The Binding of Isaac Gameplay Guide

[PizzaSHARK]

So I was explaining how to not suck at The Binding of Isaac to a buddy of mine yesterday, and I figured I might as well put everything down in one place so he and anyone else that needs the help can reference it easily. For people who've been living in a cave for the past year, The Binding of Isaac is a little indie game that's essentially a mash-up of SmashTV, The Legend of Zelda, and Rogue. You play as Isaac, a naked unwanted child fighting through a basement, cave, and even Hell itself, killing all manner of mutated and grosteque monsters with your tears, blood, and urine. And bombs. Yeah, it's a pretty fucked up game. You should play it.

If you don't have it, pick it up at http://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/ You can get the game plus the soundtrack (which is awesome) and the expansion for less than $10 and can reasonably expect a good 30-50 hours of gameplay without really repeating anything. As a Roguelike, the game is completely randomized, so each playthrough is completely different from the others.

Another resource you should be aware of is the wiki, at http://bindingofisaac.wikia.com/wiki..._of_Isaac_Wiki It'll go more in-depth than I will here, I'm just covering the bare essentials here.


Basic Gameplay

The Binding of Isaac is controlled with WASD and the cursor keys, along with a couple of other keys. You can use the mouse, but since you can only fire in the cardinal directions, it's easier to just use the cursor keys. WASD makes you move, the cursor keys make you shoot. You can shoot in any direction while moving, and your projectiles inherit your velocity - in other words, you can shoot sideways while moving south to make your shots "curve" in a southeast or southwest direction. Get the hang of it, it'll help you avoid a lot of unnecessary damage.

You initially can play only as Isaac, but you can unlock additional characters by completing certain criteria, and each character tends to focus on a particular archetype. Samson is the classic Berserker style, Cain tends to be more like a Thief, Judas is played similar to a Mage, and Eve is an interesting character that boosts her damage output by taking damage. Eventually you can unlock the hidden character, ???, who's unique in that he does not and cannot have permanent life. But we're just going to focus on Isaac.



Isaac will start with three hearts of health, average stats across the board, and a single bomb. I'm gonna assume you weren't a cheapskate and you bought the expansion DLC for a couple of bucks.

Your hearts are your life, obviously. As with any proper Roguelike, death is permanent and you only have one life (unless you find a couple of specific items.) Lose all your hearts, and you're done. However, there are three types of heart you can have at any given time:

- Red, regular hearts. These are permanent, and can be replenished by collection heart pickups that can be won in the arcade, found in chests, dropped by enemies, and they tend to be pretty common, though they'll become less and less common the deeper you get. You can increase the number of hearts you have by finding certain items, and some items can cost you entire heart containers (you lose the heart permanently.)

- Blue hearts, called Soul Hearts. These are essentially armor. They're semi-permanent; they'll never just randomly disappear, but once they're gone, they stay gone unless you find more. They can be generated through certain items, you can buy them in shops sometimes, and occasionally they'll appear as drops from bosses, chests, monsters, etc. Soul Hearts are consumed before red hearts and white hearts when taking damage, with a few exceptions. You can survive solely on Soul Hearts (you won't die even if you have no red heart containers as long as you have at least half a soul heart remaining.) ??? is unique in that his health is comprised solely of Soul Hearts and he cannot ever have red, permanent hearts.

- White half-hearts, called Eternal Hearts. These are basically Heart Pieces, like from Zelda games. If you collect two in a single floor, you're rewarded with a new, filled red, permanent heart. If you complete a floor with only one Eternal Heart half, it will become a filled, red heart when you begin the next floor. Eternal Hearts are consumed before red, regular hearts, but after blue Soul Hearts. Eternal Hearts are very rare and generally only found in secret rooms, generated through the Prayer Cards item, or very, very rarely a drop from a boss or chest.

- Possibly a bug, I found that if you purchase an item from the Devil room that costs more hearts than you have, but you also have Soul Hearts, you're left with absolutely no hearts of any kind, yet aren't dead. The next hit you take will kill you. I didn't survive long enough to find out what happens when you pick up a Soul Heart or Eternal Heart or anything that adds a heart container, though.


