No Damage Achievements Guide & Tips

Introduction

So, you've played isaac and you've played it again, but now you want more, you want something harder, so now you wanna do the no damage achievements (since that's why I think you are here, unless you just wanna see me), so let's get started:

First off, this guide will be divided in five stages since they all have different strategies, but here we will tell you the things that are useful for all of them:
1.- Hearts aren't a priority: If you want you can get them and exchange them in the devil room (if you're not doing the achievement for that stage, since devil room trades DO COUNT as damage), but for the most part, just forget about them and any item that gives them without any other effect.
2.- Evade items that activate when you take damage: since you don't want that, those items will be useless.
3.- Take your time and plan things right: you don't know how many times I've been about to beat mom and an enemy she spawned just hits me as I give her the finishing blow, anyways, always plan a strategy for the room, you should be familiar with the enemies by now.
4.- Get these items if you can: this ones work for every stage, and help a lot.
a.- The Map + The Compass / The Mind: that means less rooms to go since you already know where the boss room is
b.- Holy Mantle: this lets you take 1 hit per room without taking damage, so it might save your life while you're trying to evade enemies.

c.- Trinity Shield: it gives you a shield that blocks proyectiles and does damage on contact.

d.- Any Flight Item: being able to move on the whole room makes you not worry about the obstacles and saves you from ground enemies who can't reach you if you're on rock or pits.
e.- We need to get deeper: what's better than skipping one room? that's one boss less to fight and less rooms to clear, don't use it on the second boss area tho, you need to beat that one.
f.- IV The Emperor: with this card you won't have to worry about clearing rooms in 1 stage, since it brings you directly to the boss room, if you think you're ready to face it, the use it.
g.- If you have a lot of coins or a dollar then Pay to win would kill all the enemies in the rooms you go to and kill the bosses in a few seconds. Thanks to d'Artagnan for the suggestion

With that said, let's start with the Basement.

The Basement

The basement is the easiest one, so you have 2 strategies:

1.- The Fast Way: since the enemies here aren't as hard or annoying, you can always rush through the rooms and kill them until you find the boss room and kill it, without exploring more.
pros: it'll save you time and you can repeat it quicker should you fail.
cons: it'll be harder to kill the boss without upgrades, but it's not that much of a burden at this level.

2.- The Strategic way: since this is the easiest area in the game, you can also explore it the most, try to get the most stuff you can while avoiding damage so you can take on the bosses easier, don't be too greedy tho, remember that you only need 1 key and you don't need coins that much, since you'd need 15 to buy an item.
pros: if you start like this you can get more upgrades and try to do the next no damage achievement. It'll also be easier to kill the bosses
cons: since you visit more rooms, you'll have a higher chance to get hit.

tips: since this is the first place you go to when you start the game, you can always close and choose a new game if the item in the treasure room is not good enough for this run, remember, closing and making a new game won't give you a death count, so you can do it as many times as you want.

Recommended Character: Azazel. Even tho his beam has a very short range, it's still very OP, and you could even get around the basement easily with just that, he also starts with flight, so that's a plus.

The Caves

Here's where you have to start thinking what to do and stop rushing, trust me, it'll help.
if you think you have high attack/shooting speed and can handle the boss then you can also just search for it instead of searching for the treasure rooms.

try to get the book of shadows, the game kid or my little unicorn, the invincibility is well worth it and you can always use it to make your way to the boss if you're having trouble in one room, just remember to refill it before the boss.
Here's where you'll start seeing more pits, flying is very useful in the caves for evading obstacles, but if there's a huge pit then there must be some flying enemies, so keep paying attention to your surroundings.

Recommended Character: Azazel. His flight ability and huge attack power will prove very useful here, try to not stay in one place tho, since his attack range forces you to be closer to enemies.

The Depths

3 words: Get. The. Bible.
if you get it, keep it, that'll be your main active item since you'll need it for mom, you can always change it for another one while you fight your way to the boss, but remember to take it again before going to the next room or to fight mom.
if you get pretty lucky, you might get the emperor, we need to get deeper and find the bible. That means you got the achievement, use WNTGD, take the bible, go to next stage, use the emperor, use the bible, congratulations on your new achievement.

