A Strange Ramble About The Lost
I have always sucked at the Binding of Isaac, but I consume a LOT of Binding of Isaac content. I am literally subscribed to 3 channels that do Binding of Isaac content on Youtube. Despite only having 8 hours on Afterbirth (I don’t even have Afterbirth+), I can tell you a surprising amount about it. Okay I just bought the DLCs I was missing (the whole collection is now on sale for a fiver, worth picking up if you like rogue-lites), and I just got my ass handed to me by the Burning Basement yet again, but I can still tell you a surprising amount about the Binding of Isaac. Sure, I can barely beat Mom, but I know how to access most of the end-game bosses way past Mom. I’m weird like that. All knowledge zero skill or reaction times.
Anyway, today, I want to talk about a challenge character. A character I could probably never even unlock, let alone play. And a character that completely had the way he was unlocked changed between Rebirth and Afterbirth. In Rebirth, you had to die in 4 specific ways on 4 specific characters. In Afterbirth, you just need to die while playing Isaac, while holding the Missing Poster trinket, in a sacrifice room. Which sounds easy, but that means you need to unlock the Missing Poster trinket (by beating the Lamb with Isaac, an end-game boss, I believe), then you need to find the Missing Poster trinket, then find a sacrifice room. Which is very RNG-based.
Even between versions, the Lost is actually a vastly different character. While you start with zero health (so you die in one hit), flight and spectral tears (so you have some chance to win), the Afterbirth version gives the Lost an Eternal D6, which has a 50% chance to reroll or delete an item, and Rebirth Lost just has the D4 which completely and randomly rerolls your build. In all honesty, the only way to play Lost is to first unlock the Holy Mantle as a starting item for the Lost. Which requires playing Greed Mode and filling the post-final-boss Greed Donation Machine to 879 coins. Which requires a minimum of 9 successful runs but may in fact require a literal fuckton of runs. It’s one hell of a commitment. And it won’t take 9 runs. There’s literally a mechanic that randomly stops you filling up the donation machine by making it randomly jam.
But if you don’t have the Holy Mantle, the Lost is unplayable. Heck, on Rebirth, even with Holy Mantle, the Lost is unplayable because you can lose the Holy Mantle as an item if you use the D4, your starting item. Early guides on how to play the Lost routinely consisted of “restart until you get a Holy Mantle or a stupidly good hard-carry item in the treasure room.” Without the Holy Mantle? The game is simply unfeasible. I follow some extremely good players and I’ve only ever seen a no-hit run once – I don’t remember what video it was, but it was Bisnap playing the Lost with IPECAC (the famous self-damaging explosive shot item) and beating the Chest.
With the Holy Mantle unlocked though? If you are skilled enough to only get hit once per room… you’re basically immortal. And, like, most of the time? You’re only getting hit once per room anyway. The only times you get hit more than once are in boss rooms or later rooms that feature multiple tanky enemies or simply take longer. At the same time, if you are a skilled enough player, you can also manipulate the game to give you what you want.
This leads to the Lost being an insanely good character. Since you start with flight, spectral tears and a way to re-roll items you don’t want in Afterbirth, you can more easily obtain run-carrying items, which means you can more quickly finish rooms before you have a chance to get hurt. At the same time, you can grab devil room items for free, rather than costing health. And even then, because your Holy Mantle refreshes after exiting and entering a room, you essentially have infinite health. Sure, two hits in one room and you’re dead, but 50 hits over 50 rooms and you have the same amount of health as when you started. Zero but also a lot.
What’s scarier though is that Tainted Lost exists. He doesn’t have the Holy Mantle. He starts off with a one-time-use Holy Card which gives a one-hit-only Mantle and that’s it. You get hit once, you either die on the next hit or survive until you can get a new Holy Card (or the Holy Mantle, Blanket or Wooden Cross). Yet folks still manage to get all completion marks with this character. Okay, sure, Tainted Lost has a far better item pool (many health-gaining items, flight items and spectral tears items are removed by default) but STILL!
Just goes to show what sheer skill and game knowledge can make people do.