The Binding of Isaac

Okay....try starting a game with the new character and...wow.

Ended up in basement XL on the first level and it was harder than the Womb pre-expansion.

There are some sets of rooms that are balls hard.

The trinkets are nice but...uh...they really need some explanation.

Demyx wrote:

Apparently I've heard the Mac version is dropping today though. I sure hope so!

I know you found an article on Verge about it, but Edmund McMillen's blog confirms. He also mentions there's a patch dropping today to fix a bunch of issues that have been found, and should fix the achievements. Oh, and they plan on adding a few more things to the game later since they ran out of time on some stuff they wanted to add in the expansion.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

Okay....try starting a game with the new character and...wow.

Ended up in basement XL on the first level and it was harder than the Womb pre-expansion.

There are some sets of rooms that are balls hard.

The trinkets are nice but...uh...they really need some explanation.

Basement XL == FREE DOUBLE LEVEL. Its double the powerups man.

shoptroll wrote:

I know you found an article on Verge about it, but Edmund McMillen's blog confirms. He also mentions there's a patch dropping today to fix a bunch of issues that have been found, and should fix the achievements. Oh, and they plan on adding a few more things to the game later since they ran out of time on some stuff they wanted to add in the expansion.

Yay! More Isaac for me!

boogle wrote:
TheArtOfScience wrote:

Okay....try starting a game with the new character and...wow.

Ended up in basement XL on the first level and it was harder than the Womb pre-expansion.

There are some sets of rooms that are balls hard.

The trinkets are nice but...uh...they really need some explanation.

Basement XL == FREE DOUBLE LEVEL. Its double the powerups man.

It may not have been the basement but whatever level it was had enemies that were harder than some of the womb level enemies pre-dlc.

I'm playing "everything is terribl" too because of the number of times I've beaten the game so maybe that has something to do with it?

In general I played like 4 or 5 games yesterday with only one completion and I found the difficulty to vary WILDLY at the beginning. It seems to me that if you pick Samson the game throws much harder sh*t at you towards the beginning.

TheArtOfScience wrote:
boogle wrote:
TheArtOfScience wrote:

Okay....try starting a game with the new character and...wow.

Ended up in basement XL on the first level and it was harder than the Womb pre-expansion.

There are some sets of rooms that are balls hard.

The trinkets are nice but...uh...they really need some explanation.

Basement XL == FREE DOUBLE LEVEL. Its double the powerups man.

It may not have been the basement but whatever level it was had enemies that were harder than some of the womb level enemies pre-dlc.

I'm playing "everything is terribl" too because of the number of times I've beaten the game so maybe that has something to do with it?

In general I played like 4 or 5 games yesterday with only one completion and I found the difficulty to vary WILDLY at the beginning. It seems to me that if you pick Samson the game throws much harder sh*t at you towards the beginning.

Nah, those are just additions to the random pool as far as I can tell. I hope for an early XL dungeon because it can give you a nice edge if you are careful and milk rooms for item recharge.

Now passives, how do they work?

boogle wrote:

F*ckin' passives, how do they work?

They're miracles, man.

Sweet, got my Isaac and Maggie runs done and unlocked Samson, not really looked at the challenges yet. Did discover that The Nun's Habit and Yum Heart combo is pretty close to invincible, which made my maggie run a cakewalk

Those new jumpy spiders can go die in a fire. Seriously

jamos5 wrote:

Did a run last night with Cain, got a nice surprise ending after killing Mom's heart.

The game does seem a bit unbalanced though. Strong pickups seemed plentiful, and I accrued more money than any pre-WOTL games. I felt way over-powered by the time I finished my run.

Yeah it does feel more unbalanced, I've found that either you become ridiculously overpowered early on and it's a total breeze or you just die real early, there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. And, as you say, the additional pickups do seem to tend towards overpowered.

I did an Isaac run earlier, fresh after killing Mom's Heart. I could not stop getting Health Ups and Tears Ups. It was ludicrous. Right before I went for Mom's Heart again, I got two full health pills.

After that, I did a Cain run. Technology 2 on the first treasure room, and then Health Ups to about 8 containers, and then almost nothing but Tears Ups. I got different items in between, but I didn't need them. At all. For reference, I killed Mom's Heart with Cain in about 15 seconds. I don't know if that's really that quick, but it definitely wasn't a challenge.

I'm thinking that maybe the challenge runs are meant to be the challenges now. You don't get any treasure rooms in some of them which would certainly change things.

Demyx wrote:

I'm thinking that maybe the challenge runs are meant to be the challenges now. You don't get any treasure rooms in some of them which would certainly change things.

They are mostly still easy. Still have 7 years bad luck and one other to go.

boogle wrote:

They are mostly still easy. Still have 7 years bad luck and one other to go.

Maybe it's just because we're all used to playing it by now?

I mean, I've sunk over 50 hours into BoI by now, so when evaluating whether or not the expansion makes things easier, I'm not sure how much of it is the expansion and how much of it is the fact that I've gotten better at it. At least, I hope that I've gotten better at it after sinking so much time!

50 hours is probably about right for things to start really clicking.

I've noticed that the expansion items seem to come up a lot. I'm not sure I've had a run since it came out where I didn't get Jesus Juice early on.

Demyx wrote:
boogle wrote:

They are mostly still easy. Still have 7 years bad luck and one other to go.

Maybe it's just because we're all used to playing it by now?

Yeah, I did wonder if that was the case. What would it be like to play the expansion without having the golden god achievement and all the powerups that go with that level of completion? My couple of Isaac runs were pretty easy with the dice in hand.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I've noticed that the expansion items seem to come up a lot. I'm not sure I've had a run since it came out where I didn't get Jesus Juice early on.

