Isaac CHARACTERS Tips & Tricks 

as a dead god player this man is lying hold R until the green spider is in the yellow crown room

37:00 that little pause after the health down pill speaks thousands of words without talking

As an extra tip with keeper, I would like to say that he, along with Maggie, is one of the best users of the sacrifice rooms since when he sacrifices himself, coins can spawn and he heals very easily.

2:56 green has got to be my favorite mode in isaac

I dont know how many people will get this reference. But youre like the Otzdarva of the Binding of Issac community. Youre out here giving us all this good information like a GOAT

For regular cain, you forgot that luck foot is amazing and gives all positive pill effects, like virgo and phd. It also increases payout chance when gambling on machines and the like. All around an amazing character.

Tainted lost's passive doesn't quite work like that. Yes it has a chance to roll lower quality items, but the main thing is that anything that's related to hp (breakfast or razor blade for exemple) or is a defensive item (most respawns, holy mantle, etc) just can't spawn at all Another little trick with him is to prioritize the even floors. What I mean is this, each chapter in the game has two floors (or xl but doesn't matter here). Boss trap rooms, the challenge rooms with a boss item inside, can only spawn in the second floor of each chapter. One can take advantage of that by intercalating normal and alternate floors, so basically: basement 1 -> basement 2 -> downpour 2 -> caves 2 -> mines 2 and so on, that should make your run considerably stronger in the long run Any low health character can benefit a lot from that actually, so obviously both losts, both keepers, but also characters like tainted maggy, tainted eve or lszarus

Average tainted cain run without eid: painful struggle all the way to depths 1 without a single dps up until a host finally puts you out of your misery

Every time you say Go Angels I imagine youre cheering on a football team

extra tip for tainted apollyon: You can abyss an item while it is in the little "holding the item above head" animation. That makes trash shop items insanely good, especially if they are 7 or 10 cents

A good thing to mention with blue baby, the poop has a handful of secret synergies with items like midas touch and hallowed ground, making any poop spawned have a high chance to be either gold or holy, can turn an awful active item to a very good one

my tip for every character is just: don't die

5:50 Midas touch makes an increased chance for poop to be gold poop which affects the poop item to allow for some easy money if you’re struggling.

29:38 i actually have a tip for tainted cain i find really helpful, if you can spawn any item in a secret room via something like sacrificial alter, mystery gift, a judgement card, etc, the pick ups you get from the item will be from the secret room pool like bone hearts, you can do this for something like angel rooms too. always helpful to keep in mind.

I actually wanna add some more tips for T.Lazarus, the tips and tricks that I used to fully complete T.Lazarus marks without the help of birthright: 1. Beat the boss early, instead of clear every room and then the boss room, you should try to beat the boss with the stronger character, make sure to try to find the secret room or the shop to blow up keepers in order to maximized your deal chance before hand, after you beat the boss, you will be flipped into the other character and the boss item will drop, there you can decide whether you wanna take that item as that character or just go out and clear one room to take that item as the other character. 2.With that being said, map items are extremely useful as the more unclear rooms you have left, the more control you have over your character. 3. Speaking of control, Angel rooms are actually better than Devil deals imo, let say you've killed the boss with the character with a lot of health but you got flipped into the character with like 2 soul hearts and you go to the deal, and see brimstone there, well, just cry I guess. But with Angel items, not only can you take that item for free, you can also choose which characters you wanna take it as with the cost at only 1 bombs, because killing the angel is considered a room clear, therefore, you will be flipped into the other character and take that item as that character 4. But well, you can just throw controlling over your character out of the window if you have some way to generate energy, via Sharp plug or the battery, basically any battery items will make Tainted Laz a whole lot easier 5.Don't play him like Jacob and Esau, I know you wanna be busted with like a hundred damages, but putting all the good items on one character will make the other extra vulnerable and you'll struggle whenever you got flipped to that character, what I recommend is to give one character some form of protection or damage that can help them clear rooms, and all the good items can be the other character's. Just utilize the first trick, using the character with high damage to clear bosses (I'm not good at English and may make a lot of grammar mistakes, hope you don't mind it)

For lost/t lost, I also recommend switching in and out of alt floor. Boss challenge room only generated on the 2 floor of each chapter, so going b1->b2->downpour 2->c2->mines 2 will allow you to grab extra boss items.