In addition to your health, you can also find keys, which are used to unlock doors and chests (duh), and come in two flavors: regular silver, and lion-headed gold. Silver keys are consumed on use and are carried from floor to floor. The much rarer gold keys aren't consumed on use, but aren't carried between floors - a gold key basically gives you unlimited keys for the floor you found it on. You can carry up to 99 keys. Keys can be found pretty much everywhere.

Bombs should be fairly self explanatory. You drop them, they go off a few seconds later, and blow shit up. You can hurt yourself with a bomb, causing a full heart of damage. Bombs will generally kill any garden-variety monster in a single hit, and will do significant damage to bosses and champion monsters. Bombs also, predictably, blow up rocks, can bust down unlocked doors, and can blast holes in walls to reveal secret and top secret rooms. You can carry up to 99 bombs. Bombs can be found pretty much everywhere.

Coins are currency, used to gamble in the arcade, to give money to beggars (who can give you items in return, eventually), or to buy items in shops. They come in a variety of flavors, from pennies (one cent), nickles (five cents), dimes (ten cents), quarters (twenty-five cents), and even the rare dollar (99 cents.) Coins can be found pretty much everywhere, but the quarter and dollar can only be found in a few special locations, usually as a rare item pickup.



Lastly, you can carry a number of special items with you. You have one slot for trinkets (items which are always active and provide passive effects), one slot for cards or pills, and one slot for an activated, permanent item. Cards and pills do not have their effects revealed at the start of a playthrough - playing cards and tarot cards have a consistent effect between playthroughs, but the name of the card doesn't usually denote what kind of effect it'll have. Pills do not have a consistent effect per-color between playthroughs, but once you've used a pill of a given color, all other pills of the same color will have the same effect for that same playthrough (so if you found a red-white pill that gave you two soul hearts, all red-white pills found in that same playthrough will have the same effect.)

Activated items are varied, but they all function in the same way. They're activated by pressing the space bar, and once used, they have to recharge before they can be used again. Items are recharged by clearing rooms of monsters, and each item has its own charge time - usually either one room, three rooms, or six rooms. Some items (like the Remote Detonator or Guppy's Paw) do not have a recharge time because of the way they work (the Remote Detonator simply detonates all bombs on-screen instantly, while Guppy's Paw simply converts a red heart container into three soul hearts.) Items like the Nun's Habit and Battery can allow you to recharge items without having to necessarily clear a room, and the 9Volt item reduces the number of rooms required to recharge your item.

Trinkets are a new item type added with the expansion, and provide passive effects (not necessarily always a benefit.) You can only have one trinket at a time, and picking up another will cause you to drop your current one. Trinkets can increase the frequency of finding hearts/coins/keys/bombs, increase damage, reduce boss health, or provide random stat boosts or penalties every room. Trinkets are typically found in chests, battle rooms, or sometimes in secret rooms or shops.


Tears, and stats


Being a Roguelike, The Binding of Isaac uses a fairly basic stats system. Besides health, you can also increase or decrease your rate of fire (usually referred to as "tears"), range, damage, and movement speed by collecting items and using pills. Most items will simply provide passive stat boosts, while others will change the way your attacks (tears) work.

Keep in mind that, depending on which items you have already, not every item will be an upgrade for you. Some items will completely change the way you attack and will not benefit from damage or tears upgrades, and vice-versa. The items that function like this are:


- Ipecac. Picking up Ipecac changes your tears into giant, arcing, venomous explosives. They explode on contact and do damage equal to a bomb (and briefly poison anything that didn't die immediately), however they fire in a fixed arc (which can be influenced by your movement direction), and you can and probably will kill yourself with this item. Because it does a fixed amount of damage (equal to a bomb), and you can only have one shot on-screen at any given time, Ipecac overrides and thus pretty much invalidates any damage upgrades or tears upgrades, and doesn't really benefit from range upgrades, either (again, it fires in a fixed arc.) Be aware that while you can fire over rocks and the like with it, if you're standing right next to the rock (or a monster), it will explode directly against that rock (or monster) and you'll hurt yourself.


