking out here, not real spoilers, just dorky crap:

The Isaac experts have been working on finding out item rarity and the nature of items marked as "special" etc. and so far the findings show that Poly is the most special and rarest item in the game; if you are going to find Poly, it is overwhemingly likely that it will either be your first item, or the very last item after you have rerolled through the entire pool, right before the point where the game exclusively gives you Breakfast, Breakfast, Breakfast.  If you're curious, try to catch http://www.twitch.tv/richard_hammer when he is doing a breaking run. The things this guy does are astounding. Tears so big that the center pixel of the orb takes up the full resolution of the screen.

 

That's interesting, I could completely believe that Polyphemus is the rarest item in the game based on my experience.

[Bjorn]

Finally remembered to take some screenshots last night! I got to the Chest with Blank Card + Jera and 70+ keys. Hijinks ensued. I'd have killed to have found the Paperclip on this run. I don't know what all I had exactly, but Fire Mind, Cursed Eye (the charge shot), Quad Shot, Ipecac, Loki's Horns and Rubber Cement were all in there. Thank god I had the Wafer, as I did not pick up Pyromaniac to protect me from explosions.

And I finished off the last of the character unlocks last night, which I think only leaves topping off the Donation Machine to 999 as the last couple of unlocks I have left. Plus there are some items I haven't seen yet. But I don't really care that much about getting Platinum God. I'll probably take a break from it for awhile now. Every night I've played, I've ended up staying up later than I intended, starting "just one more run" around the time I should have been heading to bed.

[Problem Machine]

Blank card works on runes?! Wow.

[Bjorn]

Yeah, and it probably shouldn't, as it's one of the most ridiculously broken things in the game.  Blank Card would still be one of the most powerful items in the game even if it didn't work with Runes.   All you need is one battery to drop in a level, and you can pretty easily max out keys, bombs, money and Soul Hearts.   Chests with items in them dupe to more chests with items in them.  On this same run, I had the Left Hand for awhile and got a Key Beggar to drop a bunch of red chests, which I then duped multiple times and walked away with all the Guppy items plus some Devil Room items.  I also had the Credit Card for a while, so could just strip every Devil Room and Store of all their items. That run took more than 2 hours because I was just having fun making myself ridiculous.  

 

I've thought a lot about whether Rebirth is easier than original Isaac, and I'm quite convinced that it is a lot easier, for a bunch of reasons (and that being easier isn't a bad thing).  It just runs much better, which ultimately makes it easier to play from a raw mechanics stand point.  But then I think there are more individual items that can break a run open that are fairly easy to acquire (Blank Card and Krampus' Head would be two). 

[Problem Machine]

I think its base difficulty is higher (some of the new room/enemy layouts are devilish) but much more breakable. Then again, I dunno, original was also pretty breakable, if less dramatically so.

[Bjorn]

Some of the difficulty definitely changes as you get the Donation Machine to higher levels (more items in the store makes it far more likely to have something you want) and get some of the Challenge items unlocked (particularly the most useful runes), compared to starting a new save file.  Oh, and being able to bomb the Donation Machine to withdraw money is huge, especially on early levels, where picking up a Humble Bundle or Red Candle can make the first half of a run much, much smoother.

 

After playing a couple of dozen runs on Hard, I think it feels the most like old Isaac difficulty. 

 

Ultimately I think it's all a change for the positive.  There were plenty of people who put a ton of time into Isaac who never even reached the Chest.  I think that's a lot less likely now.  And it's not like Rebirth is easy, I just think you're more likely to get an easier run thanks to a higher prevalence of certain items than you were on old Isaac. 

[miffy495]

I beat mom's heart for the third time last night and did a boss rush while doing it. I feel like I'm maybe good enough to say something in this thread now? I watched Klepek's streams earlier this year and thought the game looked cool, and have been playing the shit out of this since it was free for Vita on PS+. This game is pretty sweet. I don't understand almost any of the items, but I love playing around with them.

[TurboPubx-16]

Just carried a Chaos Card from Caves 1 to the Dark Room and threw it at the Lamb. Best item in the game.

[atte]

From http://bindingofisaac.com/ :

 

"once the holidays end, the nicalis gang will be jumping back into the abyss and digging into the very large design doc i have ready for em. i have big plans for this expansion, i hope to add a very huge chunk of gameplay in the form of a new game mode that will almost double the amount of things you can do, im very proud of this new design. aside from this new game mode the expansion will feature a ton more enemies, bosses, new areas, endings and a new playable character as well as a slew of new unique items to play with…"

 

Oh wow...

[Bjorn]

Well that all sounds awesome. 

 

Going to be a bunch of community ideas included as well.  You can see the submissions in this reddit thread.