But, since we're not here for luck, let me tell you my strategy.
My strategy here actually depends of what character I choose, so let's start with that:

Recommended Characters: Azazel or Judas/Eve. if you want a powerhouse with near melee range, then keep azazel, he also has flying so the range is the only thing that puts it down. Now, if you want ranged damage, get judas if you were trying to get the other no damage achievements too, or get eve and take her to one heart before the depths and get a flying item for them.

Now, for Azazel: if you got enough upgrades to protect you then just try to get to the boss as quick as you can, take your time on each room but don't explore, just get to the boss.
When you get to mom you'll want to stay near the center and hit her foot, you'll always know it's coming at you, so just attack her with your short range beam without risking getting hit by the hands on the doors. Try to kill just the spawned enemies that are close to you or the ones that shoot proyectiles, focus on mom for most of the fight and you'll make it.

For Judas/Eve: take your time, getting as many upgrades as possible, but don't be greedy, as soon as you get enough go directly to the boss room, try searching for it first, then the treasure room, then leave.
For Mom you'll want to shoot at the four parts of her that appear on the wall and evade the big foot and shoot it if there's no enemies nearby, try to kill the enemies as soon as they spawn so they don't cause trouble.

The Womb

Remember all my rant about the bible up there? well the same applies here, if you get lucky, keep it.

Since mom's heart stays in place, the ludovico technique will be perfect if you find it, if not, then any long ranged attack will do.
Try to have a fast attack rate too, since you'll be moving a lot and each hit counts. Now for the strategy:

You can do 2 things when moving on rooms, bomb your way out if they're not the ones you seek or just carefully fight the bosses. If you have fought the depths, keep that strategy, but now the hazard is proyectiles, there's tons of them here.
If you enter a room with an eye, never stop moving, if it's in the center just round it and if it's on an edge just go in a quarter of circle around it, that way it'll never shoot you.
The womb achievement is actually easier than the depths since you get upgrades in the depths, so you won't have that much of a trouble.

For mom's heart: remember the one on the original isaac? Well she's on steroids now, and you'll evade more than attack, the good thing is that her patterns are easy to evade, as long as you stay away from her, most of it is jiggling arround evading tears or circling around, but you should take care since she keeps spawning enemies, near the end she'll shoot 4 brimstone lasers and rotate them around the room until you kill her, when she dies she'll try one more time doing a tammy style tear attack.

Recommended Character: Eve. Azazel won't do anymore, I mean, you can kill her with him, but the close range will eventually make you take a hit, you need long range and high damage, and eve with one heart has that.

The Chest/The Dark Room

Now, for Dead boy you can choose which path to take, so we'll have different strategies for each one.
Let's start with the basics for both:
1.- Those two items I showed you at the start of the guide? they help, a lot. that means you can make 1 mistake and you also can block tears going in your direction.
2.- Skatole: if you get this item the flies that come out of both bosses won't be an issue anymore.
3.- big damage/shooting rate: These bosses have a huge health bar, so you want to take them out quickly, try maxing out your damage stat.
4.- an invincibility object in your item slot: now I'll put 3 here, and each one has its pros and cons.
-Book of shadows: gives you an impressing 10 seconds of invincibility and needs just 3 charges, but doesn't add anything else.
-The Gamekid: gives you invincibility and attack on contact, but lasts less than the book of shadows and you can't shoot tears.
-My little Unicorn: It's more or less like the Gamekid.

No matter what Item you get, you should also buy the battery, that lets you overcharge your items so you can use them up to two times.

If you want to go the lucky way, if you get a Chaos Card you can insta kill ???, so you'd have to only worry about the stage. Thanks to =(eGO)=™ MIB2 for suggesting this and LootZ for testing it.