Yeah, it seems like a really common pickup.

e2a: The secret room location seems a lot less easy to predict, although I notice that many levels now have 2 hidden rooms so I suspect the algorithm that places them has changed. Also it would be nice of the trinkets had a different icon on the mini-map other than the card icon.

Yeah as someone who hasn't played the game a lot (and had my progression reset because I changed computers), I can safely say that the game is still freakin' hard.

DanB wrote:

e2a: The secret room location seems a lot less easy to predict, although I notice that many levels now have 2 hidden rooms so I suspect the algorithm that places them has changed. Also it would be nice of the trinkets had a different icon on the mini-map other than the card icon.

XL floors have two of everything. They also have two treasure rooms and two boss rooms (after you defeat the first there'll be a door leading back whence you came and another door leading to the next boss).

LobsterMobster wrote:
DanB wrote:

e2a: The secret room location seems a lot less easy to predict, although I notice that many levels now have 2 hidden rooms so I suspect the algorithm that places them has changed. Also it would be nice of the trinkets had a different icon on the mini-map other than the card icon.

XL floors have two of everything. They also have two treasure rooms and two boss rooms (after you defeat the first there'll be a door leading back whence you came and another door leading to the next boss).

You can get double secrets without XL. One is a holy secret though.

Double secrets... What does it mean?

boogle wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:
DanB wrote:

e2a: The secret room location seems a lot less easy to predict, although I notice that many levels now have 2 hidden rooms so I suspect the algorithm that places them has changed. Also it would be nice of the trinkets had a different icon on the mini-map other than the card icon.

XL floors have two of everything. They also have two treasure rooms and two boss rooms (after you defeat the first there'll be a door leading back whence you came and another door leading to the next boss).

You can get double secrets without XL. One is a holy secret though.

I've seen 2 normal secret rooms in a couple of non-XL levels. One cave with 9 coins and the other with a fortune telling machine for instance.

Also the rule for entering the challenge rooms seems different. It used to be that you had to have your red heart containers at full but now the room is sometimes closed even when you're at full health. Anyone worked out the new rule?

Protip: In the big XL levels with the large grids of fully connected rooms, always walk round so you enter new rooms from the side rather than the top or bottom. You typically start a little further from the mobs so you get more reaction time.

I wonder why they haven't already ported this game to touch devices. Seems like a pretty obvious fit for tablets and phones.

DanB wrote:

Also the rule for entering the challenge rooms seems different. It used to be that you had to have your red heart containers at full but now the room is sometimes closed even when you're at full health. Anyone worked out the new rule?

I had one open when I was at 1 heart. And it had a Holy Grail, so unless that was complete luck on my part, I assume that because you need to be low health to enter, it has better rewards.

Secret rooms: There are two on every floor now, not just the XL floors, every floor. One is the secret room that's been there all along that's almost always found in a "horseshoe" pattern. The other is apparently always found on the edge of the map, is only bordered by one other non-secret room, and can take a variety of different forms, including an angel/devil room, a room full of hearts, and more. Being able to reliably find the second secret room is one of the main benefits to ipecac.

Also, there are two types of challenge rooms now. There's the old style where you need to be at full health, and a new style where you need to only be at one heart's worth of health (I think it doesn't count soul hearts since I made it in with Blue Baby). The new style has better rewards and you fight minibosses (which I actually kind of find easier than a lot of the mobs that can spawn in the regular type...)

I thought the new style was take damage in the room outside it or glitch it using flying.

boogle wrote:

I thought the new style was take damage in the room outside it or glitch it using flying.

If you're talking about the rooms with the doors with teeth that hurt you, those aren't challenge rooms, that's yet a third type of room.

The two different types of challenge rooms both look like challenge rooms from the outside, but one has a sword over the door and the other has a skull.

There are also the bloody spike rooms, marked as a blob of blood on your map. They're the ones with blood all over and a set of spikes in the center of the room. The first time I entered one I looked around, noticed a trend, and threw myself on them. A normal chest appeared. Second time I tried it in a different room, nothing happened. I think they really ought to make it clearer what you're supposed to do there, as the game's trained us to avoid spikes and had I been unlucky on my first attempt I would have concluded it's always a bad idea to touch them.

They're also not that good -- giving up a whole heart for a chest. I guess it's not that bad if there's a spare heart on the level you don't need, like a poor man's blood machine, but meh.

On the other hand, the rooms with spiked doors are sometimes worth it.

Demyx wrote:
boogle wrote:

I thought the new style was take damage in the room outside it or glitch it using flying.

If you're talking about the rooms with the doors with teeth that hurt you, those aren't challenge rooms, that's yet a third type of room.

The two different types of challenge rooms both look like challenge rooms from the outside, but one has a sword over the door and the other has a skull.

I was talking about the skull challenge rooms.

LobsterMobster wrote:

There are also the bloody spike rooms, marked as a blob of blood on your map. They're the ones with blood all over and a set of spikes in the center of the room. The first time I entered one I looked around, noticed a trend, and threw myself on them. A normal chest appeared. Second time I tried it in a different room, nothing happened. I think they really ought to make it clearer what you're supposed to do there, as the game's trained us to avoid spikes and had I been unlucky on my first attempt I would have concluded it's always a bad idea to touch them.

I do wonder if there is some better "final" drop if you're willing to sacrifice enough hearts to the spikes (like the blood machine). But I've not tried

Demyx wrote:
boogle wrote:

I thought the new style was take damage in the room outside it or glitch it using flying.

If you're talking about the rooms with the doors with teeth that hurt you, those aren't challenge rooms, that's yet a third type of room.

The two different types of challenge rooms both look like challenge rooms from the outside, but one has a sword over the door and the other has a skull.

Speaking of the spiked door rooms, i notice if you're flying you don't take any damage when entering the spiked door but you do take half a heart when leaving which seems like a bug.