How to perform a Game “Break”

Overview

For all those wondering how to perform a game “break”, I put break in parentheses cause it’s not really breaking the game, this guide is for you.

What is a break?

You may not be familiar with the term break used in BoI. Well a break is simply getting a combination of items that is seen as super strong that makes it seem like you have broken the game. This applies to anything in the game that can cause an extreme level of easiness or availabilty of items. I will be explaining how to do the latter.

Tools for Game “Breaking”

A game break won’t happen from thin air so you’ll need some items to help you get there.

Probably the most important item to break the game. It rerolls every pickup and chest in the room it is used in but won’t reroll pedestal items. As long as you can get a charge in it you can use this many times to keep rerolling. It’s also not unlocked by default, it requires you to beat ???(blue baby) as Isaac

This item isn’t really needed but it is very helpful especially for trying to get more available items. It rerolls all pedestal items in the room into another pedestal item from the corresponding item pool for the current room. So if you use it in a shop it will reroll the shop items into other shop items and in a normal room it will reroll from item rooms. This item isn’t available by default and will unlock by beating Isaac with ???(Blue Baby)

While it may not seem like it this item could be the item that really helps you break the game. This item fills the whole room with poop(where it can fill). This is helpful because the poops could contain coins or hearts that can be rerolled with the D20. Along with the petrified poop trinket this will start your game break off nice and strong.

Not exactly needed for a game break but very useful especially with the Card against Humanity. It gives you a higher chance to find consumables in poop which means in a room full of poop you have a good chance of getting a whole load of consumables perfect for the D20. But if you have the Card against Humanity and not this trinket no worries. Petrified poop drops from poop(logic not valid here) so you are more than likely to find it from the room full of poop you create.

You could have the perfect opportunity to break the game. You got your D20 your room full of coins and a D4 waiting in your item room but you have no more charge in your D20. This is where sharp plug saves the day. Sharp plug allows you to get a charge in your spacebar item for the cost of 2 health. Not bad considering the fact that its a full use and if you got a decent game break going on you’d have some hearts or soul hearts lying around. Its found in shops meaning its easier to find especially in you have shop upgrades. So this could essentially give you infinite charges in your D20/D6 to break as you please.

This item could help you in the same way the Sharp Plug does. The difference is the habit gives 1 charge when you take damage from any source so this could be worst or better than the sharp plug if you manage to find a way to take the least amount of damage or regenerate your health, and get a full charge.

Like the petrified poop this is not needed at all but helpful. It causes you to drop coins when you get hit. This means more coins on the ground to reroll so that’s good. Just make sure you have some sort of health source or similar. Works good with Habit and Sharp Plug.

Same effect as Swallowed penny but also give you 3 coins on pickup!

This item is basically the D4*, D6, and D20 all in one! As glorious as it sounds there’s a drawback. For one it has the properties of the D4* which means every time you use it it will reroll all items you have except for the item itself and trinkets.This could add for a sort of 4th dimension breakception gameplay but its a real gamble. The other thing I wouldn’t recommend this for breaks is HUGE SPOILER AHEAD! It is unlocked by beating the boss rush with the lost! THE LOST! So you probably wouldn’t be reading this guide if you have it.

Let’s Break!

Now that you’re familiar with what a break is and how a break works its time for you to try yourself!

As said before the pedestal items that will show up will be from the item pool in the current room.
For example, in devil rooms devil deal items will show up, in a shop shop items show up, in a boss room items from the boss item pool will show up, and in a regular room items from the normal item pool will show up.

The size of the room doesn’t play a vital role but I’d recommend a bigger room for the sole purpose of having more room so its not filled with items after 3 rerolls and to easily distinguish other items. Also try not to break in a room that you can only go into once like the devil/angel room and bosh rush room because if you end up accidentally leaving or getting pushed by a bomb or teleported out your break is gone. Happens to the best of us.

Pretty much explains itself in the tools section. Find a D20 at least and then find a way of getting a a lot of items in a room, reroll, open chests, repeat. Do this to get any items or trinkets you want. With a D4 you’d be able to reroll the pedestal items which will give you even more choices.

There’s no real answer to this. A good time to break would be if you manage to find a D20 and feel like trying. But even then you’d need a good place to start. You can’t make something from nothing.

Tips

You may not be here to learn to break and just need help getting started or improving.

• Play Isaac as he starts with a D6 assuming you unlocked it of course. This means you could reroll for a D20 to at least get a good chance at breaking.
• When breaking open chests even though you may not want to because you don’t want to take a chance decreasing your items. Well for one if you are rerolling with D20 you’d have to really try to decrease the amount of items in the room you are rerolling. Secondly after chests open the chests themselves become rerollable so it adds another item plus you could get even more items from the chest. Especially gold chests since they can contain pedestal items.
• Use your D20 or D6 wisely if you have no real way of gaining the charge back. This is hard because you may have cleared every room or you want to clear other rooms to get chance of getting more items that could help you.
• Be careful what you’re doing. With items all over the place there could be troll bombs or spiders from red chests that could end up hitting you. So keep track of your health and try to remain at max health after every reroll. Never be at 1 or 1/2 a heart for this exact reason.
• Progress through the game to unlock more items. Of course you’re going to need to have D20 unlocked to even attempt a break but even more items could add for interesting game breaks.
• The most important thing to do while breaking is to have fun. Do things you wouldn’t do normally unless of course you are using a game break to be OP for a specific reason like beating a boss.

This Guide

I hope this guide helped you and I would like to know in the comments how. I’d also like to know what you think about the quality of this guide. I’m not good at these things so I’d appreciate any ways I can do a better job on future guides. I’d also be willing to add another section of videos of game breaks that you link.

Platinum God | A Binding of Isaac Cheat Sheet[platinumgod.co.uk]
The Binding of Isaac Rebirth Wiki[bindingofisaacrebirth.gamepedia.com]
http://www.reddit.com/r/BindingOfIsaac