I love these kinds of videos, I'm so glad we got one of them from you! Very cool!

Pro Gamer Tip - Get down to half a heart as Tainted Eve and don't skill issue.

Little tip for samson, if you can go down to the second floor with (at least) 5 cents, please do. It lets the arcade spawn, it will probably have a blood donation machine in there

instructions unclear, removed anima sola from tainted jacob

You can block projectiles using poop. You can block enemies. You can do whatever you want with poop

The Isaac tip wasn’t great, if you have a really bad item in your treasure room and it’s spawned right next to you when you start it’s worth rolling it since you can get another charge by the time you finish the floor, maximising your charges and possibly getting a good item while doing it

Really good as a beginner guide - looking forward to the advanced guide

Another tip for Apollyon is to go to downpour 2 since the knife piece is pretty much a free stat boost if you're not going for Mother, and you get an extra boss item to absorb/take, and you have more rooms and therefore more charges. There's also the added benefit of reduced risk from taking blind items (in case the visible item is bad) since if the blind item is bad you can absorb it while you're holding the item above your head (if you have bad reaction time you can pause buffer to see what the item is and then decide if you want to absorb it or not.).

Thank you for these useful tips! One thing you probably just forgot to add which you mentioned for T. Forgotten only, but boney boy in Regular Forgotten can block shots as well, which makes some stuff incredibly easier. I used to struggle with the Isaac and Mega Satan fight, but using the skeleton as protection makes these and some other boss fights look like a joke. Overall one of the more complicated, but really really good characters!

Great video! I wanted to mention, for bethany also rotten hearts are useful, because they don't trigger devil/angel room percentage reduction when being hit

A good tip for Blue baby, is to always assess the room you just cleared and keep your charge when possible until you've cleared the first couple floors and hold off on active items or switch a full charged poop with them until you need to decide if you want to take it to the next floor. With a 1 tile wide gap, you can sub poops for rocks to form bridges where there aren't rocks and that helps a lot with resource gathering.

Great video! I've gotten all the marks in binding of Isaac for the normal characters but refused to ever play Jacob and Esau but after watching this video I would've never thought to use them how you described thank you so much!

my hint for tainted samson is to use book of shadows when berserk starts (for bigger enemies/bosses) so you can just run in them and completely destroy them, also, items like mutant spider give you multiple clubs for tainted azazel i find the sneeze very helpful against bullet hell bosses like mega satan and it lives because you can knock back tears and when you sneeze at an enemy that spawns smaller enemies (also counts if it spawns enemies when it dies) they also become weak to brimstone attacks and can be cleared easily (hush as an example)

T. Jacob tip: if u have half a heart and u are trapped inside a curse room, use anima sola to turn urself into ghost while standing next to the door. This will give u invicibility frames.

Tip regarding Judas, because you didn’t mention it - Judas is the easiest to clear boss rush with provided you keep the book of Belial. You can use it multiple times during the boss rush and it keeps adding into your damage. Just did that yesterday and it was so easy, can recommend strongly

Ty, I have to restart soonish and I never know wtf to do 😭

Mattman was in the intro 🎉 Lets go

Best Tainted Blue Baby tip: Don't play that shit infant

One thing I'd like to do with Jacob and Esau is to give 1 of the brothers all the HP generating items as well as a bunch of protection items. That way, they can act as a sort of meat shield for the other brother.

Lost with Holy Mantel is so good. Before I got the item the only unlock I had was The Lamb because I was doing a Samson run with a HELLA good item pool and had the missing poster and used it for the hell of it before the boss room.

I felt that silent moment of fury when you got a health down as Tainted Eve. Edit: So basically, you're saying Tainted Eden always tries to keep up with the latest trends? You 'get hit' by the latest meme, and become the meme. Edit2: Technically you can avoid getting spanked by Esau in the Bombfly Bridge Room, you just gotta act quick. As soon as you realize what room you're in, position yourself as close to Easau as possible in front of the door, and hug whatever side gives you more space in a straight line, and you'll juuuust have enough pixel space to avoid his charge. Good luch avoiding the bomb flies though.

I found using Blind Rage with Tainted Magdalene works in conjunction with her gimmick, since it gives more Invincibility frames to hug enemies.

