Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth

[talah]

I searched and there's nothing here on this?
WOW JUST WOW.

I've gotten into Isaac having been corrupted and overtaken by Twitch generally, watched a few games and then got sucked into the speedrunning antics of ProblemsIRL and the slow-playing and streaking stuff from the likes of Diabetech, Cobalt and NorthernLion.

I'm officially an addict and have been finishing up my working days lately by coming home and playing a few games on the latest version of the BoS weekly challenge (and IMO best racing iteration of Isaac Rebirth ever) - the Jud6s mod.

So.
I'm looking forward to Afterbirth, have pre-ordered for a few bucks and mainly want to see what happens with the Isaac community meta when all the new items, item synergies, characters and transformations are in effect. I'm less jizzy about the leaderboards and Greed mode, but i'm sure I'll try them out.

It releases on October 30th! Yay a thread about Isaac Afterbirth!

[talah]

Mmm, mm. Mm.

So this pokeball thingy. I guess I missed the memo.

I was sort of thinking that all the additional items, item synergies and transformations would be pretty cool.

[talah]

One of the main synergies they've spoiled is the Rubber Cement working with - well almost everything now.

There are probably going to be some stupidly OP combinations which are rarer due to the increased item count.

So Tammy's Head and Brimstone it won't have much bearing on because it was stupidly OP anyway :D but say triple shot Technology with rubber cement (and I think 20/20 will combo with a bunch of other items it didn't used to as well)... these are going to make meaningful balance in an SRL environment pretty interesting.

We shall see! It's going to be fun to watch the full achievement runs on Twitch - I think Dick and Cobalt are planning to complete the game on release day.

[talah]

The main rebirth category is here on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/The ... %20Rebirth
Afterbirth will obviously have a different game category as it's a different game.

The final/championship Rebirth Weekly Balls of Steel VoD (prior to Afterbirth) is here: http://www.twitch.tv/bostv/v/22377924
10 hours of nice business sorting out the best of the best using the Jud6s mod

Diabetech - host of the BoS weeklies and a really nice dude who plays other games as well
Cobaltstreak - who has said he'll be running the new 111% True Platinum God when Afterbirth comes out along with Richard Hammer (who appears to be staying at his house for the week to do so heh)
Problems - one of the notorious 7-character runners
Hyphen - winner/titleholder of several major Isaac speedrunning comps
Anti - possibly the best Isaac Rebirth speedrunner around
Brain - fantastic and entertaining runner who is growing into 7-11 character speedruns

There are dozens of other really great racers, most of them play on SpeedRunsLive (SRL) - although I mainly just catch them on Twitch :)

[talah]

I can't say I've ever actually gotten the Soy Milk + Libra combo, but yes its reputation is well known. Possibly something you'd be more likely to end up with while Eden streaking, as each of the items on their own are basically run-killers and not something you'd usually pick up in isolation.

(I did take soy in the chest recently after I already had quad shot / scythes and that was pretty hilarious.. Then found ipecac in another chest room... Apparently cac/scythes isn't an instant death sentence with soy heh)

Far as getting the Afterbirth DLC for free, I don't think that's a thing. AFAIK it's DLC for Rebirth so you need Rebirth anyway. I bought Rebirth / Wrath when they were on sale together a while ago, so if I'm wrong I just wasted my $6.66 buying Afterbirth. After release date the DLC wil be $9.99 USD. Apparently you'll get the Afterbirth soundtrack for free if you already bought the Rebirth one.

Edmund (creator)'s sitey bloggy thing with all the info is here:
http://bindingofisaac.com

[talah]

http://platinumgod.co.uk/afterbirth-countdown

(expired on 2015-10-31 04:00:00)

[talah]

It's... interesting, I'll give it that.

I don't know that I'll play much Greed mode after I get all the unlocks from it.
I think normal mode with the different room layouts might be pretty good with the new items.
D4/D100 seem to work a lot better with more synergies (not so much a high-risk nerf anymore).

Found that pokeball thing you were talking about.

Also, it seems to upgrade the entire game (ie, it's not going to be easy for anyone to say, 'Screw it I'll continue speedrunning the un-upgraded Rebirth').

[talah]

I'm... kind of having trouble enjoying the game as much as I did before, and I'm not sure if that's just because I was comfortable with Rebirth dynamics (had like 875 hours), or if it's just that diluting the item pools and adding an additional amount of similar ratio crap-to-good items has just made it a lot harder to attain those rare synergies you used to get, therefore harder to realistically look forward to them.

Might also be that I'm going for challenges/achievements. Haven't touched Greed Mode since getting the post-it note achievement for each character. (Fuck you "The Lost", if that even is your real name.)

