How to use co-op to finish Repentance faster?

[Eternal21]

I've completed Mother for a few characters, but it will take me ages to do it for all of them, not to mention Tainted playthroughs.  I've seen people mentioning you can use up to 4 people in co-op, and get 1 item per player, which should make this much easier.  Can anyone answer any of these:

 

1. Are there any downsides to this method (i.e. does my main character get nerfed in any way).

2. Do I need 1 controller per character?

3. What are main characters I should be using for these playthroughs (i.e. easiest characters).

[BalefulFrog]

17 hours ago, Eternal21 said:

I've completed Mother for a few characters, but it will take me ages to do it for all of them, not to mention Tainted playthroughs.  I've seen people mentioning you can use up to 4 people in co-op, and get 1 item per player, which should make this much easier.  Can anyone answer any of these:

 

1. Are there any downsides to this method (i.e. does my main character get nerfed in any way).

2. Do I need 1 controller per character?

3. What are main characters I should be using for these playthroughs (i.e. easiest characters).

 

1. No; your main character will actually get buffed (Edit: Actually, all players will do 20% less damage against bosses). Each boss will drop 1 item for each player, and you can take all of the items with your main character. The only real downside is that the camera can be annoying in large rooms (any room bigger than 1x1 on map). You will have to move all characters to move the camera in these rooms.

 

2. Yes.

 

3. Different players will have different opinions on this. Azazel is great at steamrolling rooms but is actually rather poor for the end-game bosses due to his range. My choice would be The Forgotten. His melee is very powerful for clearing rooms as long as you know enemy patterns (i.e. which enemies are safe/risky to get close to), and he is great at the end-game bosses if you get good at using The Forgotten to body block tears while controlling The Soul.

Edited November 29, 2021 by BalefulFrog
Fixed error

[Eternal21]

10 hours ago, BalefulFrog said:

 

1. No; your main character will actually get buffed. Each boss will drop 1 item for each player, and you can take all of the items with your main character. The only real downside is that the camera can be annoying in large rooms (any room bigger than 1x1 on map). You will have to move all characters to move the camera in these rooms. 

 

2. Yes.

 

3. Different players will have different opinions on this. Azazel is great at steamrolling rooms but is actually rather poor for the end-game bosses due to his range. My choice would be The Forgotten. His melee is very powerful for clearing rooms as long as you know enemy patterns (i.e. which enemies are safe/risky to get close to), and he is great at the end-game bosses if you get good at using The Forgotten to body block tears while controlling The Soul.

 

Thanks.  The official wiki states that you do get 20% damage nerf in coop:

All damage players dealt to bosses is reduced by 20%

But I'm sure it's offset by extra items.

 

Have you tried playing with 4 chars at once?  I can see how it would get annoying having to move them separately.  I only have 2 PS5 controllers, so this would be another $140 to get 2 more controllers.  Probably worth it for the amount of time I would save, but still sucks.  I wish there were some cheaper 3rd party controller alternatives, but couldn't find any.

 

 

[BalefulFrog]

3 hours ago, Eternal21 said:

 

Thanks.  The official wiki states that you do get 20% damage nerf in coop:

All damage players dealt to bosses is reduced by 20%

But I'm sure it's offset by extra items.

 

Have you tried playing with 4 chars at once?  I can see how it would get annoying having to move them separately.  I only have 2 PS5 controllers, so this would be another $140 to get 2 more controllers.  Probably worth it for the amount of time I would save, but still sucks.  I wish there were some cheaper 3rd party controller alternatives, but couldn't find any.

 

 

 

Oh wow, I didn't see the 20% lower damage against bosses, thanks. Moving the extra characters around isn't as annoying as it might seem. As I said earlier, the camera doesn't need to move on normal sized rooms (which make up the vast majority of rooms) so you don't have to move the other characters then. Also, only one character has to enter a door to move so you don't need to move any of the other characters to go to a different room. The annoying part is the big rooms where you will have to move every character. This is also only really an issue when clearing for the first time. Your main character can move across the whole room, even if they are off camera, so once the room is safe you can blindly move off screen to enter the door to another room.