Other items that might help you are the ones that summon spiders and flies, guppy is the best one obviously, with a high rate of fire you can finish the boss in seconds. Here's an example of me beating Isaac with ludovico + brimstone(from Azazel) + big fire rate + guppy:

One last thing, there's no recommended characters to use here, just use the one you can use the best, the thing is getting upgrades to make your character powerful enough.

Anyways, Let's start with the chest:
Strategy: this is a boss rush, learn to kill all the bosses quickly before going here, and bring keys, at the start you'll be able to get 4 extra items that might help you, and just try to reach the boss, nothing else.
The Boss: ???/Blue baby will stay in place most of the time, and won't attack at the start until you attack him, so use your card or other upgrades you got before attacking, you have to evade his tear so keep moving around while your back faces a wall until it reaches his next stage. Here he will start shooting homing tears too so you have to move more to fully evade them, and he'll summon flies that might get in your way, a brimstone laser generally destroys them before they can move. In his last stage he can teleport to you and give you contact damages, so I recommend you don't stop moving and save your invincibility item for that stage.

I generally use a card, then a bomb and then start shooting like showed in this video.

Now, if you don't want to beat the chest, you can choose to go to the dark room:
Strategy: at the start you get 4 red chest, you might get lucky and get guppy, so try to open them all, but be prepared to evade spider or bombs. In the next rooms you'll find enemies from sheol, mostly bosses like the fallen, so take your time with each room. You can't bomb your way out, so don't even try it, if you have an item that lets you see the map then use it or go directly to the boss since some rooms, like the ones filled with ghosts that shoot flying projectiles, are very hard to evade.
The Boss: The lamb starts laying on the floor and then floats and start moving towards you, those seconds in which he isn't moving are a great oportunity to buff yourself and plant a bomb. His attacks consist of shooting little explosive projectiles, shooting waves of tears, shooting tears with splash damage and shooting homing tears, so just keep evading them and eventually he'll reach his 2nd stage, in which he divides, the head is the most dangerous one since the body stays in place, skatole is recommended since then you'll only have to worry about the tears the body shoots. The head has the same attacks as before plus a charging attack that makes contact damage and a 4 way brimstone laser like the one mom's heart shoots. the charging is almost instantaneous so take care and move from one side to the other without staying directly in front, down or to the sides of the head to shoot the brimstone laser.
I generally try to kill the head first and then the body, but it seems the body is weaker.

And that's all guys, I hope you enjoyed this guide and it helped you get those achievements you always wanted to get.

[Smiss]

no damage achievements are not very hard, anyone could do it with azazel in no more than 3 tries, even without holy mantke. I mean, if you don't have to deal with brimstone bosses, everything will be fine.

[Monomin]

Thx For The Help For Tips on getting Dead Boy :)

[Slimurgical (Stormy)]

Also in some ways, Eden can either help, or do the opposite for getting them.

I personally got basement boy and spelunker boy using Judas, I just was lucky enough to get enough damage and tears upgrades. When I got brimstone after getting those, I didn't get the others, but it still became a landslide win since I had the bible, which i got in a devil room in the first caves level.

But yeah, Judas is a good idea, since damage is his most strong attribute pretty much. Azazel is a very strong starter though, so he's likely better in a bunch of ways.

[Arvenyte]

get azazel for flight and try to get a protection item like book of shadows or holy mantle, that's the easiest way.

[scriblemelego]

Its funny, I got basement boy, dark boy, mama's boy, and dead boy (on my first try xD) and yet I just can't get spelunker boy. Any tips?

[Луукфи Пэнц]

Пока не открыли Лоста, даже не пытайтесь проходить без получения дамага.

[BriFighter]

Having 3 orbitals to block shots will be useful aswell. Also the resistance rune ( I forgot the name) gives you 30-40 secs of invincibility.

[Arvenyte]

Dead boy is just 1 room, so it's also easier if you're used to the boss, and since it's at the end then you have tons of upgrades.

[♥Arrowtongue♥]

No I Even Mean I Got Dead Boy Before but I can see your point

[AppleSaws]

i'm pretty sure i got spelunker boy and mama's boy after taking devil rooms on those floors...