This is going to be a quick post about a somewhat divisive trinket.

Its function is pretty simple. When held, it changes every type of chest to a Red Chest. This includes Grey, Golden, Stone and Eternal Chests.

(Btw the first time I picked it up I didn’t understand what the flavour text meant whatsoever, I thought I had to try and take left-sided doors for more consumables or something)

Now Red chests are fairly unique among chests in terms of what they contain, and not always in a good way:

The Good: 2x Soul Hearts, Teleport to Devil/Angel Room, 1-3 Blue Spiders/Flies, Bone Heart, Red Chest pool item

The Bad: 2x Troll Bombs, 1x Mega Troll Bomb, 2 Red spiders

The Neutral:1-2 random Pills

Now, on the balance of rewards this seems more on the good side, but bear in mind that friendly spiders and flies aren’t ever run changing or saving, just a little extra one-time damage. And you get the bad rewards a whole lot more in personal and viewed experience

Of course the Red Chest pool is fairly dubious in itself. It is very powerful in that it can transform you into Guppy, containing the Head, Collar, Paw, 9 Lives and Tail. It can also contain Pandora’s Box, Goathead and Bob’s Curse, all of which are fairly useful with no downside. But it can also contain Plan C, which as you may know can kill anything in a room (even Delirium) but will kill you 3 seconds after. But that can be discarded, unlike Curse of the Tower and Cursed Eye, which stay with you for the rest of the run

So when should you keep the Left Hand? The greatest use is when you have a shortage of keys. This poses a problem with Golden Chests, especially if you have Guppy’s Tail which increases Chest drops at the expense of key drops. As I mentioned before, it gives Isaac a high chance of transforming into Guppy, which is always huge and can carry a run almost entirely on its own. Added Soul Hearts have very few downsides for anyone but the Lost. And finally, its a free transport to the Devil/Angel Room. This is very useful because it doesn’t guarantee the likelihood of getting the door opened after beating the Boss. Why is that good? Because you can get both the Devil/Angel deal and have a higher percentage of getting it next floor

For example: say you had a 33% chance of getting a Devil Deal on Floor 3. The Red Chest takes you to it and you get some items. Now you beat the Floor 3 Boss and lets say the Devil Deal door doesn’t appear. Next floor you now have a 67% chance of getting it, prior to doing anything else to increase or decrease that chance

Also, this allows you to get Devil Deals before Basement 2 as well as after Womb 2, which is when it cannot be accessed after beating the boss

One final interesting note: the Left Hand can retroactively change chests. If you see a Golden Chest, then equip the trinket and come back to the unopened chest, it will have transformed into a Red Chest. This is reversible if you drop the trinket and revisit the room. However, if you see the chest as a Red Chest from the beginning, dropping the trinket will not change it to anything else. This is a fair warning to drop it before entering The Chest after beating Isaac or else: