Overview
This guide serves to teach the advanced Isaac player how to exploit the game using specific sets of items which will synergise in such ways that will create some OP and fun runs.
Introduction
Welcome to “The breaking of Isaac” a guide for “The Binding of Isaac” which will teach you how to make the game give you whatever items you want, when you want them.
“This must be cheating!”
You might say.
“He must be using somthing like spidermod!”
Wrong my friend. This is all legit.
Using exploits in the game’s code you can make the game your slave, bending it to your will.
Are you ready to learn?
What is Breaking?
Breaking in the BoI is exploiting certain item and/or mechanic synergies in order to bend the game to your will.
This includes doing things such as…
- Geting infinate consumables
- Geting any item you want (pasive or active).
- Crash the game.
- And a few other things that will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
THE MOST IMPORTANT SECTION IN THE GUIDE!!!
Before we get started, please note that it is Imperitive that you are playing with the “Wrath of the Lamb” DLC, otherwise, many of the items necisary for breaking will not be in the game.
Also, please note that breaking depends on certain things happening, so you might not get a breaking run every time you play the game, even if you follow this guide to a T.
Lastly, As the description to the guide said, this guide is for Advanced players only,
In other words, you should have unlocked most of the items in the game and beaten the ??? boss in the chest at least once, otherwise, you, again, might be lacking some of the items or game expiriance needed to break the game.
Items for breaking:
Okay, here we go, let’s start by listing out the items that are involved with breaking.
They can be broken down into 5 catagories:
- Item generators (Items that generate items to re-roll/use)
- Rollers (Items that will allow you to re-roll consumables into items or items into other items)
- Rechargers (items that allow you to re-charge your rollers)
- Sustainability insurance (Items that make sure that you can keep breaking)
- Problem items (to avoid)
Item generators:
This item will allow you generate bombs, keys, coins, hearts, pills, and flies for a coin per use.
This item can be used to generate coins either for re-rolling or consumption depending on the type of break you are going for. Works at the cost of one half-heart per use. (If you use it fast enough, you can use it twice per half-heart 😉 )
This item can be used to generate pills on the floor which, can be used for re-rolling or consumption depending on the break type. This item takes a few rooms to recharge, meaning that it is one of the two item generators which requires a recharger to be effective.
This item can be used to generate Tarrot cards on the floor which, can be used for re-rolling or consumption depending on the card. This item takes a few rooms to recharge, meaning that it is the second of the two item generators which requires a recharger to be effective.
As an alternitive to any of the items in this section, an arcade room can be used, which is arguably the most effective method of item generation, but doesn’t work in every situation.
Rollers:
This item will re-roll all of the consumables on the floor into another random consumable. consumables include; Chests, golden chests, red chests, trinkets, red hearts, soul hearts, eternal hearts, Tarrot cards, pills, keys, golden keys, bombs, troll bombs, super troll bombs, and any type of coin.
This item allows you to re-roll any item into any other item WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE ROOM’S POOL.
Rechargers:
This item is the holy grail of breaking. Whenever you take damage with this item, you gain 3 ticks of charge for your space bar item, meaning, if you take damage twice intentionally, you can fully recharge either a roller item or an item generator.
Every 15 seconds you are in a hostile room (Where the doors are shut) you will get a tick of charge for your space bar item. This might not seem too rediculus until you realise that you can bomb out of a room after you get 3 ticks for your space bar item WITHOUT COMPLETING THE ROOM and re-enter to do it again for a full recharge.
Sustainability insurance:
This catagory requires a bit of explaining.
These items are (ususally) non-mandatory items that will allow you to break without running out of things such as hearts, money and bombs, and usually come in sets.(You’ll see what I mean.)
The skeleton key(keys), Pyro(bombs), and Dollar(money) will each give you 99 of their respective consumable.
These 4 trinkets; the golden penny(coins), flat penny(keys), burnt penny(bombs), and bloody penny(half-hearts) each gave a 50% chance that when you pick up a coin, one of the trinkets respective consumable will drop.
The <3 is only one of these, but they all are usefull.
Once per room, whenever you drop to half of a heart, you will gain one full soul heart.
Allows you to get in and out of the secret and top secret room without the use of a bomb.
Bad Things:
When you’re breaking, it is generally a good idea to avoid becoming guppy until you are finished breaking and it’s the last thing you are going for, as the flies spawned often kill things you don’t want to kill, which can often end a breaking session prematurely.
This item is bad in the first place (IMO) but it is especially bad when attempting a break. It makes breaking nerely IMPOSSIBLE for reasons you will understand later on. Also, ProTip, don’t take this item, even if you are not breaking, the one free bomb and soul heart you will get from this item is not worth it.
Setups:
Here are listed the different requirements of different kinds of breaking runs.
Here is the format they will be displayed in:
- Title of break
- Item generator(s) needed
- Roller(s) needed
- Recharger(s) needed
- Sustainability insurance item(s) needed
- Floor requirements
- Difficulty (x/10)
- How to execute break
- Side notes
Exampe video:
So with that… Let’s begin!
- Common Inf. re-roll break.
- Any item generator
- both D6 -AND- D20
- Nuns Habit
- Scapular is optional, but not required
- A constant source of half-heart damage
- Difficulty: 4/10 (as easy as it gets)
- Once you have all of the required items in play ON THE SAME FLOOR, find an open room and your damage source and begin spawning items in it using the item generator of your choice (arcade works well for this one). if you are using a space bar item generator, whenever you need a recharge, take damage from your damage source (if you have scapular, you can do this infinately AS LONG AS YOU LEAVE AND RE-ENTER THE ROOM EVERY TIME YOU TAKE DAMAGE) after you generate a fair ammount of items on the ground, use your D20 to re-roll all of the rooms items (unles you need health) and open all of the chests in the room (be sure to take a golden key if you see it) then recharge and roll again. after a while of opening chests, actual items will begin to appear. after you get about 4-5 items in the room, start re-rolling using the D6. Take the items you want as you see them. then, go back to re-rolling with the D20 to generate more items when you run out.
Rinse and repeat until you have everything you want - This is the most common form of break.
Example video:
(please note that this is an extreme case and this prob. won’t happen to you)
I will be adding another form of breaking every week or until I run out of ideas, it which point i will ask for suggestions.
Help Me!
If you find ANY errors (Mechanical, spelling grammer), or if ANYTHING is confusing or doesn’t make sense in this article, please inform me in the comments, and i will remedy the problem as quickly as possible.
I will also be awnsering questions if you comment them.
Thanks!
The Item thumbnails come off of The BoI cheat sheet[www.platinumgod.co.uk], The most usefull Isaac site ever, and others came form the BoI wiki[bindingofisaac.wikia.com] (I don’t advise that you use the wiki as a source for info though, it is often inacurate)
And lastly, A special thanks to anyone who’s video I borrow for an example.
Toodles!