The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth: Complete Guide (through Repentance+)

Everything you need to go from your first Basement run to The Beast: how the DLCs stack, the unlock order, items and rooms worth knowing, character notes, and how online co-op in Repentance+ works.

Researched September 2026 — current as of Repentance+ patch 1.9.7.16/1.9.7.17 (crossplay beta). Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Quick Start

• Know what you own. The base game is Rebirth. Content stacks: Rebirth, then Afterbirth, Afterbirth+, Repentance, and Repentance+ (a free add-on for Repentance owners, released November 18, 2024). Each DLC needs the previous ones. If you are buying today, get everything — Repentance is the definitive version.
• Your first goal is Mom. Mom is the boss of the Depths (chapter 3). Beating her unlocks a big chunk of the game, including the Womb, and — since patch 1.9.7.13 (September 2025) — in-game item descriptions.
• Explore every floor fully early on. Items, keys, bombs and coins come from rooms and chests. Speed matters later; early on, resources win runs.
• Always check the Item Room (gold crown icon) and Shop (coin icon). Item Rooms on the earliest floors are open; on later floors they usually need a key, so don't spend your last one carelessly.
• Bomb suspicious walls. Secret Rooms sit next to several rooms at once; Super Secret Rooms touch only one room. Both usually hold items or money.
• Take Devil Deals if you can afford them. After beating a floor's boss without taking red-heart damage, a Devil or Angel Room door may appear. Devil items cost heart containers (or soul hearts), but many are run-winning.
• Mom's Heart is where the real game starts. Kill it repeatedly — each kill advances unlocks. The 10th kill unlocks the Blue Womb; the 11th unlocks It Lives!.
• Hold Tab to see the map, and pause to see collected items. With descriptions unlocked, you can read what an item does before committing.
• Dying is normal. Isaac is a roguelike: every run unlocks something, and progression is about unlocks and knowledge, not stat carryover.

Controls (Keyboard Defaults)

Action | Key

Move | W A S D

Shoot | Arrow keys

Place bomb | E

Use active item | Space

Use card / pill | Q

Drop / swap trinket, pocket item | Hold Ctrl

Map | Tab (hold)

Restart run | Hold R

Controller support is built in. Shooting direction is independent of movement — strafing while firing is the core skill of the game.

Core Systems

Stats

Stat | What it does

Damage | Tear damage. Multiplicative items (e.g. Polyphemus, Cricket's Head, Sacred Heart) are the big spikes.

Tears | Fire rate. Often the most impactful stat early.

Range | How far tears travel.

Shot Speed | Tear velocity.

Speed | Movement speed.

Luck | Boosts proc chances on items like Tough Love, Holy Light, and many trinkets.

Health

• Red hearts — heart containers, healed by red heart pickups.
• Soul hearts (blue) — temporary; lost when damaged. Taking soul-heart damage does not ruin Devil Deal chance the way red damage does.
• Black hearts — like soul hearts, but deal damage to the room when lost.
• Bone, rotten, golden, eternal, and broken hearts — Afterbirth/Repentance additions with special rules. Broken hearts permanently occupy health slots for the run.

Pickups and consumables

Coins, bombs, and keys are the economy. Cards, runes, and pills go in your pocket slot (Q). Trinkets are passive and swappable. Pills are unidentified until used — a bad pill (e.g. health or tears down) can hurt, so pop them when you can afford the risk.

Rooms worth knowing

Room | Icon / sign | What's inside

Item Room (Treasure) | Crown | One free item (sometimes a choice)

Shop | Coin | Items, pickups; upgrades as you donate to the Donation Machine

Boss Room | Skull | Floor boss + item

Devil / Angel Room | Appears after boss | Paid (devil) or free (angel) items

Secret / Super Secret | Hidden | Coins, items

Curse Room | Spiked door | Costs health to enter; pickups or items

Sacrifice Room | Spikes | Take damage for escalating rewards

Arcade | Dice icon | Slot machines, beggars, Blood Donation machine

Library | Book icon | Book items (costs a key)

Challenge Room | Boss-style door | Wave fight for an item (full health needed)

Planetarium | Repentance | Rare planet/star items; more likely if you skip Item Rooms

Ultra Secret Room | Repentance | Reached via the Red Key/Cracked Key; high-value items

Progression: The Unlock Path

The game drip-feeds its chapters and endings. This is the rough order most players follow.

Step | Target | How / what it unlocks

1 | Mom (Depths / Necropolis) | Opens the Womb and many items; enables item descriptions

2 | Mom's Heart (Womb / Utero) | Repeated kills unlock new content each time

3 | Satan (Sheol) or Isaac (Cathedral) | Reached after Mom's Heart / It Lives! (down = Sheol, up = Cathedral)

4 | The Polaroid / The Negative | Beat Isaac 5 times for The Polaroid; beat Satan 5 times for The Negative. Mom then drops one of them (they're mutually exclusive).