 

4 characters probably wouldn't save too much time when considering the time to beat this game as a whole. The main time saving comes from the fact that you can easily get the completion marks for difficult characters who would otherwise take a lot of time. Once you've completed the difficult characters, you can beat the other characters somewhat quickly by quick-restarting until you get a powerful item. If you still do want to try 3+ characters, you can use Remote Play on a computer/phone as another controller. This is actually what I did to test how the co-op method works (I only have 1 physical controller).

[Eternal21]

I did a couple of runs using 2 characters. It not really possible to do more when going for the Mother completion, because of that chase section in the mines.  There are a number of larger maps, and it's hard enough having to control two characters at that point.  But I will give 4 player co-op a try when completing all tainted characters.  I just abuse saves, saving at each new floor and right before the boss. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by Eternal21

[BalefulFrog]

7 hours ago, Eternal21 said:

I did a couple of runs using 2 characters. It not really possible to do more when going for the Mother completion, because of that chase section in the mines.  There are a number of larger maps, and it's hard enough having to control two characters at that point.  But I will give 4 player co-op a try when completing all tainted characters.  I just abuse saves, saving at each new floor and right before the boss. 

 

Cool, let me know how it goes. I'm hoping to write a guide for this DLC and it'd be good to include the details of this method, but I'm not planning to use co-op myself.

[Eternal21]

Will do.  I just ordered 2 extra controllers for a total of 4. 

[Eternal21]

I got 4 controllers in total now, and was able to clear The Mother for 8 characters in 2 games.  The mine chase is still doable with 4 characters, you just need to dodge your main character with your left hand, and move two other characters with your right.  Alternatively the section is completely easy using Azazel, since you can just fly over the blocked off sections.  Either way with 4 characters you pretty much are guaranteed to have all containers filled out by that point, so it's not an issue.

 

One thing that sucks is the fact that even though there are 16 characters, you actually have to play 5 games, since the last character (Jacob & Esau), counts as 2 characters for co-op, so you can only have a total of 3 players when having them selected.

 

The only other downside I noticed is that Challenge Rooms are always closed, because the co-op players are stuck at half a heart after dying.  But again, the 4 treasures from bosses more than make up from it.  Also, restart if you get an XL room as your first room.  You only get a single item after beating the first boss.

 

I will be working on 'The Monster' completion mark next, I'm assuming I can also do it using 4 players.  Do you know if I can unlock Tainted characters in batches of 4 as well? 

[BalefulFrog]

5 hours ago, Eternal21 said:

I got 4 controllers in total now, and was able to clear The Mother for 8 characters in 2 games.  The mine chase is still doable with 4 characters, you just need to dodge your main character with your left hand, and move two other characters with your right.  Alternatively the section is completely easy using Azazel, since you can just fly over the blocked off sections.  Either way with 4 characters you pretty much are guaranteed to have all containers filled out by that point, so it's not an issue.

 

One thing that sucks is the fact that even though there are 16 characters, you actually have to play 5 games, since the last character (Jacob & Esau), counts as 2 characters for co-op, so you can only have a total of 3 players when having them selected.

 

The only other downside I noticed is that Challenge Rooms are always closed, because the co-op players are stuck at half a heart after dying.  But again, the 4 treasures from bosses more than make up from it.  Also, restart if you get an XL room as your first room.  You only get a single item after beating the first boss.

 

I will be working on 'The Monster' completion mark next, I'm assuming I can also do it using 4 players.  Do you know if I can unlock Tainted characters in batches of 4 as well? 