- Fetus in a Jar, or Epic Fetus. Basically the same thing as Ipecac. Fetus in a Jar literally makes your shots into activated bombs that will explode a couple seconds after you fire them. Again, it overrides tears and damage upgrades and doesn't benefit from range upgrades. Because they're still bombs, you can detonate them immediately with the Remote Detonator item, which makes it a pretty good item to have if you have Fetus in a Jar. Epic Fetus makes you fire guided missiles, identical in function to the missiles fired using The Doctor's Remote item. You can and absolutely will die, a lot, before you figure out how to use Epic Fetus. Once you figure it out, though, Epic Fetus is an immensely powerful item... just don't get it if you already have a bunch of stat upgrades because it pretty much invalidates them.


- Chocolate Milk. Chocolate Milk gives you the ability to charge your shots to make them larger and do more damage. It works wonderfully with damage and range upgrades, but since you'd only get it to allow charged shots in the first place, tears upgrades don't do much for you, since they don't reduce the amount of time it takes to charge a shot.


- Brimstone. Brimstone's a rare item, usually found only in Devil rooms or red chests, that changes your shots into a giant red laser that pretty much obliterates anything it hits. Only problem is, the laser has to be charged before it can be fired, and you can't fire without charging. And once you're charging, you can't change the direction you'll fire in. Brimstone does a fixed amount of damage, has infinite range, and doesn't benefit at all from tears upgrades. Never, ever get any of the other items on this list with Brimstone (or vice-versa) because they tend to impact each other in negative ways; Chocolate Milk, for example, will double the amount of time it takes to charge a Brimstone shot, but won't make it do more damage.


- Technology, or Technology 2. Both Tech upgrades replace an eye with a laser. Technology completely disables your normal tears in exchange for just the one laser, while Tech 2 replaces one eye with a weaker laser that still allows normal tears to be fired out of your other eye (unless you're Cain, who only has the one eye to begin with.) Technology does not work well with any upgrades since it does fixed damage, has infinite range, and its rate of fire is constant. Tech 2's laser has the same attributes, but it allows normal tears out of the other eye, so it's not as big of a deal - keep in mind that picking up Tech 2 sets your tears stat to minimum, however, so if you've got a very high tears stat, you may want to skip it. Technology can actually play nice with Chocolate Milk, allowing you to charge up your laser to make it wider and hit a little harder.


- Mutant Spider, or Polyphemus. Both of these upgrades override your tears stat. Mutant Spider causes you to shoot four tears in a spread pattern, while Polyphemus makes you shoot a single, giant, powerful tear that can continue through enemies it kills (think "Trample" from Magic The Gathering.) Both upgrades only allow one shot to be on-screen at once, which makes tears upgrades fairly pointless. They benefit normally from range and damage upgrades. It's worth noting that Mutant Spider and Polyphemus work together in a sense - Mutant Spider will override Polyphemus' giant tear, but you keep the stat changes Polyphemus provides (tears set to minimum, huge damage boost.) Having both is basically like having a shotgun - shoots slow, but you obliterate just about everything if you hit it with all four tears.


- My Reflection bears special mention here. It's an effect that will cause your shots to boomerang back to you if they don't hit anything. This isn't a problem, usually, but it's guaranteed to get you killed if you have Ipecac. Because your shots will not explode before beginning to return to you (since they won't actually hit the ground until they come back), and the shots return to your current position rather than where you fired them from, the end result is you effectively shooting bombs at yourself. Avoid it like the plague if you have Ipecac, and it can make life difficult with Fetus in a Jar, too (your bombs will try to return to mama.)

As mentioned, these effects are generally kind of mutually exclusive and probably shouldn't be combined. In a best case scenario the new one will simply override the previous one (or the previous one will override the new one, making the item worthless), but in most cases the effects they have on rate of fire (pretty much all of these items murder your rate of fire) will stack, causing huge delays in your shots. Picking up Ipecac with Fetus in a Jar, for example, will make you have to wait four seconds between the time your shot disappeared to the time you're allowed to fire another shot.

[Wynnyelle]

Pretty good guide for somebody just getting started at this game! Kudos to you. Hopefully this will get some people interested in this great game!

[PizzaSHARK]

Minor update to some of the tear upgrades. Debating about adding in a bit about the bosses. I personally think the bosses are simple enough that you can figure them out after a couple of fights, and that part of the fun's in figuring them out for yourself. I can add in basic outlines for them if someone needs the help, though.