So you think that pills are bad? 

It's just a testament to my core belief of how good pills actually are (haha)

And the tears up pillow should be called "Emotion widener" like you're making your emotions more stronger, I don't know

omg I was just waiting until someone would notice it. I swear I took like an hour just making sure all the timings were correct and that it cut off at the exact right moment for maximum comedic effect. Thanks dude for reaffirming my editing choices :P

Rip issac, he shortly died after eating thy health down pill and his body was discovered 3 weeks later

Maybe not drugs, but still unidentified medicine

Basically, all pills that rise your stats is the reason i use pills all the time. Yes I slam my table when I got the negative one.

Sorry for assuming your pill beliefs with such a question Pill Cosby, how very uncool of me to do so. I do love the punny name though! Made me chuckle, A+!

That's a neat idea, but I think it'd clash with the item that shares the same name and a similar effect. Maybe the caffeine pill could drop a small caffeine pill which would increase those stats. Or maybe just make a trinket and call it coffee bean which would give those effects. Also please no more shot speed upgrades they are the bane of my existence.

@@Eufuu Am I the not only one that thinks that shot speed is pretty useless...?

Late response, but I would agree with you on this. I wouldn't even classify it as useless, but as actively detrimental in a lot of cases. With high shot speed, it becomes much more annoying to aim, the knock back increases and with certain items it can be just horrible (e.g. Trisagion). There are still instances where it can come in handy, if you have low range for example or with Ludovico technique, but overall I would subjectively say I'm not too excited about it as a stat.

@@Eufuu That being also the reason I don't really like to play with Samson And the Ipecac with high shot speed? Dear lord.

We need shot speed up and shot speed down.

He will still say pills bad

Thank you! I really appreciate the sentiments ^-^. Here's the thing with the pill distribution, it's mostly subjective and I completely respect if anyone has a different opinion/outlook on pills. Why I've decided to put horf! and explosive diarrhea in the good categories is that you can keep both of those pills in mind whenever you use any pill and thus avoiding all damage or negative consequences that those pills can have (like walking into a direction where you know the explosion radius won't hit you). I personally wouldn't consider retro vision a bad pill at all, it doesn't affect me, my dodging abilities or anything like ethat, but I know it really gets on the mind of some people so that's why I've decided to include it as "situational". Either way I was trying to make a case that even these bad pills, if accounted for, can be turned into positive effects and I think that's the important takeaway from this video.

Eufuu I see your point! I guess you're right about the retro vision pill. We'll have to agree to disagree about the other two, however. I appreciate you taking your time to respond to so many comments, as well.

It's absolutely ok, I see where your perspective is coming from and I think it's perfectly fair that we've all formed our own opinions about the situation. I really should be the one thanking you for deciding to check out the video and post an insightful comment, so thanks! ^-^

This is an important factor to consider! However, I do disagree with your assessment slightly because the effect of a bad pill on a great run (where you're likely to have more stats, items and options) will be significantly lessened. And since it's still more likely to get a good outcome I see no reason why you should stop taking pills when your run gets "good". The second part is that I feel like it'd be really hard to find that threshold between being risk-averse and trying to benefit from pills.

Ah, you're absolutely right, I hadn't even thought about transformations as that usually requires the pill to already be identified and I was mainly focusing on taking unknown pills. Just the more reason to take them, really. I wish there were more effects that changed the pitch of sounds in the game. Not too often because it would probably get annoying as we're used to enemies making certain sounds, but it's really funny to come across say a mini charger and it makes this high-pitched SQUEEEE sounds as it chases you down.

Yes-yes, definitely amazing. x3 However, pills and cards are things that really are a good opportunity for the game to become pretty exciting! And if Edmund doesn't want it... Modders will of course take it as a challenge and chance to show their creativity. *uwu* By the way, *nice ending* :)

Absolutely, there are so many possibilities in cards and pills that I feel the game hasn't explored yet! One time I was discussing an idea of a stacking pill where it would collect "souls" for as long as you keep hold onto it. For every enemy killed it'd gain a charge and when you'd use it, you'd get progressively better rewards. If you swap it out for another item or drop it, the souls escape, requiring you to charge it all over again. Similar neat ideas could stem from cards that could permanently alter the floor, like creating spikes for enemies to walk on, or switching two rooms to make breaking easier to execute. Thank you so much for the kind words and I'm sorry for a bit of a late reply, but do know I appreciate it all the same!