 

Nice, thanks for the update. According to the wiki, you can only unlock the tainted version of player one's character in true co-op. It's probably therefore pointless to do 'The Beast' in co-op for the non-tainted characters since you will have to go there with each of them anyway to unlock their tainted version. I guess you could use co-op to clean up the completion marks for any characters who you got to 'Home' (and unlocked their tainted version) but died on the boss fight. Co-op should be effective for the tainted characters though. The 'Dogma' fight is in a 2x1 room so the camera might be difficult (although 'Mother' is also in 2x1 and you didn't seem to have troubles with it), and the following Hell(?) section is all on one screen I believe.

[Eternal21]

Yes, it looks like only the first character gets the Tainted unlock.  So what I do is I pick the character I want to unlock Tainted with as my Player 1, and then pick Player 2 character as the one I want to play with.  At this point I'm playing all my games with 4 player co-op, because of the 4 boss items, even if it does not help with Tainted unlock.  It just makes the game so much easier, I don't even need to scum save.  I play with Azazel as my main character, as the flight makes it much easier to avoid obstacles in big rooms without seeing them (so I never need to move other characters).  And yes, the final section against The Monster is 1 screen only.

[Eternal21]

So I've unlocked all Tainted characters, and was clearing 'The Monster' on Hard with all of them.  My method was to use Azazel as my player 1 character, and the Tainted characters as secondary characters.  It all worked fine, until Tainted Jacob.  I noticed during the fight in Home, the game would just end, even though Azazel had full health.  Luckily I had a backup save, so I kept replaying it over and over, and noticed it's because the dead 'Tainted Jacob', would get revived as a Lost whenever Esau would die.  After that a single hit on Lost would end the game, even though it was not the Player1 character.

 

Not sure if this happens on every boss, or just The Monster, but currently my plan is to use 'Tainted Jacob' as my main character, and then use the exploit where you quite the game right before the Esau explosion to prevent getting turned into Lost with him.

[Eternal21]

I've done more testing with 'Tainted Jacob' and found a workaround for the deaths during Monster fight.  After you go to sleep in Home, wait for Esau to spawn, then kill him, then exit the game during his death animation (regular in-game quit, not the PS button quit).  Once you come back, he won't spawn anymore, and the dead Jacob won't be able to die again.

 

The animation glitch I'm talking about, is demonstrated here:

 

The one other character that kind of sucks even in co-op is 'Tainted Keeper'.  Even though you have 4 pickups you have to pay for them all.  With Monster runs. you can pick them up on your way back through the levels, but it's still harder than other characters.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Eternal21

[Eternal21]

I've finished 'Mother' with all tainted characters, and the same issue happens with 'Tainted Jacob' on Corpse II floor.  Even if he's not the main character, you'll still lose the game, the moment he gets touched by Esau.  I recommend saving right as you get to that floor, then wait for Esau to spawn, kill him, and exit during his die animation.  That works, just like it did with 'The Monster' fight.  I'll update this thread if the same thing happens with other bosses.

[BalefulFrog]

Good to know. Thanks for all the updates btw! ?

[Eternal21]

Thanks.  Just putting down all the co-op info, so somebody will find it useful down the line.  I've finished The Monster and Mother completion marks for all the characters, and even with 4 controllers this thing is taking forever.

[Doctor_Gunner]

i have been thinking of doing this method just because i really hate tainted cain. my question is can you use the save manipulation method in some form or characters can only join in the starter room?

[Eternal21]

6 hours ago, Doctor_Gunner said:

i have been thinking of doing this method just because i really hate tainted cain. my question is can you use the save manipulation method in some form or characters can only join in the starter room?

 

Not sure if I understand your question completely, but once you join the game in starting room, with other players, the game remembers that even if you exit/save/reload later.  So for example if you save right before the boss on another floor, once you load the game, it will ask you to connect the controllers for the players you started with.

[Doctor_Gunner]

1 hour ago, Eternal21 said:

 

Not sure if I understand your question completely, but once you join the game in starting room, with other players, the game remembers that even if you exit/save/reload later.  So for example if you save right before the boss on another floor, once you load the game, it will ask you to connect the controllers for the players you started with.

oh. thanks for the answer. that exactly was my question. so it is totaly doable thanks

[Eternal21]

I've completed all the marks for the Repentance characters, except for the Greedier mode.  It actually went much faster than I expected, since you can complete multiple marks in a single run.  In some cases, you only need 2 or 3 runs to do something like this:

 

1. Boss Rush > Hush > Delirium

2. Cathedral > The Chest > Mega Satan

3. Sheol > The Dark Room

 

Technically you could combine steps 1 and 2, but then you need to hope that Delirium will spawn after Mega Satan, and that's 50% chance only:

1. Boss Rush > Hush > Cathedral > The Chest > Mega Satan

2. Sheol > The Dark Room

 

By the way, you can complete The Chest/The Dark Room boss AND Mega Satan in the same run, just do the floor boss first, before heading to Mega Satan.  I confirmed the unlocks work even if you don't get into the Boss's chest (Lamb or ???).

 

Some tips:

1. I always went for The Void (Delirium) the moment it appeared, since it's the only RNG based floor, so you don't want to miss it.

2. The easiest way to get the key to Mega Satan, is keep restarting until you get sacrifice room on starting floor, then simply sacrifice your coop characters to get both pieces by fighting angels (9th and 11th sacrifice)

3. I used Samson for all the marks, as my main char (except for The Monster, where I went with Azazel, to fly through the escape floor).  I find Smason's bonus damage whenever he takes damage the best perk (you essentially get rewarded for making mistakes).

4. The hardest character to complete the marks was the tainted Keeper.  You need to pay for all the items, so even if there are 4 of them, you can't get them, unless you have the cash.  Particularly annoying during Boss Rush/Hush runs, where you don't have time to grind for cash while bee-lining for the boss room on each floor.  I ended up bombing the coin machine a lot to get extra cash when needed.

5. I haven't had any issues with the game ending due to Tainted Jacob dying.  Seems to be only happening during 'The Monster' and 'Mother' boss fights.

Edited January 1, 2022 by Eternal21

[Eternal21]

I've completed the 'Greedier' completion marks for all the characters.  I tried doing it legit, but couldn't manage, so I ended up using the D20 exploit, which works as following:

1. Pick Isaac as your main character.

2. Join with 3 other characters as your secondary characters (for which  you want to earn the completion mark).

3. Enter the store, and check if either D20 or D-Infiinity dice is there.

4. If it's not, use Isaac's D6 dice to re-roll store items.  If the dice is still not there, restart and go back to step 1.

5. If the dice is there, save the game and buy the dice (save your money for re-rolls on later floors).

6. Go to the 2nd floor.  You need to find a battery, if it's not there, try to use re-roll machine to get to one.  If not, keep trying on further floors.

7. If you did find a battery, go through all the waves, and be really careful not to pick up any coins.

8. You'll need at least 10-20 coins on the ground, and some money saved for the batteries.

9. After that keep re-rolling, and opening any chest that shows up as well as pick up any 5c and 10c coins. 

10.  Keep recharging your D20 dice using batteries.  And keep re-rolling items.

11.  What you want is keep getting more and more items that can be re-rolled.  This can be done by opening chests, that pop up, and hopefully they have more than 1 item. 'Mom's Key' helps here (and any other item that generates items, like 'Fuse Cutter', or any of the Penny trinkets)

13. Eventually this loop will become self-sustaining and you'll be able to keep spending extra cash on items.

14. Once you get powerful enough, you can just roll through the rest of the floors and the boss.

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Eternal21

[BalefulFrog]

21 hours ago, Eternal21 said:

I've completed the 'Greedier' completion marks for all the characters.  I tried doing it legit, but couldn't manage, so I ended up using the D20 exploit, which works as following:

1. Pick Isaac as your main character.

2. Join with 3 other characters as your secondary characters (for which  you want to earn the completion mark).

3. Enter the store, and check if either D20 or D-Infiinity dice is there.

4. If it's not, use Isaac's D6 dice to re-roll store items.  If the dice is still not there, restart and go back to step 1.

