The Champion Belt!

todays rebirth item tease comes in the form of a not so exciting item that im using as a way to talk about a new feature in rebirth that i think is quite amazing, but 1st lets get this belt out of the way.

the champion belt is a STORE ITEM, that raises the % chance of champion enemies appearing in rooms but also raises damage. a lot of items will be moved around item pool wise to fit a “store theme”. the store will feature more support items that are obviously very optional and you have more options on what one(s) you choose to use as you play. most players wont scoff at a damage up item for a few pennies.. but there are a lot more to champions in rebirth than there were before.

in the past a champion was just a larger enemy that had double hp and did a full heart of damage, each champion was randomly tinted to make them look special.. but there really wasnt much special about them other than that.

another big goal in rebirth is to push the random factor up higher, and special champions raise that aspect by a shit ton.

binding of isaac: rebirth will feature a large number of custom designed champions each with their own special stats, features, ai and item drops.

here is a good example:

as you might notice in the gif, there are 2 champions in this room (because im wearing the belt) one is orange and one is solid black. im not going to talk about the orange one.. because its not obvious what hes doing special, but the black one is what i call a “lost champion”. if you pay attention you can see he becomes invisible shortly after entering the room. all of the many new champions each have their own special abilities just like him.

Solid Black = fades in and out of visibility / item drop = red chest

Yellow = double walk/shoot speed / item drop = undisclosed new pickup item

Red = very high hp / item drop = heart

Grey = blows up when killed / items drop = bomb

Green = leaves green creep under itself / item drop = pill

(there are a ton more, but i dont wanna spoil the fun)

(sorry about the frame rate in this gif, i recorded it at 16 fps)

as you might imagine this totally changes how you approach each and every enemy in the game and is quite a fun game changer that pays out when it comes to risk/reward.

aside from those, champions will still feature double hp and do a full heart of damage when they hit you.. but they are much more of a challenge this time.. thats for sure.

next week ill show you my knife!