The Big Rant - Tainted Lost

[AlluMan96]

It's about time I finally came to it. For the past 2 months now, this has just about been my entire experience with Binding of Isaac. Grinding Tainted Lost in order to get all of his check marks. There has been alot I've wanted to say and there has been alot that I have already talked about in other posts here, but on the whole, I really just wanted to wait and see how it all pans out before I started making any bigger statements about the character. There have been many times, when something I didn't like has been turned around on me, because there was such a well-thought, deliberate plan behind it. Now that I only have 2 marks left undone on him (Greedier and Delirium), I think I have enough playtime to make my peace with the character.

With that said, ♥♥♥♥ Tainted Lost. As an addition to The Binding of Isaac, he exploits nothing but the game's most critical weaknesses and barely embraces any of it's strong points, many times actively avoiding them. There are tainted characters that are less fun. There are ones that are more lazily designed. However, Tainted Lost has to stand as one of the biggest sour-points of the game for being such an awful experience from beginning to end.

The problems;

#1: He's the wrong kind of challenge character for the game.
I figured this would be a good one to start off with, as it addresses the first thought that might come to someone when thinking on Tainted Lost. In fact, it was evaluating whether this was a problem or not why I didn't wanna write this until I had sufficient experience with the character.

Yes, Tainted Lost is supposed to be a challenge. He's supposed to demand perfection from the player. However, it's that latter statement that's precisely the issue. Perfection is a tall order from a game that by it's very design eschews such a notion. Randomness doesn't really lend itself well to a highly punishing form of difficulty like this, because uncertain factors and chaotic elements inherently make games inbalanced and in some parts broken. This is something that is hard-coded into TBOI's core design pillars. After all, it is a roguelike, games built around randomness and adaption in spite of more traditional structured challenges. This is a fact that the developers ought to have known already, because the original Lost was given the Holy Mantle precisely for this reason. It made him demanding, but there was a clear safety-net that worked just well enough to negate alot of the issues of the random roguelike elements. To see them fall for the same trap almost deliberately is perplexing.

Not to mention, the consequences of failure are way too high for what is a massive challenge. You look at any kind of game that revolves around highly punishing, highly demanding gameplay. Your Dark Souls', your Devil May Crys, even McMillen's own Super Meat Boy. They are often designed to be taken a single challenge at a time. Checkpoints are frequent in these games, which allow you to practice the hard parts in a way, where you are only focused on them alone. Tainted Lost on the other hand only has one shot and a single mistake can take you back all the way to the beginning. In a very unlucky run, Tainted Lost can be left with only a single hit's worth of wiggle-room and your punishment for failure can set you back 40 minutes. This doesn't really motivate anyone to "just keep practicing", when progress is such an ice-skate uphill to achieve. Even reported rage-games that will set you back on failure like Jump King will have checkpoint-spots to catch you in you fail. They don't just drop you back to the start after every missed jump. Though speaking of that previous example-

#2: His gimmicks are bad.
Tainted Lost has some issues with his defining features. The first of which being the holy card gimmick. Having every card have a 10% chance of being holy cards is supposed to be your silver lining. That saving grace that keeps you going. Between the now hundreds of runs I have played as him, I can tell you that this gimmick is way too subtle. For being his primary source of guaranteed protection, they just have a chance of not showing up at all. Cards aren't the most common items and for every tenth of them to have the chance to be holy cards makes them incredibly rare to see. Between all the runs I've played, there is a good 25% of them at least, where I had to make do with my starting holy card as the only card I had. In fact, there was a time, when I played with a mod that gave me wooden cross instead of the holy card and those runs made it so clear exactly how rare those cards are, where there were so many runs, where I just never had a holy card.

Then there's the "better items" gimmick, where his item pool is skewed to be more offensive, he has a better damage modifier and eliminates certain items he has no need for. Honestly speaking though, I think it makes him a little boring. First of all, the "better" in that name is just for show. You are still very likely to just have crap runs as with anyone. However, with a limited item pool, some of the more fun interactions in the game are lost on him. And again, some of these decisions like taking out Dead Cat are further pushing that punishing gameplay that actively works against the nature of roguelikes. I don't even know how that one even sounded good in anyone's head.

