As a follow-up to yesterday's post about some bad items in Isaac, today I'll be talking about items that are good in all circumstances without exception. There are a few items that I've grown to like so much that the mere sight of them gets me excited, even if it's not in-game (for example, pictures on the wiki).
This item is a huge damage up- I'm not entirely clear on how this works, but from what I can tell, it not only increases damage, but gives a damage multiplier, making all past and future damage up items more effective. There's really not much more that needs to be said about this item- it's a huge increase to DPS with no downside, and can make the difference between an okay run and a really good run.
Like Cricket's Head, Magic Mushroom is a damage multiplier, but also increases health, fully heals the player, and increases other stats (namely range and speed). Magic Mushroom can effectively set you up for success in a run- it's not quite as big a damage up as Cricket's Head, and doesn't affect tears (despite saying it's an all stats up), but it gives enough speed to make dodging easy, and enough damage to make boss fights less tedious.
There are very few, if any, situations in which Tech X isn't good. It turns tears into large laser rings, which can hit multiple enemies, do multiple damage ticks, and cover a significant portion of the screen. It works well with Brimstone (the laser ring becomes a blood laser ring), or Spoon Bender (which makes the laser rings bend to hit targets in a very satisfying way).
This one is probably a given- it essentially gives you a free hit per room, meaning you can go the entire game without taking damage if you're only ever hit once per room (which is basically the entirety of how The Lost plays, once you've done enough greed mode). It doesn't help with damage per second like the other items I mentioned, but it does so much for survivability that it can honestly make almost any run winnable.
Although this technically isn't a damage up, it doubles the amount of tears that come out at a time. Unlike The Inner Eye or Mutant Spider, they don't spread- they fly parallel to one another, making it more likely that both will hit (there are exceptions- Brimstone lasers, for instance, aren't parallel, but are still close enough that it's hard to miss with them). The nice thing is, as far as I can remember, doubling the tears essentially doubles the chance of getting status effects on the tears (like Holy Light, Explosivo, Fire Mind, etc.), since there are two individual tears hitting at once.
You may notice I haven't included Brimstone- there's a reason for this. It's a pretty big tears down, so when paired with something like Monstro's Lung (which already takes a while to charge), it can actually make it hard to play. It's also pretty bad paired with Proptosis, honestly- the damage drops off very quickly, so you have to play almost like Azazel. The same arguments apply to Polyphemus- it's great for damage, but the tears down means it isn't good for all runs.
Anyways, that's gonna be it for today- hopefully you enjoyed this post!