5 | ??? (Chest) and The Lamb (Dark Room) | Carry The Polaroid past Isaac into the Chest, or The Negative past Satan into the Dark Room

6 | Mega Satan | Collect both Key Pieces (from Angel Room statues) to open the big door at the start of the Chest/Dark Room

7 | Hush (Blue Womb) | Unlocked after 10 Mom's Heart kills; the Blue Womb entrance only appears if you kill Mom's Heart / It Lives! within 30 minutes

8 | Delirium (The Void) | After beating Hush, a Void portal can appear after later final bosses. In Repentance+, once The Void is unlocked the portal is guaranteed after The Lamb, ???, and Mega Satan (and after Mother once you've seen that ending).

9 | Alternate path | Beat Hush 3 times ("A Secret Exit") to open the Repentance alt floors: Downpour/Dross, Mines/Ashpit, Mausoleum/Gehenna, then Corpse

10 | Mother (Corpse) | Collect both knife pieces on the alt path — Knife Piece 1 from Downpour/Dross (the mirror, entered as a ghost), Knife Piece 2 from Mines/Ashpit (a button puzzle leading to an escape sequence). Beat Mom in Mausoleum/Gehenna II; a flesh door appears — stab it with the combined knife (a Sharp Key, Cracked Orb, or Soul of Cain also work), beat Mom's Heart inside, and the path continues to Corpse

11 | The Beast (Home) | After you've beaten Mother once, a Strange Door appears in the starting room of Depths II (or Necropolis/Dank Depths). Open it with The Polaroid or The Negative (or a Sharp Key, Cracked Orb, etc.) to reach a special Mausoleum/Gehenna II whose boss room holds Dad's Note, which starts the Ascent back up to Home

12 | Ultra Greed | Separate Greed Mode (and harder Greedier Mode) — wave-based shop runs

Characters and tainted characters

You start with Isaac. Characters unlock through achievements (e.g. Magdalene for having 7 or more red heart containers, Cain for holding 55 coins). Repentance adds tainted versions of every character, unlocked by using the Red Key/Cracked Key on the Home closet with that character after the Home floor is reached.

Character | Style | Beginner rating

Isaac | Balanced; later starts with The D6 | Great once D6 is unlocked

Magdalene | Tanky, slow; Yum Heart | Very easy

Cain | Luck, Lucky Foot; one eye | Easy

Judas | Glass cannon; Book of Belial | Medium

??? (Blue Baby) | Soul hearts only | Medium

Eve | Rage when low on health | Medium

Samson | Damage builds up while taking hits | Medium

Azazel | Short-range Brimstone, flight | Easy and very strong

Lazarus | Revives once | Medium

Eden | Random stats and items | Variety

The Lost | One hit and you die, flight, spectral | Hard (and unlocks huge items)

Lilith, Keeper, Apollyon, The Forgotten, Bethany, Jacob & Esau | Unique mechanics | Medium to hard

Tip: Azazel and Magdalene are the easiest ways to farm completion marks early. The Lost is the notorious challenge — his completion marks unlock many of the game's best items, like Godhead.

Items: What to Grab

There are over 700 collectibles, so learn patterns rather than lists.

Almost always take: Sacred Heart, Brimstone, Godhead, Polyphemus, Cricket's Head, Magic Mushroom, Mom's Knife, Tech X, Holy Mantle, The D6, Spirit Sword, Cricket's Body, Pentagram, and most damage multipliers.

Be careful with: Soy Milk, Ipecac (can hurt you with some combos), Anemic, Mom's Wig, and anything with a tears-down trade-off if you already have low fire rate. Some items are only bad in specific synergies.

Transformations trigger when you collect three items from a set, e.g. Guppy (infinite flies), Beelzebub (Lord of the Flies), Seraphim, Leviathan, Bookworm, Spun, Conjoined. Repentance+ adds the Necromancer transformation (an empowered Necronomicon usable 10 times per floor without recharging).

Active items charge by clearing rooms. Batteries (and The Battery) add charges. The D6 rerolls pedestal items — use it on weak items and after Devil Deals.