IDK:So issac, will you now consider taking pills whenever you can? I:**swallows pill** I:ouch!**dies**

Love it! :D

It was really good man, i personally never take pills, but because of the stats yous showed i will start using them and see how it goes. Great quaility video

Don't take this as "always take pills", but more in the sense of think about whetever it is a good idea to skip a certain pill or not, sometimes it's ok to just never take them and if you feel like they're more annoying than anything else that's completely fine, but they do have their uses and there's nothing as satisfying as being something like The Hush with a "I'm Drowsy" pill! or getting a horf pill into a lucky secret room. It's all about balance.

Eufuu How to use pills pls help me

On default settings you just press Q, but I assume you have figured this out in the last half a year I've taken to answer this comment :| If you haven't, I hope I have managed to enable all of your pill popping needs!

Aww, thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate it! I proabably didn't clarify my thoughts well enough, but if you are following the logic of minimising damage pills can do, you will end up with a net positive result overall. The thought process goes like this: - If I use a pill in an empty room and it's bad, no harm done - If I use a pill in an empty room and it's good, no harm done - If a pill is used in a full room and it's bad, harm done - If a pill is used in a full room and it's good, you benefit The ability to identify a pill and reuse it later once you already know what its effect is makes this a viable strategy for positive effects. There's also the nuance that you may utilise certain positive effects (such as explosions) with proper positioning or targeting. As long as you keep the idea that each unidentified pill is actually ALL possible pills, you will end up with a more positive result overall over a large enough sample size. That isn't to say you should use them if you find them annoying, but I'm just trying to shed a different, more methodological perspective to this otherwise controversial element of the game.

@@Eufuu Ah. I forgot about the negatives and positives being labeled after use. I stand corrected

I'm excited triggers randomly during rooms after using it even if you use it in a empty room

Good point! I should've phrased myself differently most likely, thank you for the notice. :)

I found pills! And ate them...

@@depressedkermit3752 you forgot the i in the second part.

You are right that there's a severe lack of nice Isaac content out there hmmmmmm

Aw thank you! I'm glad I could bring some light onto the topic, I really felt like there are a lot of pill haters out there so I wanted to present my point of view. ^-^

I should've definitely included a clip of me trying to fight Mega Satan as the Keeper with like 50 pills on the ground and every single one of them would be a speed downgrade. Now that's hell.

He's still at 666.

665 i subscribed 666

WHAT A FRIGGIN ROLLER COASTER

99% of people stop taking pills before they get their first good one

I think you do have a solid point when you point out a few of these things, but what I'm ultimately refering to is just raw statistics. First of all I think we'll agree when we say that it's hard to exactly "quantify" the power of the pills. It's hard to exactly say oh this pills is better than this one and if we could have a way to do that there wouldn't be a discussion, we could just objectively measure their individual power, hence this is all more or less subjective. The thing about identifying pills is that once you do, you know you don't have to do it ever again during the course of the run which just means naturally it's a good idea to do so because odds are you will see the same pill twice, especially with mom's dressing table being in the game. Plus there is the benefit of virgo/phd like you said that would turn the negative pills into positive ones. The way I look at it is look at it from the long term, sure sometimes you'll get a stat down and sometimes you'll get a stat up, but these events are equally likely (if you take an unknown pill) which means that taking the pill, in the average case, is going to leave you with a positive outcome. I'm not saying if you pick a bad pill you're guaranteed to get a good one, not even close, there were runs where I took 10 bad pills in a row and sometimes that even cost me the run, but there have also been moments where I've taken the pills and they've managed to win me the run as well. This is where that decision making comes into play, realizing that if you only have one spirit heart and you are just before a devil deal with one red heart - don't take the pill because if it's a bad trip it'll be potentially really harmful, take the pill after visiting the deal, for example. But in any case, I do realize my stance is a bit subjective and whatnot, but I think there are ways to use pills efficiently and that's really the only message I was trying to get across. Pills are a way to increase variance and I understand why some people don't enjoy that and that's entirely fair.

The dresser is definitely something that makes pills a lot more reliable. Without the dressers I would argue that the chance of getting multiples of the same pill in one run aren't that great, but now you do get a lot more chances should you chose to blow it up. Here's another aspect to consider: If you're already comfortable to run the game with base stats on most/all characters you just might not want to do some "extra lifting" in case you get a stat down. This is of course purely subjective, yet I think you can agree that putting extra pressure on yourself is not necessarly something most people like to do.