I think that you forgot to mention it. But when playing as T. Cain, rotten hearts will get you curse room items. Also with T. Cain, it's helpful not to pass up pickup-generating or pickup-modifying items early on. More items is never a bad thing, and items like Lil' Chest, BOGO Bombs, Acid Baby, and GB Bug -- while normally lackluster -- play a nice utility role with T. Cain. Not to mention that Acid Baby can also go a long way to getting stat ups with Virgo, PHD, or Lucky Foot. Even the Portable Slot can be useful if you have a ton of coins lying around, as recycling one slot with another will turn those 8 pennies into a handful of other, possibly more useful, pickups.

Thank you. Been looking for something like this

1:04:15 dud ok that was genuinely very impressive. You hit the boss TWICE with tainted Esau. At least it looked like it.

Lilith wants battery items. Getting double charges, or use active item twice, charge when damaged even. and anything that improves tears because you get exponentially more of it with thr friend box.

just got repentance after not touching the game in a hot hot minute- super appreciate this video dude

Fun apollyon tech! You can void shop items and devil deal items by using the active item while you're holding the item above your head

Two more tips for Skellyboi & Lil'Soul (The Forgotten): 1 - The Forgotten body attracts and blocks enemy projectiles (you can see it here 21:09), if he's low on hp switch to the Soul and stay behind the skeleton while shooting; 2 - The charge attack (bone boomerang) is an often neglected mechanic which also blocks enemy projectiles while also doing higher damage than one regular swing (unless your fire-rate is high enough, ofc); I like to enter a room fully charged and toss the bone club before starting to swing it around, and I also use it to help me with bullet-hell bosses while I'm repositioning between attacks.

5:50 The poop is also pretty good in combination with hollowed ground.

I think one of the most important think to know on lost/Tlost are the different "charges" of holy mantle. Basically things like cross trinket are different holy mantles then the holy card etc

Was thinking you'd talk more about specific items strong on certain characters, but honestly you can make an entire video out of that too I feel. Also for Tainted Jacob I like to turn into the lost after full clearing the floor to pick up stuff I couldn't reach without flight

For tainted eve when using sumptorium the clots can deal damage as they’re flying back towards you if they pass through enemies

-Keepers are really good at sacrifice rooms, just make sure you have 30 coins as tainted keeper to buy the angel item -Voodoo head guarantees a coin in curse rooms, so you can enter them as tainted keeper -Book of shadows makes tainted Bethany wisps invincible so you can run at enemies for high contact damage -A lot of characters can safely get down to 1 HP to open boss challenge rooms, e.g. Maggie, Keeper, Lost, etc. -Always grab PHD or lucky foot on T. Isaac because pills will give you permanent stats regardless of item -Practice using Dark Arts as T. Judas just as enemy projectiles spawn, as they'll be very close together -Downpour/Dross II is useful on a lot of characters who either want the extra floor's worth of pickups (e.g. T. Keeper, T. Bethany) or the extra boss item (Appolyon, T. Lazarus, T. Isaac, T. Lost) -Mausoleum/Gehenna raises the boss rush timer to 25 minutes which helps slower/more methodical characters like T. Lazarus or T. Cain still reach boss rush -T. Samson in Berserk mode gets a split second of invulnerability when killing an enemy so he can kill exploding enemies without taking damage, use that to clear a crowd quickly -Triggering T. Lost's Birthright will destroy Perfection so I'd avoid going for luck builds if I grab birthright -Back in the day before Lost had a mantle, a recommended tactic was to not be afraid to reset until you get a really good floor 1. Same goes for tainted lost today.

Actually super helpful, thanks, Matt!

Another way to preserve deal chance is rotten hearts, found them super useful when clearing Bethany

Worth noting for Tainted Maggie that Mom's Locket is imo an S tier trinket. Having all enemies drop full hearts is super helpful in those later floors where you're taking full heart damage.

Another tip for t??? is to hold on to hallowed poops, they allow you to either completely cheese a boss of your choosing or exploit blood donation machines/devil beggars using the invulnerability chance.

15:13 to be more precise, you will only get one of the 8 familiars listed in the wiki, that means you actually have a high incubus/twisted pair chance

Another ??? tip, if you find midas touch and there are still shops and you still are rocking the poop, take it, you now can buy whatever you want

You can't have a segment on Blue Baby's frail ass without mentioning that The Poop also has an innate Butter Bean effect, meaning he can push incoming projectiles away if they're close enough to him. It's a good panic button that helps ensure you keep your HP until you get a proper build going.

