Jacob & Esau

[Sicksadpanda]

Hello everyone,

Small rant incoming... I'm honestly really fed up with this character. I've spent many hours trying to complete a run as them and unlock more items (really good items it seems), but I can never survive my way to even It Lives, let alone other major bosses.

I've already beaten all bosses on various characters, but this one really stumped me. Even I'm willing to know any cheese strategies that can make me win easily... I don't care anymore lol (I'll be happy to play fairly on other characters).

I've read up some guides, but some were outdated. I am aware of their double active, ability to pick up multiple items at right timing, and luck being different. But the massive hitbox and occasional accidental split up are costing my runs and devil deals.

I guess I'm just hoping for any ideas to really make this fight a lot easier...I just want to unlock the items (and of course, Tainted Jacob...that one actually looks fun) and never touch the character again.

Sorry for the rant, I'm just frustrated and getting a bit desperate.

[Spicybullfrog]

alt path is incredible for them, double item rooms makes a huge difference even if youre not planning on going the mother route. its worth noting boss rush is 25 minutes on alt path and it spits you out at womb II after mausoleum II so you can hit those marks on an alt path run.
a lot of people put all their items on esau and leave jacob alone which helps synergies snowball harder but remember you get diminishing returns from repeated stat upgrades so depending on your situation it might be better to split the upgrades or cram them on one guy. Pills are great as them, one makes you larger doesnt increase your hitbox size yet one makes you smaller reduces your hitbox size. i prefer to put all the hitbox size down on one guy so i can be pseudo-one player, the current hitbox size downs in the game are caffeine pill, binky, one makes you smaller, mini mush, and pluto. Other than that its just a lot of being able to make split-second minute adjustments to make sure j&e are sticking together, which requires a bit of practice. I personally prefer having jacob and esau side by side instead of having one on top of the other but i dont know how much of a different it makes.

[Saph]

Go out of your way for either of the OG Options items in the shop pool. You can grab a lot more items just by having them grab both simultaneously in any scenario where you're given a choice. Alt path item rooms, same logic.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, give stat ups to the brother with the lower number every time. Though if you get flying for one or both of them, balancing stats doesn't matter nearly as much. They both share the speed stat too.

Consider giving one of them red health priority and the other soul/bone/black heart priority and giving the Negative to the latter. The free room damage on every hit when a character has no red health has always been really strong and it's a damage up to boot.

Items and pills that reduce size make them much more playable too. Less colliding with each other and the environment makes dodging easier.

Personally, I always go angel with them. Both because they're frail af so the red/temp health downs from devil deals are often a death sentence, but also because it gives me a shot at Mega Satan in a best case scenario.

J&E are by far my least favourite non-tainted character, but they do have a lot of flexibility in ways that no other character does. Just keep a level head and knock the completion marks out one at a time if you have to.

[i am god]

I've found success stacking all the red health/defensive upgrades on jacob and using him as a meatshield by making him enter all the rooms first and position him towards the ennemies while esau gets all the soul hearts. If you can get a rotten heart on esau you can even switch the roles once you get the polaroid.
It's pretty much playing the game like you have Isaac's heart from the start, except the heart can also get items and doesn't make you invincible. Just takes a bit of practice and you'll have to accept you won't win as many runs as you might with other characters