The Bindening™: Challenges

Challenges are very easy to understand, they alter the otherwise standard game mechanics, either in your benefit or hindrance, slightly.

Challenges 1 to 4 can be done at any time.

• Objective: Kill Mom
  
• Benefits: None
  
• Hindrances: Curse of Darkness is in effect for the entire run. This means you won't have a map at all. This makes items such as the Map and Compass and World Tarot Card useless.
  
• Reward: The Candle (Spacebar item)
  
• Difficulty: Beginner

This challenge is rather easy, there's only a slight difference in any normal run. If you are able to beat Mom normally, the loss of your map shouldn't add too much difficulty.

This challenge unlocks the Candle, one of my personal favourite spacebar-items. It does massive damage to enemies and bosses, recharges in a few seconds and can even block incoming shots on use. That's why it's recommended to do this challenge early on, the addition of the Candle in future runs will make them easier.

• Objective: Kill Mom
  
• Benefits: None
  
• Hindrances: Decreased Luck stat, which may increase your chance of getting a curse on any floor, and may even despawn Treasure Rooms
  
• Reward: The Lucky Toe (Trinket)
  
• Difficulty: Easy-Medium

This challenge isn't too hard, though the despawning of Treasure Rooms may be an issue. It's all about luck in this one!

This challenge unlocks the Lucky Toe trinket, which increases your chances of finding a pickup upon clearing a room. This reward is not too great, in my opinion, though the trinket isn't bad either.

• Objective: Kill Mom
  
• Benefits: None
  
• Hindrances: Curse of the Labyrinth is in effect on every floor
  
• Reward: The Burnt Penny (Trinket)
  
• Difficulty: Easy-Beginner

This challenge is very easy, though I'd rate it harder than Challenge 1.
Curse of the Labyrinth means every floor will be an XL floor; they'll have two Treasure Rooms and Two Boss Rooms. The hindrance in this is, for one, you'll have less shops in total.

This challenge unlocks the Burnt Penny trinket, which has a 50% to drop a bomb pickup with every coin you collect. It's an alright reward / trinket, but there are better versions of the Penny Trinket, such as the Bloody Penny or Flat Penny, in my opinion.

• Objective: Kill Mom
  
• Benefits: You start with the Dead Cat item
  
• Hindrances: You start with the Dead Cat item
  
• Reward: Guppy's Tail (Passive item)
  
• Difficulty: Medium-Hard

One of the hardest challenges, if you don't know what to do.
The Dead Cat item can be a blessing and a curse. You could farm Bosses for a lot of items, making the run easier than normal.
If you don't use the Dead Cat to it's maximum effectiveness, this run could turn out as a standard run with 2 less Heart Containers, and that's rough.

How to use the Dead Cat Item to farm bosses:
- Make sure you have enough bombs, 9 or 10 should be enough
- Make sure to be at 1 HP at the end of a boss fight
- Make sure you're fighting a boss you can beat without too much trouble

Enter the Boss Room and fight the boss normally, you should beat him with 1 or 0,5 hears left.
Then, an item spawns in the room as reward, per usual. Instead of picking it up, kill yourself with a bomb. You'll respawn outside and you can fight the boss again, whilst the reward for the previous one is still in the room.
This could give you up to 8 items from a single boss!
Make sure to pick up all the items at the end of your farming

This challenge will unlock the Guppy's Tail passive item, which increases your chances to find Golden Chests drastically. Paired with the added benefit that any three Guppy items can turn you into Guppy him/herself, it's a pretty good unlock. Except for the fact it's already obtainable before completing this challenge. Thanks to thatguyinthecorner for pointing out I hadn't stated that

You can only complete challenges 5 to 8 if you have killed Mom atleast once before in total.

