The Binding of Patrick: 02/27/2014

Yay! This is a great feature.

Yay crying Patrick!

Just as I was looking for this it appeared ! Great timing Patrick!

So. Much. Blood.

Just as I was looking for this, it appeared! Great timing Patrick!

Regarding character choice: I prefer Magdalene. Good starting stats, and the Yum Heart is invaluable. There's basically no reason to pick Isaac once you unlock her, and the others are pretty much "hard mode" characters.

Of course, if your item drops are good enough, you'll be a powerhouse no matter what.

@shagge: True. Once you get the nun's habit, that and the heart alone break the game.

@shagge said:

I agree to an extent. Maggy is good for learning the game and maybe lasting a bit longer (thanks to Yum Heart) if you're really having trouble with the Caves or Depths, but ultimately her low starting speed is going to get you into a world of hurt in the Caves or Depths where enemies are faster, unless you find a bunch of pills that grant Speed stat. You don't need to max your speed in Binding of Isaac, but 1 bar of speed (like Maggy starts with) really does start to screw you at a certain point.

I'll agree that most other characters are "hard mode", except for Cain. Starting with 2 hearts isn't that crippling, and the Lucky Foot is just so crazy that if you can survive to the Caves and pick up a few pills, you'll probably be pretty strong due to those pills. His range is kinda low, but whatever, there are a zillion items that increase range, and usually you end up getting Range Up pills anyway.

@patrickklepek I don't know if you read these comments, but general tip: even when you have a ton of bombs, I don't think it's worth it to bomb slot machines, or the skull game guy in the arcade. A lot of times you're trading in a bomb to get back like, a single cent, or a single bomb, or a single key. "Robbing the arcade" isn't really worth doing, and is often a waste of 3 bombs that barely gives you anything in return. You ended this run with like 40+ cents, and had you not destroyed the arcade (or the beggar), you could've spent that money getting back health or pills or whatever.

I find character selection does have a noticeably impact on most runs. I prefer Isaac to Magdalene myself, as her slow speed bothers me. And Eve is fun on occasion but she's reeeaaaally fragile.

@bisonhero: Yeah, that's true about Cain. He's pretty decent. I've never found Maggy's low speed to be too bad in most situations, though, but I usually end up with some shielding items and/or speed-ups before it becomes an issue. I find myself getting screwed by high speed more often than low.

I really hope this feature ends in Patrick beating the game with Blue Baby. Mainly because I'll probably never manage that myself.

Only Patrick would have 50 cents after blowing up the entire damn arcade!

I'm going to be so sad if you ever stop opening with the Spelunky theme.

@patrickklepek Yo dawg, items stack. So, when you got Spectral Tears you still had Number 1's power severely limiting your range. At least they went through stones, though.

Cain is definitely the easiest character to beat the game with before unlocking the D6. If you get enough money from secret rooms you can pretty much grind pills at arcades. Mags is good beginner-friendly character, but her item becomes less useful the deeper you get.

I find Eve the hardest character to use. Her starting items don't make up for the low health and gimped damage.

@patrickklepek The characters do offer a meaningful difference in my opinion - they all have minor stat differences that serve as a base since you never know what upgrades you're going to get, and the items the unlocked characters have can help out a lot. I would say that Maggie is the easiest character early on since you get health and the Yum Heart, so you can survive a lot of mistakes and keep your health high.

But once you're able to make it through the early levels without taking much damage, the items and bonus stats the other characters have are more important, especially since you'll usually get some +HP items to make you survivable enough. For later levels and bosses especially, the crow or extra damage/speed are more important than an extra couple hearts. Having 8 hearts isn't that helpful if you can't dodge or kill the boss/minions in a reasonable period of time.

You're right that it's the pickup items that make a run, but I generally have better runs with certain characters.

This series inspired me to go back to this game and I finally managed to beat It Lives with the blue baby for the first time today. I did luck out and find the bible at just the right time though.

i really like this feature, and i'm thinking about getting the game when i get paid. thanks Patrick and keep up the awesome job!

I've started playing this game again after watching Patrick for the past few days.

It's great. I hadn't really given it much of a go before, but I'm getting into it more now.

So that's what "High Priestess" does, kill mom somehow?

@patrickklepek when you bomb things near walls, always try to hit the center of the wall, it may unlock a secret room by accident

@assinass said:

It summons the mom foot stomp, which you can use on other enemies and bosses. I guess consider Mom herself to be the "High Priestess"? It makes admittedly less sense when an allied mom foot stomp comes down on the boss foot stomp, but I think that's what happened. It seemed to do way more damage than usual, but Patrick was also dropping bombs, and I may be forgetting how crazy the damage is on the foot stomp.