I absolutely agree, even if pills are good in the average case, they're still a subject to variance where you can get negative outcomes and if someone wants to play around that that's more than understandable. Variance is already something that's very prevalent in Isaac and being on the short end of it can feel really discouraging so gimping yourself even further with something like pills feels really bad so I really can't blame anyone for not trying them out in the first place at all. It's a game after all and we all play it how we see fit and I think that's what makes it great! It's all about having the most fun and if some people think taking pills is not fun then that's completely ok of course.

The way I wagered it was that the health up effect is highly conditional and with the soul heart meta, it's so very rare to have it transform into the more useful version of the pill. Stompy has the weird effect of sometimes causing you more trouble than good with the environmental hazards you can accidentally trigger by just walking on them - bombs, pots spawning spiders, skulls, etc. The ??? effect is neat though and I agree it has no downsides besides being annoying and kind of slow to execute. You are right though that these are situationally useful, but from the way I saw it when I made the video, these effects are either so niche or actively damaging that I just classified them as negative overall, even if there are instances of usefulness. Your comment and thoughts are perfectly valid though and I think this is another aspect of why identifying pills can help you win a run. :)

@@Eufuu I appreciate your feedback on my comment, I also appreciate you responding despite the time gap between the video being posted and this comment. The most interesting part of Isaac to me is finding ways to benefit from bad or niche things. I've always wanted to make a complation of said things in a video format but for one I am not amazing at video making and for two If I did I'm not sure the effort I put into it would even be rewarded, good chance nobody would see the video. Anyways, thanks again.

@@chuckles2364 The one beautiful thing about Isaac is that there's almost always a way to turn something "bad" into good - obviously efficacy varies, but there is nothing more satisfying than taking an absolute garbage item or effect and turning it into a win. Thank you for the lovely little chat!

@@Eufuu You're welcome for the lovely little chat :D

I take solace in the fact I am indeed not the only one with a problem - really the only question I pose to the people who don't use pills, how can you live with NOT knowing what's hiding under the three question marks?

Same

@@Eufuu ikr I only get them with false/real phd

Aw, thank you for going out of your way to leave a nice comment!! I deeply appreciate it, the world needs more people like you :)

I think damage pills aren't in the game just for the simple reason that Edmund wouldn't consider it good game design. I personally think that damage up pills or cards of any variety would severely diminish the importance and scarcity of damage up items - they're viewed as very special and having them in a pill form where they can be abused/broken would ruin the sanctity of the damage stat. That's just how I view it tho, I think it could be an interesting concept, maybe we could have an item that turns some pills into damage up/down pills. Either way, I could see something like increasing the stakes of pills, both in the positive and the negative direction, be as an interesting experiment and I might whip something up now that we have mods.

uhh I have no defense for this :( humans make mistakes?

It doesn't actually do anything, it just displays some text on the screen :)

The age old debate, I agree that it's probably not the best classification and if I had to put it somewhere again I'd put it under "bad", but I personally never mind retro vision and thus classified it somewhere in the middle. It's a matter of convention.

No, because we're talking about a statistical likelihood that something comes true. E.g. if I had a machine that had 51% chance of paying out with 1 cents and 49% to give me nothing and the cost of play was 1 cent, it's statistically guaranteed that I will earn money on the long run. Sunken cost fallacy is not as much a statistical fallacy as it is a cognitive one where the "victim" believes that they are on the verge of winning and believe that in obtain the favourable outcome, they must invest more resources into it, especially when there is no guarantee that the payout is going to happen any time soon.

That's just the natural mechanics of the game balancing it to make it fair for you since you're so good at it!

Well, I'm with you that you should take pills. I admit that same run was saved by balls of steel pills.

✨I cast a magic spell and imbue you with good pill luck 🪄

@@Eufuu oh my! Thank you!

@@Eufuu I just got the most overpowered run I've seen, which started with 6 consecutive positive pills and ended up squishing delirium and unlocking nine achievements, including 4 no hit achievements, I think your spell worked.

@@LimboLocalFunniProvider OMG it might have!! my spell brought you luck but your skill sealed the deal! congrats I cast it one 1 more time: ✨I cast a magic spell and imbue you with good pill luck 🪄

@@Eufuu hehe, thanks! By the way, if I remember correctly, you said that tears down was like -0.27 but I just got a -0.56 from it...

