Strength Card

[daisydork]

So I was wondering, if you use a strength card in a devil room, and take a 1 heart deal, will it take the strength's added heart, or your normal hearts?

[XMog]

The Strength card adds one red heart container when you use it, then removes one heart container when you leave the room.

For a devil room example, if you have 2 red hearts (), use strength to get 3 heart containers total (), then pick up a 1-heart devil deal, you will be back to 2 hearts (). When you leave the devil room, a heart will get subtracted, leaving you with a single red heart ().

Since Isaac (or any character) can survive without any red hearts as long as they have at least half a soul/black heart, you can probably take advantage of this by using the Strength card and taking deals until you have no red heart containers left. Since you no longer have any containers, leaving the room can't take any away. I haven't tested this, so it's partial conjecture on my part.

Unrelated to using the Strength card, but if you only have one red heart container left, you can take a 2-heart devil deal for the price of only the one heart container you have. Be sure to have some soul/black hearts though, or the deal will kill you. In the original BoI, I believe this was also possible, but would take away all your soul hearts, leaving you alive but with "0" HP, where one hit would kill you. Rebirth does not take away your soul/black hearts doing this.

[unknown soldier]

Oh glad to read this then because I always thought that if you had 2 red hearts, got a deal with devil, used strength card giving you 3 hearts and took an item worth 2 hearts, this would leave you with 1 heart both in and out of the room when you left. I was fairly sure you could use the strength heart like a free heart, maybe that was in the original, or maybe im just imagining things!!!