The unfortunate part is that once you have Wrath of the Lamb, it adds so many things to the boss item pool that you get health from bosses way less often.

Every time I go back to Binding of Isaac, I think I'm increasingly realizing I just don't like the expansion very much. "More items!" sounds good, but the item pool is just way too diluted now. All of the new boss items are kinda terrible, and I much prefer the flat stat upgrades or extra red hearts (or meat cubes) of the base game. The trinket effects are so minor as to be inconsequential except for a couple ones that grant damage or firing rate increases, and a couple trinkets are flat out bugged. The alternate stages are so much more annoying because they're basically unfair (spiders in the Cellar are particularly unfair because of how far and fast they move in a single movement). Some of the new items are cool, but some are way too good (Nun's Habit makes a bunch of items completely OP), and frankly, I miss the smaller item pool when you could actually get the map, compass, or ladder with any regularity.

I like the Cathedral and Chest, but several hundred hours in, I've still never come around on the rest of the expansion.

HOT TIP FOR PATRICK IF HE WANTS IT - SOME GOOD USES FOR TELEPILLS

1. Arena room - Grab the arena prize and skip the fight by teleporting out.
2. Shops - Have telepills equipped before you open shops, in case you're surprised with a miniboss fight vs Greed.
3. Mom - Mom's room is the only boss room you can't back out of after the boss is defeated. If there are still items you wanted to grab after Mom (like health), teleportation is your only way back to them.

Aw, sad to hear Patrick probably ignored my very minor advice about secret rooms. Oh well!

Yeah, I played the hell out of Binding of Isaac when it first came out. I was really excited for the expansion...but once it came out, I only played it a few times before realizing I just wasn't enjoying the game like I used to.

My fiancee, on the other hand, just kept going. I think she's completed all of the challenges!

Summon Mom on Mom, makes sense! XD

@bisonhero: I think the Mom foot stomp targets you if you summon it during the Mom fight, but still does damage if it hits Mom. And it does a TON of damage - kills most bosses outright.

Yeah, I'm also ambivalent about the expansion, even if I still love the game. I usually don't have that much of a problem getting a good enough item spread to make it past the Womb, but I don't like a lot of the new items or levels, and a lot of the new mechanics are annoying. It certainly injected challenge back into the game, but some of the challenge isn't as fun as in vanilla Isaac. And I agree, trinkets are pretty terrible - minor effects that are usually nonobvious, except for a couple good ones - and there are a ton of bugs and broken item combinations in there. I'm hopeful for the rebalancing in the remake.

I felt really bad for Scoops in the beginning, since stuck with Eve (one of the worst characters) with Number One (one of the worst/the worst attack item). Luckily Brimstone came up.

For those of you who want to know more about what happened when Patrick turned into that giant demon/"the curse":

Enjoy watching some of this in the evening, glad there is that option. 9:00 in the morning is getting stuff done.

That is one nice sweater

@patrickklepek You can also hold down WASD instead of tapping them to keep moving.

patrick is so mlg

@bisonhero:

I was really confused by this as well (since I hadn't thought that even worked on mom) but what happened is that since it was in Mom's room, it targeted Patrick...but since her foot was already coming down about that time in that same spot, the 'priestess' foot came down and did (according to the wiki) HALF HER HEALTH in damage when it collided with her other foot. What a hilarious way to finish the fight!

never not funny

Why does Patrick blow up arcade machines but then skip right by another arcade machine outside the arcade?

Blow up everything!

I'm waiting for the Blinding of Patrick. It's a new special where he just gets poked in the eye by random things. Nothing sharp, nothing that would cause permanent eye damage (this isn't a snuff film you sickos), just enough that he can't see for like 10 seconds because his eye doesn't want to open. Like a hotdog or something could be the first episode.

@dudeglove: He also did a decent amount of damage to enemies when being hit.

@shagge: Magdeline is a great begginer character with the high health and healing, but I think Judas is pretty much the best character once you've played enough to reliably complete the first few floors with his low health. His book item lets you melt any serious threat in the game, his speed is good too, compared to maggies slow painful crawl.
Arguement to be made for Isaac as best character after you've beaten the game with ??? to unlock the diceblock for Isaac, since that's a great item.

I just realized in the picture, Scoop has his headphones on. Nice touch!

The only thing about watching this feature is how painful it is to watch Patrick hoard bombs and never go for the secret rooms even when he's sitting on ten or more, claiming he'll use them for boss battles.

... And then he tries to use the bombs in combat and hurts himself.

I'm sure he'll improve in the following videos, but holy crackers, that bugs me.