• Objective: Kill Mom's Heart / It Lives
  
• Benefits: You start out with Infestation and the Mulligan
  
• Hindrances: No Treasure Rooms
  
• Reward: The Fish Head (Trinket)
  
• Difficulty: Medium

Compared to other challenges in this section (5 to 8), this is probably the hardest. Where the starting items of those other challenges make up for the loss of all Treasure Rooms, the Mulligan and Infestation do not, really.
The Mulligan will spawn attack flies to aid you whenever you land a hit, whereas Infestation will spawn attack flies whenever you get hit.

If you're good at the game, in the sense that you can kill Mom without too much effort or lucky-good items, this challenge shouldn't be too hard for you.

The reward for this item, Fish Head, is a trinket that does the same as Infestation, but worse. It's horrible.

• Objective: Kill Mom's Heart / It Lives
  
• Benefits: You start out with Dr. Fetus and the Doctor's Remote
  
• Hindrances: No Treasure Rooms.
  
• Reward: Epic Fetus (Passive item)
  
• Difficulty: Beginner

Probably thé easiest challenge. You start out with one of the best passive items there is, Dr. Fetus. Which immediatly grants you infinite bombs (in a way), too.

Watch out with not hitting yourself with Dr. Fetus and you're good to go.

The reward is amazing. Epic Fetus changes your projectiles into rockets. The same ones you shoot with Doctor's Remote, but without any cooldown since it's a passive item.

• Objective: Kill Mom's Heart / It Lives
  
• Benefits: You start out with a level 4 Cube of Meat
  
• Hindrances: No Treasure Rooms.
  
• Reward: SMB Super Fan (Passive item)
  
• Difficulty: Medium

I can't say too much about this challenge. If it's easy or not is mainly decided by, if your Meat Boy (Level 4 Cube) wants to co-operate.

The reward for this challenge is the SMB Super Fan, a passive item that boosts every stat except for speed, which it reduces.

• Objective: Kill Mom's Heart / It Lives
  
• Benefits: You start out with Mutant Spider and Spider's Bite
  
• Hindrances: No Treasure Rooms.
  
• Reward: The Spider Butt (Spacebar item)
  
• Difficulty: Beginner

The added damage and possible slowing effect gained from Mutant Spider (also known as Quad Shot) and Spider's Bite makes up for the loss of Treasure Rooms. This challenge is fairly easy.

The reward is like a Necronomicon + Hourglass, but weaker in both regards. It damages all enemies in the room a little bit, and slows them for a short amount. A bad item.

Challenge 9 can only be done if you have gained access to Sheol, and Challenge 10 can only be done if you have beaten Isaac, in the Cathedral, once.

• Objective: Kill Satan
  
• Benefits: You start out with the Holy Grail and Halo items.
  
• Hindrances: No Treasure Rooms
  
• Reward: The Counterfeit Coin (Trinket)
  
• Difficulty: Medium-(slightly)Hard

Don't be afraid of Satan, his patterns are actually kinda easy to dodge when you think about it.
You start out with the Holy Grail which grants you the ability to fly and adds a Heart Container, and the Halo, which is an all-stats up item.

These are good items, if you were able to do the Spider Boy! Challenge and defeat Satan atleast once before, this shouldn't be too difficult. Don't take this challenge for granted though.

The reward is the Counterfeit Coin, also known as Counterfeit Penny, which gives you a 50% to add a single (extra) penny to your total if you pick one up.

• Objective: Kill Isaac
  
• Benefits: None
  
• Hindrances: No Treasure Rooms
  
• Reward: Daddy's Love (Passive item)
  
• Difficulty: Hard(est)

Since you have to beat Isaac atleast once to even unlock this challenge, you'll probably be at the right level of experience to try it out. It's about luck though; good Devil and Shop items, Arcades (paying out) and Golden Chest / Library items are your main sources of income, and they're all pretty unreliable.

The reward is Daddy's Love, which is a fun item in my opinion. It makes a shadow follow your character, which will stomp down on enemies and damage them greatly.

- Images: Cropped out of my achievement list
- Information: Straight out of the game and my own experience

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