Repentance+ and Online Co-op

• Price and requirements: Repentance+ was a free DLC for Repentance owners on Steam.
• Online modes: Quick Match, Public Match, and Friend Match lobbies, plus online Daily Runs, an emote wheel and text chat. A Revive Machine lets downed players come back in online runs.
• Chat moderation: type /mute [username] and /unmute [username] in text chat (added April 2026).
• Crossplay (beta, April 2026): enable it in OPTIONS.INI in Documents\My Games\Binding of Isaac Repentance+. The last line EosCrossplay= sets 0–1 (off), 2 (Steam + Epic public lobbies), or 3 (crossplay + Epic account linking for Epic friends lists and invites).
• Balance: 50+ items were rebalanced in Repentance+, and patch 1.9.7.13 (September 10, 2025) added item descriptions and upgraded effects for every trinket — golden trinkets and Mom's Box now actually do something extra for all of them.
• Save warning: the wiki notes online co-op is still flagged as beta and has had save-corruption reports. Back up your save folder before playing online.
• Consoles: as of July 2026 Edmund McMillen confirmed Repentance+ is coming to current consoles, with no date yet, and that a small PC update may land by the end of 2026.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Skipping Devil Deals out of fear. Red heart containers are a resource. Trading two containers for Brimstone is usually correct.
• Taking red-heart damage before the boss. That lowers the Devil/Angel chance. Soul-heart damage is fine.
• Ignoring the timer. Blue Womb requires Mom's Heart in under 30 minutes; Boss Rush (after Mom) requires beating Mom within 20 minutes.
• Using the D6 on good items. Reroll only what you don't want.
• Wasting bombs on rocks. Save them for secret rooms, tinted rocks (the ones with an X mark), and key-locked alternatives.
• Picking up both The Polaroid and The Negative. You can only carry one — choose based on whether you're going to Chest (???) or Dark Room (The Lamb).
• Playing The Lost too early. Unlock easy items first so your item pool is stronger.

Advanced Tips

• Angel vs Devil rooms: once you take a Devil Deal, Angel Rooms stop appearing for that run (unless an item changes that). Plan which pool you want before the first deal.
• Angel statues: bombing the statue in an Angel Room starts a fight with an angel who drops a Key Piece — you need both for Mega Satan.
• Planetariums become more likely the more Item Rooms you skip. They're one of the strongest pools in Repentance.
• Shop upgrades: donating coins to the Donation Machine permanently upgrades shops; the Greed Donation Machine does the same for Greed Mode unlocks.
• Seeds: the pause screen shows the seed. Some seeds disable achievements; special "easter egg" seeds change visuals or rules.
• Pill identification: PHD makes all pills positive and identified. False PHD makes them negative (but with stat bonuses).
• Curse of the Lost / Labyrinth / Darkness are floor curses — the Black Candle blocks them.
• Victory Lap exists after beating The Lamb: you restart at the Basement with your items for a score run.
• Mods: the Repentance API supports Steam Workshop mods. Popular QoL mods like External Item Descriptions still exist, but the built-in descriptions now cover the basics. Mods disable achievements while enabled.

FAQ

What order should I buy/play the DLCs? All of them stack onto one game. Buy Rebirth plus Afterbirth, Afterbirth+, and Repentance (Repentance+ is free on top). You play them all at once — there's no separate campaign.

How do I unlock the Isaac and Satan fights? Beat Mom's Heart (It Lives! after 11 kills) — afterward you'll get a trapdoor or light beam leading to Sheol (Satan) or Cathedral (Isaac).

How do I get to The Void / Delirium? Beat Hush first. After that, a Void portal can appear in the boss room after later final bosses. In Repentance+ it is guaranteed after The Lamb, ???, and Mega Satan once The Void is unlocked.

How do I reach the Repentance alt path? Defeat Hush three times to unlock "A Secret Exit". Afterwards, a special door can appear in boss rooms leading into the alt chapters (opening it costs a key, bombs, or health depending on the chapter).

What is the true ending? The Beast at Home (Ending 22) is the story ending of Repentance, reached via Dad's Note and the Ascent.

Does online co-op work with Epic players? Yes, in beta — set EosCrossplay=2 or 3 in OPTIONS.INI (see above).

Is The Binding of Isaac getting more updates? As of the July 2026 Steam post, Edmund said a small update is in the works, possibly by the end of 2026. Console Repentance+ is confirmed without a date.

Sources

• Steam news: Bonus Discounts? WTF!? (July 10, 2026)
• Steam news: Repentance Online 1.9.7.16 (April 11, 2026)
• Steam news: Internal Item Descriptions, patch 1.9.7.13 (September 10, 2025)
• Binding of Isaac Wiki (wiki.gg): Repentance+
• Binding of Isaac Wiki (wiki.gg): Endings
• Binding of Isaac Wiki (wiki.gg): Blue Womb
• Binding of Isaac Wiki (wiki.gg): The Polaroid
• Binding of Isaac Wiki (wiki.gg): Sheol
• Binding of Isaac Wiki (wiki.gg): Corpse
• Binding of Isaac Wiki (wiki.gg): Dad's Note