How are you doing to now take damage on 51:25? I am trying similar but no success

For The Lost (and Tainted Lost) Devil Rooms are good because of possible Dead Cat. I think for the video you should add a list of some items that work well with each character and which ones to avoid (other than the clear obvious ones)

also a really small addition but one passive item im just generally kinda "eh its okay, but it could be a better item" with usually, but always hyped to see as the forgotten is shielded tears there was one run i did where i got to delirium as the forgotten with 9 lives, the first life, i died during that telefragging assholes death animation (i think a stray bullet hit me right as the static was overlaying before they disappeared so i died with him LOL) meaning i had to do the entire fight again with 1 HP per form, and shielded tears SAVED my ass so hard, i think i also had the milk that makes u just constantly swing too, so there was no bullets hitting me the whole time i fought him. definitely a pickup worth going for (esp that combo with the milk) if u see it

why do i have to lock in to one deal over the other instead of going angels for first one or two depending on rng. it just doesnt make sense when you will have tons of hp by mid to late to not try to get devils

A huge upside of going angels with Lilith, is the possibility of getting immaculate conception. Pairs great with cambion and essentially changes nothing about your game plan while doubling the reward.

For Cain I'd also say to abuse pills a shitty run can go crazy really fast if you get lucky enough, but worst case scenarios, still a stat up.

I'd argue that Berserk is pretty useful in bullet-hell fights, since the swing can deflect bullets as well (as you can see at 39:55)

Tbh with tainted lilith i think its better to use tears late-game, because you dont have to aim and you usally have some good tear effects.

Something cool with bethany is that you can actually use eraser multiple times on a floor because of the charges (unless they fixed it)

man has NOT played the forgotten recently (the soul devil trick no longer kills you as you can't even switch back to the soul until you get a soulheart)

But many of the good Secret Room items are locked behind completion marks. So in my opinion, rolling the angel/devil deals is a better choice than the Secret Room. When should I start rolling the Secret Room?

I just want to give a little advice on tainted blue baby which is if you have a really powerful popp like a holy poop or a butt bomb or whatever dont hold on it, of course dont just use them on a random fly but you should constantly be using your poops

Another small tip I would've mentioned with Eve: If you have a soul heart you can use the invincibility frames from Razor Blade to get into the Curse Room without losing your Soul Heart if you have enough Red Hearts.

I disagree with you on the lost. I think it's better going devils, since rolling the angel key piece is not guaranteed. Also, lost does have only 1 hp, so going devils to get that boost early on can help you with power scaling, just dealing with rooms easier. (yes, I'm a devil deal fan)

My brutha i did ultra hard as one of my first unlocks, (on my second save file). I think i did it after unlocking all non tainted characters and doing greedier with everyone bc i dont want to deal with it later. It was very close i will say. The fight took 5 minutes bc damage wasnt amazing, but i did have trinity shield which is apparently a free second phase.

It might be worth noting that if you void the Alabasters Box you dont need soul hearts to charge it and it just activates when you use void agai

I don't go strictly angels because it's the worst when I lose the 30% and the 60% leaving me needing to beat depths 1 with item room and shop items. If I'm not lucky with those pools, then the run will just kinda die or drag on. Or I'll skill issue

Here's my advice for Tainted Samson: DO NOT pick up Matt's Kidney Stone, or any item that makes you fluctuate in "redness." Not only will you not be able to tell when your beserk state ends, which is especially bad against late game enemies like he said, but it also screws up your tears and jaw bone attacks by interrupting them usually at the worse time, sometimes delaying and messing up their transition while the kidney stone charges, which feels awful. Just trust me on this, it will hurt your run far more than it will help. It's not like he lacks in DPS anyway. Additionally as Tainted Samson, don't pick up items that shrink you visually, like Spider Bite, Pluto, or Size Down pills, simply because it makes it way harder to tell when you're switching to beserk and that can majorly mess up your gameplay. I say all this because I had both Spider Bite and Matt's Kidney Stone in my last Tainted Samson run, and it was completely awful, although the character is good enough that I barely squeaked by a Mega Satan and Delirium win even with that anti-synergy. Hope you guys can learn from my mistake though.

