Holy hell I hate the Brains! challenge. I have this one and the Guardian left. There has always been rooms with near guaranteed damage but the fact that the brains can't be fired as soon as you enter a room seems to create a few more of these. Health is a concern because Blue baby.

Anyone have any tips and tricks to share?

From googling/reddit and a few realizations of my own:

• Don't bother with damage-up-Devil deals, since they won't help the brain damage. Pick Abbadon for the added health.

• Any strong melee familiar like sac dagger or cube of meat is really helpful. Now you die from touching enemies while trying to melee instead of suicide by exploding brain.

• Other sources of damage is great. Red or blue candle. Guppy's head, Incubus or Li'l Brimstone etc.

• Ways to get health like the Relic,Dark Bum, Satanic Bible or Book of Revelations. Maw of the Void did not work.

• Save on bombs to be able to bomb out of hard rooms where necessary

• Mapping is always helpful

• Wait until brains have respawn until entering a new room

• Don't pick the negative

• Don't have the game crash on your strongest run so far

Finished the Brains! challenge with a run with Broken Stopwatch (active on both Isaac and ???), Humbling Bundle, Dark Bum and Crystal Ball as the heroes. Health out the wazoo and mapping. Woo! Never again.

A few more thoughts:

• Use distance (duh). Bob's brain has infinite(?) range
• Herd enemies if possible, i.e. collect them in a bunch for easier kills

Hated the Brains challenge as well. My winning run was due to a devil deal with rotten baby, succubus, and abaddon, along with the flashlight and blue candle from shops, and a good amount of health upgrades from bosses. Had a few runs where I picked up Tammy's head in gold chests and was hoping for the Tammy/Brim dream, but never got there.

Guardian challenge seemed super easy for me, I was surprised to see anyone complain about it but I guess I just had an op run.

Yeah I did the Guardian straight after the Brains one and finished it on the first try , wondering what the fuss was about. However I got early mapping and lots of health but I can see that one being frustrating if you don't get ways to replenish health because it went away in a hurry in some rooms.

grrr, apparently the last thing I'm missing before 1001% is Blinding Baby, that feels a bit annoying to grind. I want to be done with the game.

Should be relatively easy to get in greed mode.

I'm grinding it in hard mode actually, because it's more likely to get blank card in a shop than greed shop and then subsequent tarot cards, no?

Fine, you win!

Congrats man, great work.

thanks! I wonder if gobbo decides to come back and do it on all three saves, like he did with RPG in Vanilla...

Doesn't matter since you already got it, but I think being able to just reset until you get blank card in a greed shop and then do a normal run until you get a floor with cards in the shop would be substantially faster than trying to do the same in hard mode.

I never bothered with the Lost pre-Afterbirth so I still feel a little bit like I am not a real Real Platinum God.

As far as I can see I have Sworn Protector left to touch for the 1001% achievement. Isaac-runs with the D6 and aiming for angel rooms and rerolling the key pieces might be a good way?

I tried to use Blank card, 2 of Diamond (and Chaos) in greed mode to get Godhead and Sworn Protector and I swear to God and sunny Jesus that Godhead just showed up in the greed shop after a reset. Along the way I managed to "end" one run with this set up when I foolishly used the credit card. No more item respawns after that. I used Isaac since you can reroll the items in the shop with the d6 and also with the bomb you start with if there is a reroll machine available.

When I break Greed Mode, it seems like I just can't avoid everything coming up Breakfast long before I've cleaned out the item pool.

I spent 2 hours trying to beat Hush with the Lost last night and wound up dying 3 times at <5% health on separate runs. I suck.

Wohoo! It was way faster going the Greed mode way with blank card and 2 of diamonds. It seems to be really hard to open up angel rooms when it is all you really want to do in a normal run. I take all the **** damage apparently.

If an item pool is cleaned out you will get Breakfast I think. If you keep buying things eventually stuff from other pools will show up. Chaos helps to speed up the process a little.