I've thought of it and originally I wanted to have 5 categories - always good, always bad, sometimes good, sometimes bad and entirely situational. This way I could've categorized pills like health down and addicted a bit better, but I felt like this is not the point I was trying to make. I was just trying to show that there are pills which either have no effect or a positive one and I considered these pills as "good". What was really important to me was to show the relation from this group of pills to the group of pills which is always negative (or annoying) and to instigate the conversation whetever it's a good idea to always avoid them or not. I felt like this would get the point across and I'm certainly hopeful that it did, but I do agree that for the sake of being as accurate as possible, a useless pill category would've been very beneficial.

Well the idea of pills is that you don't know what they'll do UNTIL you use them. After that, the same pill (you can tell them apart by their color) will be the same until you restart the run. You use them by pressing Q on PC and R1/RT on consoles (not fully sure about the consoles so give it a whirl!).

Yeah, with the state of the game I totally understand how it can turn into a total slog if you get unlucky with your pills at the start so I get why you wouldn't want to risk it (especially with certain characters). Ultimately it is a game and it's meant to be enjoyed and I kind of love how pills are this controversial discussion in the Isaac community :)

😳😳😳

@@Eufuu disliked, blocked bad video

I assume this is because it was actually a health down pill all along - the little secret is that the health down pill turns into a health up pill if you're at 1 red heart so maybe that's what happened!

Technically you have identified it as a ??? pill soooo...

The point of the video is to say that they are good *most* of the time, but of course you would have to carry any additional risk in mind depending on what you are trying to achieve. I am not saying they are always good or that they can't have devastating side effects (hello getting a health down as Keeper), but that there is a positive side we can uncover if we just look at what's going on under the hood. Anything beyond that is just a matter of personal preference and the situation we are using them in.

man of culture

Aw thanks man, I really respect and appreciate that you chime in with positivity regardless of my creative endeavors, it feels nice to be a part of this community. ^-^

Well, the argument being made here is not that you should ALWAYS take pills, but that pills are predominantly good. Does this mean you should always take pills when you get them? Absolutely not, as there are plenty of scenarios where you may damage your run by doing is (like when your stats are already low or you're playing as one of the more difficult characters in the game), but in the average case, when your run is doing... averagely, I believe that pills can help you out more than hurt you and hopefully the arguments in the video present this viewpoint well. You of course do not have to agree as how we play is ultimately a personal choice, but I do hope it's at least given you a unique, well-presented perspective if nothing else. :)

@@Eufuu well it did give me a different perspective and it got me to think for a minute

Yeah of course, due to variance sometimes you'll end up with a run that has a lot (if not all) bad pills, but that isn't really indicative of what the average case would be, usually you'll have a mix of both and just due to virtue of statistics it'll be more likely that a pill is positive. Next time you use an unknown pill always walk into a direction away from the wall while you use it, that way, if it does turn out to be a horf! pill it won't hurt you and the explosion will land somewhere else safely. Once you've identified the horf! pill you can use it as a bomb later on in the run.

WAIT I SAID IT BEFORE IT WAS A MEME WTF?

i will not become back my subscription

I think you're on a similar track as I was, most pills really don't have a huge effect on the game and are at worst annoyances. I'm totally with you on the ones that change your sprite, I get thrown off my game so hard if my sprite increases, but since I tried to look at it objectively it's better to be smaller with a smaller hitbox than bigger with a bigger hitbox. What is really important imo is identifying those game changing pills, percs to use in a sacrifice room or I'm Drowsy against a really difficult boss - this is where the pills can save your run.

yes. it just feels like whenever i have a good pill, they barely appear. when i have bad ones the game spams me full of them. the new mirror is quite nice now cause you know you get pills. also my biggest complaint is phd. so many useless and bad pills are considered "good" so the item doesnt change them. its legit total trash. but yes i always take pills ALWAYS. even tho i think the majority is useless/bad

I understand that this might be how you perceive pills and I don't want to negate your feelings on the subject, but perhaps trying jotting down on a piece of paper or into a notepad every pill effect you gain and how that impacted a specific run. Once you've gathered a bunch of data points we can compare the theoretical expectations vs. your actual experience. I'm not saying try to use them if you don't want to, after all, we should all be allowed to play the games the way we want to, but it might be an interesting experiment!

