T. Cain is literally unplayable

[Daegon]

I played this character when you could break it just by looking the old fixed "recipes" to craft what you want. Now that this got changed and everything is random, I don't know how to play this character in an efficient way to do things like boss rush or even hush and delirium.
Why? Because I get trash on all of my items from the bag of crafting, It amazes me how 3 souls hearts, 1 black heart, 1 lucky penny and some random pick ups, gives me a freaking hp upgrade, by that amount of rare pick up I would expect something like Brimstone, Tech X, I don't know, op items, instead I get trash items.

And items pedestal should drop enough guaranteed pick ups to craft one item, who the fu** thought that 3 pick ups from an item pedestal was a good deal?

[Luna]

just inhale every pickup that you dont absolutely need. have enough keys for the treasure rooms for a few floors? put em in the bag. have full health? put em in the bag.
have a bomb or two for tinted rocks? thats right put the extras in the bag.
tainted cain is about quantity not quality.

[Luna]

Originally posted by Candy_fox:

just inhale every pickup that you dont absolutely need. have enough keys for the treasure rooms for a few floors? put em in the bag. have full health? put em in the bag.
have a bomb or two for tinted rocks? thats right put the extras in the bag.
tainted cain is about quantity not quality.

doing this i find tainted cain to be one of the easier characters

[burn1none]

I suggest downloading the mod "Extended Item Descriptions". there is a specific hud for T. Cain that works beautifully

[JellyPuff]

The seed creates recipes based both on the quality-value of pickups and the type, so a bunch of generic low quality pickups will not help increase the total quality of the items inside your bag, even if there are a couple of good pickups inside. For Q3/4 items, you really want more stuff, like batteries, cards or pills as filler, rather than keys/bombs/coins/red hearts.

Since recipes are seeded, it's still possible to look them up, hence why most people just use the External Item Description mod.

That being said, you can still break the game easely, thanks to the few fixed recipes still in place. For example, 8 coins = Portable Slot. Craft a 2nd Portable Slot and it destroys the 1st, dropping pickups based on the room you're in.
Keep doing this in secret rooms, for example, to create bone hearts and with some way of generating coins (e.g. IV-Bag), you can spam Portable Slots. I think you know where this is going. ;)

[Daegon]

Originally posted by JellyPuff:

The seed creates recipes based both on the quality-value of pickups and the type, so a bunch of generic low quality pickups will not help increase the total quality of the items inside your bag, even if there are a couple of good pickups inside. For Q3/4 items, you really want more stuff, like batteries, cards or pills as filler, rather than keys/bombs/coins/red hearts.

Since recipes are seeded, it's still possible to look them up, hence why most people just use the External Item Description mod.

That being said, you can still break the game easely, thanks to the few fixed recipes still in place. For example, 8 coins = Portable Slot. Craft a 2nd Portable Slot and it destroys the 1st, dropping pickups based on the room you're in.
Keep doing this in secret rooms, for example, to create bone hearts and with some way of generating coins (e.g. IV-Bag), you can spam Portable Slots. I think you know where this is going. ;)

I refuse to think that the players should use a mod to make the character functional.
The character imo is bad designed, is anti user to begin with, why adding just a low quality pick up should ruin the others highly valuable pick ups? It takes effort to collect the rare pick ups, if I just collect only rare pick ups I can potentially lose items that I could craft from trashy pick ups.

That 8 coins trick is useful, but still, the character shouldn't be this cryptic to be playable. The funny thin is that the challenge called cantripped gives a way better concept on how T. Cain should be as a playable character instead of the crafting system.

[SilverTank]

I recently tried to complete him, and I have to admit, he is weird but you can learm how to use his gimmick.

As it was mentioned, the drops are based on the room you are in. Have you tried to get planetarium? Or use pills/cards/runes as resources? :D
When I play him I always look up the item value table, like a key's value is the same as a bomb (3) but if you get trash with keys in the recipe, try to replace some of them with bombs. The same meta with red hearts and coins.

In spite all of this, Boss rush and Hush is still a question for me as well

And one more addition: if you get something good (like dmg or good tear items) write the recipe down! I know it breaks the flow of the game, but it can help

[W1LL0W]

He is easy but you have to know HOW to do it. Tip: if you "dissolve" an item in a secret room it will almost ALWAYS drop a boneheart (if nothing changed, I had a long hiatus from this game lol) basically bonehearts have really good quality on crafting the items so bascially all you will have to do is craft active items in a secret room that consist of cheap forms for example: full coins or full hearts and it will give you a boneheart

[D3nn1s]

it used be busted now it's kinda cinge ngl #makeTcainbrockenagain

[kone]

Originally posted by Daegon:

I played this character when you could break it just by looking the old fixed "recipes" to craft what you want. Now that this got changed and everything is random, I don't know how to play this character in an efficient way to do things like boss rush or even hush and delirium.

The biggest issue with this character is his very slow start and gameplay, so I agree with that. It isn't fun to unlock things with this character.

However this character can be very consistent and interesting when you get his gimmick down. It's important to realise that all items you bag will produce something within a range, so it is not guaranteed you'll get a Q1 item or a Q2 item when an average bag is between Q1-Q2.

Originally posted by Daegon:

Why? Because I get trash on all of my items from the bag of crafting, It amazes me how 3 souls hearts, 1 black heart, 1 lucky penny and some random pick ups, gives me a freaking hp upgrade, by that amount of rare pick up I would expect something like Brimstone, Tech X, I don't know, op items, instead I get trash items.

It's all still luck based. Bagging a special heart like a black/bone heart gives only a chance of crafting a devil/secret room item. Even then, it will only produce a range of quality. It's a shame then, that by the looks of it you had a range of Q2-Q4 where there's a fair bit of health items in Q2. You likely would've needed to shuffle the basic pickups more to come across at least a Q3 item.

At the end of the day, you have a fair amount of control on what items you could get. There's a number of Q1-Q2 items that are cheap and effective, and some that can even be repeated if they have a recipe like 7 pennies, 1 key.

Trying to get a specific Q3-Q4 item requires going out of your way with luxurious pickups but even then you can stack a massive amount of trash in the meanwhile. It's better to craft a bunch of trash, saving important pickups for the last moments of the floor instead of being picky shuffling your bag forever in a weak range. But to be smart and decide when is a good time to shuffle around your low quality pickups to shuffle through recipes cheaply to find a powerful item in a range.

[Mewo]

Originally posted by Daegon:

Originally posted by JellyPuff:

The seed creates recipes based both on the quality-value of pickups and the type, so a bunch of generic low quality pickups will not help increase the total quality of the items inside your bag, even if there are a couple of good pickups inside. For Q3/4 items, you really want more stuff, like batteries, cards or pills as filler, rather than keys/bombs/coins/red hearts.

Since recipes are seeded, it's still possible to look them up, hence why most people just use the External Item Description mod.

That being said, you can still break the game easely, thanks to the few fixed recipes still in place. For example, 8 coins = Portable Slot. Craft a 2nd Portable Slot and it destroys the 1st, dropping pickups based on the room you're in.
Keep doing this in secret rooms, for example, to create bone hearts and with some way of generating coins (e.g. IV-Bag), you can spam Portable Slots. I think you know where this is going. ;)

I refuse to think that the players should use a mod to make the character functional.

It's good that you refuse to think that, because it's not true, t.cain can be played without any mods and is fairly easy character overall. I'm not a big fan because personally because I find the character boring, but certainly it works well if someone is a fan of crafting stuff.