I had a streak of -100 and then some before I could figure the Keeper out and get Wooden nickel unlocked. Guess we both suck.

grats

Thanks,a little late to the party but still. I finished off the Sworn Protector greed run with my fastest Ultra Greed kill by a mile. I'd say around 25s from when he starts to take damage to finished fight. Since I haven't played with Godhead in the game before I was giggling like a little school girl at those ridiculous tears and their hitbox.

In Greed Mode, some items have their own special pools, like Cube of Meat. It literally only contains Cube of Meat, so if it's gone from the pool it makes it much more likely to get breakfast. Other items have small pools. I think only some pools will repopulate with other pools: ie the Library Pool getting refilled from the Shop and/or Boss Pool.

Good stuff.

Thinking about it, it all really comes down to getting to the Chaos item to merge the pools together. This shouldn't be a problem with Blank Card, 2 of Diamonds and a battery in shop. Chaos is part of the shop pool so it is bound to show up eventually.

I know still early in the day but finished 65th on the daily, my best by far, it is a fun one, beat boss rush, Hush and Mega Satan

So I've been trying to do Satan/Lamb/Mega Satan on The Lost for a week now.

I have the most OP Brimstone run I've ever seen going. I'm 1-shotting everything.

I've got Dad's key and I'm clearing the Dark Room trying to find Lamb, and I come across a secret room. Item I've never seen before, so I pause a second and then just grab it anyway. Missing No.? Okay, cool whatever.

It ****ing rerolled my passives and gave me ipecac, soy milk, and TINY MOTHER****ING PLANET.




FML

**** you, Isaac. **** you.

hahahaha

yeah item experimentation is for when you are underpowered and need to get lucky or just ****ing around, not when you are in dark room as lost

ugh in the daily I had a sick build goin and reached the door to mega satan and the 1st chest I opened out popped a spider and killed me.. probly woulda insta died anyway w/ only 1 heart but if I got a HP boost from the chests coulda had a shot

Haven't really happened upon any new build that impressed me in Afterbirth until now with Cain's Eye, lots of tears up, homing/mega/poison/tear bombs with Dr. Fetus and the capper Brimstone, every room dies in a second with double brimstone stars. I suppose quad shot would improve it quite a bit, but easily the most OP run I've had.

finally achieved 1001% had the most op run in the world and managed to kill boss rush, the hush and then mega satan with the keeper and then spammed eden till i got the mega blast, now its time to actually enjoy the game

Just had my proudest moment (well) as an Isaac player. Rerolled Lilith in a 6-room without realizing I would lose the Box of friends. The run was ****ty and I was very slow so it was YOLO time I felt. Rolled into Guillotine and Isaac's Heart. Great. But I also got sac dagger and Daddy Longlegs and later on found the Relic and this carried the run.

I really cannot figure out the Guillotine otherwise, it almost makes me nauseous, and I usually take a ****-ton of dumb damage while stumbling around like a drunk. Isaac's heart is what is and usually means the end of the run for me but it worked well with sac dagger. But I guess the fact that I had it negated some of the damage I usually take because of the Guillotine.

I am currently trying to do streaks. I started with Isaac and then move through the character wheel step by step but skip the Lost and Keeper but include Eden. Current record in Afterbirth is 6 this way. If I die I start a new streak on the next character in the progression instead of starting over at Isaac so to speak.

EDIT: Playing on hard and no resetting. I tried the trick where I leave the game and start again if I encounter Greed in a shop or secret room to spawn Super Greed instead and remove them both from the rest of the game. But that felt cheap even though I have seen speedrunners do that. Different rules for different things.

Other ideas are Lost streaks or Eden streaks. Anyone got any other ideas to toy around with? Is streaking harder in Afterbirth? I'd say so since there are a little bit more bull**** damage thanks to tiny rooms and Krampus spinning Brimstone etc.