Thank you, I do plan on making a few more videos like this and expanding upon some of the concepts I've covered in this video. It does take somewhat of a long time to make and since I really want to take care about the information that I present it is quite a bit of a process, but rest assured, I have a few more similar ideas in mind which I can't wait to unleash upon the world plus of course some of the more basic ones like daily runs/let's plays/tutorials to keep the channel busy while I'm working on these larger projects

Take your time :P. Everyone has a life outside of their public one and you should enjoy yours

Aw thank you, I'm glad you found it helpful!!! ^-^

I can accept this cordial statement :)

heck yeah brother pills are life

@@Eufuu only pill run would be crazy

Hmmm, why would you consider them situational? I believe it's just a cosmetic change and therefore I listed it as "positive" since it doesn't have any negative side effects. Granted I could've probably picked a better name because it is misleading, but I was going for something opposite of "negative" which is of course "positive" to specify these are the pills without any negative effects.

Aw thank you, I do intend to do a few more like these, it's fun to think about different approaches of playing the game and since there's always something new to be learned I feel like this is a great way to share the information I have in my head. Good luck with the Eden Greedier streaks, I don't think I could do it personally, Greedier mode is just a bit .. much sometimes.

I have played isaac for 2700hrs in total now. Not really proud or smothing but i wonder if this is totally crazy or just normal for a good love to this game. What do you think? there is no way to compare the played time to others

it´s actually only 2000. 2700 was my dota time ;)

I've personally played the game for something like ~700 hours and I know a few people who've played for even longer. If you enjoy playing the game then do so, just don't let it get in the way of life and other things that are important to you!

It was a bit problematic, i played it three days straight without sleep. Every two weeks the full weekend. On the third day i actually fell asleep but kept playing. I seriously finished runs sleeping with open eyes and dreaming sidestories into the game. I did this like an addict for two years after my father took his own life because of depression. That´s my very special relationship to this game :) now my life became good again and i do one or two runs a week and enjoy a bit of theorycrafting

It do be like that sometime

The element of danger is what makes it exciting 3:

Exactly, why be good when you can just be lucky?

@@Eufuu O.O ohhhhh uhhhhhhhhhhh hiiii there then XD didnt expect a reply

hiiii!!! :-D

@@Eufuu ^.^ heyooooooo!!!!!

media.giphy.com/media/kcWcpkmTujzr2/giphy.gif

I will make an update video once I'm done unlocking everything in Repentance (might take a while though haha)

It temporarily makes you shoot your tears diagonally, alternating between your left and right eye, effectively reducing your damage output in half as you can't reliably hit enemies with both of your shots.

I think your point is valid and this is why I am hesitant to say that pills are *always* good, because they aren't, but I think they have the potential to be a lot better if you're just aware of what kind exists and how to utilise them to their maximum potential. Like you said, if for example, you're running as the Keeper, a single pill can ruin your run so caution is advised, but if you're already having a decent run and you're aware of the risks, pills can only bring more than they can take. Ultimately everyone enjoys the game so don't let me detract you from your playstyle, but I thought it was interesting to analyse it from a different perspective :)

Aww, thank you man. Don't feel bad about 666 subscribers, think of 667 subscribers as 666 + 1 and you're that extra +1 which makes the 666 feel a bit more full. I do respect the sanctity of trying to keep an even number tho, some numbers feel so much more special than others (but don't tell this to mathematicians they might hunt me down).

Lmao alright, subbed

I could agree with this to some extent! If you are trying to be as consistent as possible you would probably want to reduce your overall variance as much as you possibily could. When you are doing long streaks getting a loss is more consequential than getting a win so your strategy won't be to gain as much advantage as possible over several games, but to minimise low variance spikes that might potentially ruin a run.

Oh gosh, I'm so glad you watched it too! :D

If we all lived life optimally it would be a lot less interesting (:

Breaking the game is what makes it fun at a certain point in a run, That is why you have to take care of your items the best

@@Zadoxwin I'm inclined to agree, but sometimes you're in a run and the idea of going around just seems exhausting so you decide to carve a different way in through the other side :p

The individual effects are I believe, but some things might have changed with patches - I'm thinking of doing an update video now that the dust has settled :)

@@Eufuu lol really?

Sometimes RU-vid does a weird thing and labels people as spam, I just dislike that it doesn't notify me sooner so I have to manually check it every time. How can a RU-vid label a joke as a spam?! Let's share the joy together geez louise.

@@Eufuu well i dont know whats more absurd This or random demonetazation xd

We're making history here boys!