might be a kind of silly way of using them, but when playing j+e i tend to stack luck-based items onto jacob. without perfection, -1 starting luck is really hard to claw out of imo, so my setup tends to be All dps going to esau Except for tear effects which go to jacob

Item room rolls being lowest on the D6 totem pole is a crazy suggestion.

for eden you basically see which character he's closer to and apply that other character strat

Great vid, thanks

yknow ive noticed every time i play either samson or judas i usually win and the one thing that helps me win a lot is lead pencil because samson + lead pencil: take damage then your lead pencil shot thing does massive damage and easily shreds any boss Judas + lead pencil: use book and get lucky early on to shred bosses aswell anyways thats my take i have no clue why i play much better on either character but eh

the only characters a have trouble with in isaac are the "multi-entity" characters, witch are jacob and esau and tainted lazerus, i already know every tip for jacob and esau, but tainted lazarus is a genuin pain solely for the fact that you cant always buff both at the same time, its dreadfull to watch them both slowly wither away despite trying to split hp between both of them, im finnaly commiting to infinity percent and i dread having to do tainted laz again

One run I had was a tainted Isaac run, had a Jacob’s ladder start and found a clicker. Decided fuck it and got tainted Azazel after collecting a junk item and finding out about the clicker’s item removal gimmick, found satan bible, babylon, 4.5 volt, twisted pair, and ludo. Ludo brim is overpowered. And then let’s just say I got my hard mode beast mark for T. azazel.

As far as i know u cant swap back to the soul as forgotten when it is "dead" Also if you get unicorns stump as bethany its an instant win cause u can stack the duration by using it mutliple times in a row

Thank you Matthew, very cool 👍

For the losts id argue that devil deals are better than angels due to the devil pool being better suited to the characters, namely damocles having the instant death negated and the angel deals having 2 of its best items useless on them

ive been experimenting a bit with razor blade usage on eve and there are some tips that i think got missed (though theyre more for razor blade than eve i guess) razor blade prioritizes red health, so if you want to protect any soul hearts or black hearts you can use the i-frames from razor to sneak in (though first use of razor also costs a full heart in the room so weigh your options before doing this) second, i feel like a lot of people dont realize that razor blade provides a damage buff on use? forgot if its the first use only or what, but because of this i do like to go into bosses out of whore mode so that the buffs from both whore and blade apply

Something very important I must say about tainted Apollyon. He is the most unassuming busted character in the game with Birthright. His DPS output is insane. With birthrifht and a few flies he can easily shred through the Hush's health pool. It's nuts.

22:40 fun fact, you can preserve your deal chance by picking up rotten hearts

Cambion Conception doesn't spawn just any familiar, it spawns demonic familiars like Dark Bum, Demon Baby, Leech, Lil' Brimstone, Succubus, Incubus, Lil Abaddon, Twisted Pair

Bro Mattman as the “veteran tip” is goated.

You’ll know that you’re set if you get Twisted Pair as Lilith (either with Cambion Conception or Devil Deals) and Car Battery. Also BFF. BFF is GOATed.

Pretty sure Rotten hearts on Bethany also protect your deal chances - and they are far more common than bone hearts.

Don't forget, you use the rolls in the secret room once you have some good items unlocked in the secret room, otherwise you're basically just waiting for an rkey or 1up

Does anyone know what the name of the background music is that he's using Please, I need it

Can you do a video on tips to beating every challange ?

hi is it ever, and i mean ever a good idea to do devil deals? are they just a$$ now?!?!?! like you even said "i know theyre free for the lost but um, dont" like when would you recommend ever going for devil deals?

with azazel you also don't lose hp when you go into a curse room

why didn't you change the character transition theme to the male version when going over the tainted characters? seems like a missed opportunity.

I love you for this video

I don't know why nobody ever mentions this, but eve has a 0.75x damage multiplier when not transformed, so you should absolutely try to avoid doing combat without your whole of babylon active. Also, Cain has a 1.2x damage multiplier while Judas has 1.3x, which makes Cain essentially the strongest starting character, especially so with just how early you can get him compared to, say, Judas. Oh yeah, also, Azazel has a straight-up 1.5x damage multiplier, only being beaten by Dark Judas