#3: He's just kind of boring.
At the end of the day, playing Tainted Lost is playing Isaac at a net loss. Any character that removes the standard health mechanics of the game are already playing the game with a crippling disadvantage, but with no one is this more evident than Tainted Lost. Using health as a resource is part of the fun of Isaac. So many of the elements in the game are built around it. Curse rooms, sac rooms, blood donors, demon beggars, all of these are wasted opportunities for a character like Tainted Lost. Even Tainted Eden can theoretically play these to secure advantages.

Also, I just kind of find it mystifying why he has nothing in his starting kit. He literally lost an item in the transition from Tainted Lost and the best they gave him was a one-use consumable that puts him back to square-1 effectively. The original Lost always had a dice to compliment him. Why couldn't Tainted Lost be given a unique dice to use? Hell, without the Holy Mantle, he'd get more out of d4 than the og Lost ever did. The point is that just starting with a slightly beefier attack value and less chances to get some fun items isn't a good trade-off for a character, I feel.

#4: The culmination of these elements.
Tainted Lost is an overly punishing character whose gimmicks are either too subtle to notice without actively gaming the system or are actively working against you as a player and starts the game without anything he can use to secure advantages. What this all results in is a character that is literally bottle-necked into playing in a way that immediately addresses his issues. Overall, playing Tainted Lost is very samey, because his gameplan is super linear and entirely luck-dependent. There's a reason why Blank Card, d1 and Book of Shadows are such a meme to this character. He needs these items not to win, but just to get his run started and there isn't really alot of justifiable reason to carry any other active items or consumables because of it.

After a while, playing T. Lost became boring purely from the sense that all his runs feel the same. You're looking for the same set of items every time. You see so many repeats of items again and again. There isn't anything this character offers other than big-♥♥♥♥ attack numbers and that is the ultimate reason I dislike him. He's too hamstrung by his relatively weak starting position to be considered truly skill-based and his routes to victory just revolve around completely ignoring the gimmick he's built around, making him a stale character that doesn't feel like anything more than a pain in the ass to play.

[Roy]

Agreed. This character is just a massive pain and, I feel, a massive middle finger from the dev to us players. Just today I finished Mega Satan with him, I was on a high, only to discover that my hard-fought run just introduced in the game another boring-ass, cancery, "haha got you" trap that, of course, is especially deadly for T. Lost (Haunted chests).

And we payed money for this.

Worst of it all, I still prefer that piece of hot garbage over J and E everyday. Feelsbadman.

[kone]

I've had experience with this character because of my favourite self imposed challenge, winstreaks. Got above 25 winstreak a handful of times. I didn't think much of the character when unlocking things because of the 'reset until big damage or Book of Shadows', but as a streak character there's a bit more than that.

Without a doubt this character is not well designed for this game. It's the end all glass cannon of any character and barely survives off of min-maxing. Can't get hit, can't take risks, can't play with health. However it lends a situation where this character can land a weird consistency and gameplan that this game doesn't have. For me, getting D1, Blank Card or Book of Shadows is very relaxing but not a guaranteed win. This character then thrives off skill and knowledge that I've ditched Eden streaks for.

It doesn't exactly sacrifice variety when you aim for these items, they are always important but having a run established without them can be about as good with enough skill and damage. I do really miss being able to play with health as a resource, and the only consolation is never having to deal with a sluggish health dependant run.

I'd like to say a lot of the "gotcha" aspects of the character are still very annoying with experience. A stray troll bomb, unpredictable movement from a status'd enemy or a handful of rooms that WILL take a hit off you if you have Succubus or Toxic Shock.

T. Lost isn't a fun character to unlock things with because hold R. You're not going to enjoy any aspect of his challenge with the few times you play him or many times suffer through him. However I see a different enjoyment to this messed up character with having to be consistent enough to win. You'll be able to see a bit more variety regardless.

[AlluMan96]

Originally posted by kitten exterminator:

I've had experience with this character because of my favourite self imposed challenge, winstreaks. Got above 25 winstreak a handful of times. I didn't think much of the character when unlocking things because of the 'reset until big damage or Book of Shadows', but as a streak character there's a bit more than that.

Without a doubt this character is not well designed for this game. It's the end all glass cannon of any character and barely survives off of min-maxing. Can't get hit, can't take risks, can't play with health. However it lends a situation where this character can land a weird consistency and gameplan that this game doesn't have. For me, getting D1, Blank Card or Book of Shadows is very relaxing but not a guaranteed win. This character then thrives off skill and knowledge that I've ditched Eden streaks for.