*sigh* Maybe I just need to move on to Fallout 4 or something. Rebirth used to be so fun though trying to run through quickly to the Chest a couple of games a night.

[talah]

I empathise I guess and did wonder if it was similar.

The past week of Edmund/Tyrone tweets and "community unlocks" have been utter bullshit IMO. Not even enjoyable to watch from the sidelines. I'm actually really angry that Edmund's calling people who are saying it was time-gated (let me look up the quote(s))

"you sir are an idiot ..."
"How is it that people think extra bonus content that wasn't in the game or part of the description was "gated content"? :| INTERNETS!!!!!"
"you also aren't the only misinformed fool either sadly :/"

More like an agressive mafia game than the release of DLC which he was worried about secrets being exposed too early
considering he participated proactively in the secret "unlocking" and no-one but a few core folks could participate in it anyway.

No fun.

[talah]

So anyway I unlocked Keeper yesterday.

Got up to Sheol in Greed mode with him with a fairly sustainable build. (Lots of Tears-up, Spectral and Flight and some Damage ups.) And then got double-tapped by 2 x Adversary Brimstone.

I don't know that it's going to be fun playing Lost for Hush / Greed / Mega Stan and Keeper for everything.
Guess I just love dat punishment doe.

[talah]

Guardian challenge: I think you just need to get lucky with room composition mainly and maybe an item like Maw of the Void (or Athame like I just did :) ). Something that will do damage if you're hit (which you will be) and something which will give you a better chance of finding health. So even say Gimpy would be good with a mostly red heart build as I think it increases chances of red hearts dropping from kills as well as soul hearts from damage.

Thanks for reminding me about challenges though! I've only done 3 of the new ones now having struggled with Blue Bomber and Pay to Play in the earlier Afterbirth patches.

Funny - everyone says tech x is awesome but the couple of times I've got it it didn't seem that great to me.

Also yeah Azazel greed was hard just because of the range. And even like 3 range-up items doesn't seem to help that much with him. At least they mostly reverted the charge time and damage nerfs.

[talah]

I had to Alt-F4 glitch to get the lost achieves in Rebirth and I think they've fixed that now (or maybe you need to end the process using Task Manger now, not completely sure).

People manage it though, a lot of the time with like Gnawed Leaf strats; it's cheese either way.

Holy mantle plus D4 is a bit infuriating on lost considering as soon as you D4 the mantle is gone O.o


I played a few hours of Keeper over the last couple of days. Really bad. Gotta laugh at the fact that I'm almost certainly never going to beat the achieves without getting cube of meat and gnawed leaf and leaving the computer running for several hours to beat Hush for example.
(Well I dunno maybe I'll just get 100 times better at dodging and RNG a run without a guaranteed damage room :P )

[talah]

So yup. I've got Keeper done with Chest (think that was Guppy and something OP, can't quite remember), Hush (got through with Guppy's head / hive-mind and I *think* a chaos card on that one), Mega Stan (that was also Guppy's head / shielded tears / hive mind) and just finished Dark Room today with Jar of Flies hive mind, holy mantle and Rune Bag (which gave me several Algiz runes which I used on boss fights).
Lucky lucky though.

Moral of the story is hive mind is OP especially with the Keeper's thing of converting hearts into flies. I'll also *always* give up the coin for Guppy's head - and Jar of Flies too; it just finishes off bosses and difficult floors so awesomely (even without hive mind). And remember Hive Mind is in the shop.

So I've got Boss rush Keeper and Greed mode on Lost and Keeper till my 1001%
:)

So much time sunk. So SO frustrating when you get sniped or get a bad room. So satisfying when a run comes together tho.

[talah]

Oh by the way I just remembered my *Lost* Mega Stan run a week and a half ago.

Cheesed it with Gnawed Leaf Demon Baby.
Walked away for like 15 minutes XD

[talah]

Half or more is spending way too much time on it.

So instead of discovering the cure for Alzheimer's I have a potential Steam achievement.

:P

[talah]

Sooooooo....

I've signed up for a "basement" tournament which is supposed to be for afterbirth newbies. I'm not so bad at it but streaming with an upload of 1mbit and watching anything else seems to be a bit impossible even though I've tried to tweak QoS.

So I can stream in decent quality, or I can watch my potential competitor.

Egh. Maybe I'm just making up excuses not to race :)
I'll ping back with the tourney (but probs not who I am on twitch) if I get in.

[talah]

Oh by the way Om you were so so right about Tech X
I just didn't know how to use it *shakes fist at sky*