It doesn't exactly sacrifice variety when you aim for these items, they are always important but having a run established without them can be about as good with enough skill and damage. I do really miss being able to play with health as a resource, and the only consolation is never having to deal with a sluggish health dependant run.

I'd like to say a lot of the "gotcha" aspects of the character are still very annoying with experience. A stray troll bomb, unpredictable movement from a status'd enemy or a handful of rooms that WILL take a hit off you if you have Succubus or Toxic Shock.

T. Lost isn't a fun character to unlock things with because hold R. You're not going to enjoy any aspect of his challenge with the few times you play him or many times suffer through him. However I see a different enjoyment to this messed up character with having to be consistent enough to win. You'll be able to see a bit more variety regardless.

Yeah, that's what it always comes down to, isn't it? Playing for completion's sake is a chore and easily the worst part of Isaac in general. Because you're never thinking about "Oh, how does this synergy go?" or "Haha, this synergy just went south". No, it's always "God start? No? Hold R". When I was done with J&E, I thought to myself that if I'd never see them again, it'd be too soon. Now though, months after finishing up their marks, I gotta be honest, I kinda got a push to pick em'. When I can just take my time and not have to be so dedicated to unlocks, I can take my time and actually appreciate what characters bring.

I'm sure that Tainted Lost is probably going to be "just fine" after I'm done with him and I'll move on to hating T. Jacob or T. Blue Baby next until I get them done and the cycle repeats. You are right that, while being stuck grinding him is has made his one-track gameplan very boring, it's a spicy challenge when I roll into him on roulette. That's the kind of streaks I actually like doing, is random-streaks. I'm mostly comfortable playing any character, so I think it's fun to roll on your character and see how that shapes the run going forward. In that context, T. Lost will probably be a welcome addition, if a bit of a "Oh, I guess the streak is over" kind of character.

[ICountFrom0]

I'm looking at the lists of forbidden items in a tlost run and trying to remember a single lost run that I drove to megasatan or delerium that didn't have at least one of them.

[AlluMan96]

Originally posted by ICountFrom0:

I'm looking at the lists of forbidden items in a tlost run and trying to remember a single lost run that I drove to megasatan or delerium that didn't have at least one of them.

It's not impossible to get them most certainly, which further adds to the pointlessness of the entire mechanic as a whole. It's just that it turns what should be just a straightforward process of getting good items into this luck-dependent game of "Will the run give me the the necessary things to cheat these out?" And again, none of this is reflects very positively on the character himself, where the best way to play him is to find ways to completely ignore every mechanic that makes him unique. He has to take additional steps just to stand at the starting line with everyone else.

I guess that really gets to the core of my frustration, because he's one of the first times when I've felt a character in Isaac is genuinely lesser in every way with no meaningful benefits to him. Afterbirth Keeper was a true challenge character. He was slow, awkward and very frail. However, he also had benefits that could pay off in the right circumstances and a mechanic which changed how you approached playing him. You were encouraged to actually lean into his unique playstyle and form your strategy around it. It didn't just act as an obstacle standing between you and getting what you want.

[kone]

Originally posted by DD AlluMan96:

It's not impossible to get them most certainly, which further adds to the pointlessness of the entire mechanic as a whole. It's just that it turns what should be just a straightforward process of getting good items into this luck-dependent game of "Will the run give me the the necessary things to cheat these out?" And again, none of this is reflects very positively on the character himself, where the best way to play him is to find ways to completely ignore every mechanic that makes him unique. He has to take additional steps just to stand at the starting line with everyone else.

It really is an obstacle. While I feel the character is faster than most in terms of clearing floors, the only thing going in my mind the entire run is hoping for Holy Card if I don't have one or maybe even Blank Card/D1/Glowing Hourglass/Deck of Cards for the same reason.

If you can't cheese the character by holding R, it's trying to get past that barrier of luck to cheese the next danger with security. Though I have to admit that searching for unique security in the character is still interesting for me. I've never really had more fun breaking the game with this character because of the excluded items mechanic, using Spindown Dice. To me at least, the highs are higher with this character than one who breaks so easily, like T. Keeper, T. Bethany or T. Cain.

[jessa smith]

Just don't put the mod menu on the new dlc hates it and gets the mom fight broken if you defeat mom you win then you go back to the main menu you didn't win and doesn't count it. And mine is stuck on and can't be deleted thanks mod menu

[ICountFrom0]

Another downside not even mentioned. What's the point in adding endless levels of offence bonuses (assuming that the rerolls and no defend items worked as it was meant to) and then NOT disabling scaling armor on the mega bosses.

Normally that enforces you thinking things through a different way, but the tainted lost is all about pure damage.

[ToxicBoo]

Originally posted by coolwaysandway:

Just don't put the mod menu on the new dlc hates it and gets the mom fight broken if you defeat mom you win then you go back to the main menu you didn't win and doesn't count it. And mine is stuck on and can't be deleted thanks mod menu

Beat mom without using mods first, then you should be able to progress with them on.

[Lucifer ★✬]

Tl:dr

I take it OP is complaining caz t lost Is hard. Hate to brake it to you but he and other t characters (and rep in general) are meant to be hard mode and endgame

For me, I love t lost. He gives me old lost vibes and is my go to character now. Love doing runs with him

[NEVEZYXA]

да

[AlluMan96]

Originally posted by Lucifer ★✬:

Tl:dr

I take it OP is complaining caz t lost Is hard. Hate to brake it to you but he and other t characters (and rep in general) are meant to be hard mode and endgame

For me, I love t lost. He gives me old lost vibes and is my go to character now. Love doing runs with him

Trust me, if it were just about "being hard", I'd have talked about T. Jacob on this same post. Key difference is that I think T. Jacob is actually fun compared to T. Lost. T. Lost is just boring, because his gameplan is so limited in scope. Every run feels samey, because he only has like 2 or 3 winning strategies, none of which particularly highlight any of his special gimmicks. T. Jacob on the other hand feels like a character, whose gimmick is interesting. There are cool strategies I can do with T. Jacob that I can't do with anyone else and I have motivation to get better with him, because Anima Solas and abusing his T. Esau's Mama Mega-style explosion reward you for good play and quick thinking.

[Lucifer ★✬]

Originally posted by DD AlluMan96:

Originally posted by Lucifer ★✬:

Tl:dr

I take it OP is complaining caz t lost Is hard. Hate to brake it to you but he and other t characters (and rep in general) are meant to be hard mode and endgame

For me, I love t lost. He gives me old lost vibes and is my go to character now. Love doing runs with him

Trust me, if it were just about "being hard", I'd have talked about T. Jacob on this same post. Key difference is that I think T. Jacob is actually fun compared to T. Lost. T. Lost is just boring, because his gameplan is so limited in scope. Every run feels samey, because he only has like 2 or 3 winning strategies, none of which particularly highlight any of his special gimmicks. T. Jacob on the other hand feels like a character, whose gimmick is interesting. There are cool strategies I can do with T. Jacob that I can't do with anyone else and I have motivation to get better with him, because Anima Solas and abusing his T. Esau's Mama Mega-style explosion reward you for good play and quick thinking.

T lost is fun caz he is hard. Love trying to get to the end without being hit. Some of the bullet hell bosses canm be annoying, but thats what the cards for

[Bill]

I've been grinding out T.Lost, I just can't understand why they made Rebirth Lost but worse in every way.

My motto as every other character is "No matter how bad a run looks, it always has the chance to turn around" But as Tainted Lost it's the exact opposite. "No matter how good a run looks, you're probably going to die anyways."

I go from Basement 1 to Void without getting hit only to be telefragged twice 15 seconds into the fight with Delirium, I find myself hating particular enemies and bosses more than I do the character but I think both suck.

T.Lost isn't a glass cannon, he's a glass nerf gun because of the armor final bosses get.

I do not look forward to having to re-complete all the posted notes 2 more times as him.

[abisalspider]

I mostly agree with the points you made regarding the character, but that said I think a big issue I see with people who are still angry at Repentance is that you are all desperately trying to 100% the game despite the fact we know some characters like Tainted Lazarus weren't even really finished before release.

Personally, I would say that it is best for the players' mental health to just stop before trying to get all marks and to play some other game until the patch comes out. Or if you really want to see that Dead God achievement, maybe just get a mod.

Still, I really hope Nicalis/Edmund buff Tainted Lost a bit in the future. Personally I'd like something like a "Better Pickups" that rerolls 20% of hearts and uselss cards/pills into other things. And maybe let you unlock a "Better Beggars" that rerolls Devil Beggars and Blood Machines into other stuff sometimes.