5. If the dice is there, save the game and buy the dice (save your money for re-rolls on later floors).

6. Go to the 2nd floor.  You need to find a battery, if it's not there, try to use re-roll machine to get to one.  If not, keep trying on further floors.

7. If you did find a battery, go through all the waves, and be really careful not to pick up any coins.

8. You'll need at least 10-20 coins on the ground, and some money saved for the batteries.

9. After that keep re-rolling, and opening any chest that shows up as well as pick up any 5c and 10c coins. 

10.  Keep recharging your D20 dice using batteries.  And keep re-rolling items.

11.  What you want is keep getting more and more items that can be re-rolled.  This can be done by opening chests, that pop up, and hopefully they have more than 1 item. 'Mom's Key' helps here (and any other item that generates items, like 'Fuse Cutter', or any of the Penny trinkets)

13. Eventually this loop will become self-sustaining and you'll be able to keep spending extra cash on items.

14. Once you get powerful enough, you can just roll through the rest of the floors and the boss.

 

 

Good to know that the D20 method still works. I heard some people say that it wasn't as effective but I couldn't find anything on the wiki to suggest this.

 

Is there a co-op specific reason why it was difficult to do it legit? i.e. Why couldn't you just play as Azazel who normally steamrolls through greedier mode? Was it because the camera was too difficult as the fighting takes place in a 2x1 room (like Mother)?

[Eternal21]

3 hours ago, BalefulFrog said:

 

Good to know that the D20 method still works. I heard some people say that it wasn't as effective but I couldn't find anything on the wiki to suggest this.

 

Is there a co-op specific reason why it was difficult to do it legit? i.e. Why couldn't you just play as Azazel who normally steamrolls through greedier mode? Was it because the camera was too difficult as the fighting takes place in a 2x1 room (like Mother)?

 

The D20 method was nerfed.  Empty chest objects no longer re-roll into new objects.  That's why you need more coins initially to get the loop going.  There are ways of making this easier, by using certain tainted characters (the one that drops poop objects when you kill enemies for example - the poops re-roll into objects).  Also some tainted characters, like the one that drops coins, or the one that drops hearts whenever you kill each enemy made getting through the initial floors easier.

 

As far as difficulty, I'm pretty sure the 20% nerf against bosses still applies, and now you need to fight two at the same time.  I was able to get around the visibility by placing the other characters in the vertical center.  It's not as good as playing by yourself, but you can see the whole area, if you move up and down. 

[Eternal21]

I'm finally done with this chore!  Challenges went relatively fast, with multiple characters and scum saving when needed.  Some challenges were made trivial with 4 player co-op (like the one where you get card items for example - after boss fight, you would get the extra card item spot, but also 3 actual items for the other 3 players you could pick up).  As with other modes, the conjoined characters count as two players, so you can only have a single co-op player in challenges where those are used.

 

After completing challenges I had to find about 20 items I never picked up.  I used the D20 + Battery Greed mode exploit.  SpinDown dice with Birthright (when playing Isaac), made this extremely easy.   Hopefully I'll never have to look at this game again.

[JeManquedHygiene]

On 1/7/2022 at 3:10 AM, Eternal21 said:

I've completed the 'Greedier' completion marks for all the characters.  I tried doing it legit, but couldn't manage, so I ended up using the D20 exploit, which works as following:

1. Pick Isaac as your main character.

2. Join with 3 other characters as your secondary characters (for which  you want to earn the completion mark).

3. Enter the store, and check if either D20 or D-Infiinity dice is there.

4. If it's not, use Isaac's D6 dice to re-roll store items.  If the dice is still not there, restart and go back to step 1.

5. If the dice is there, save the game and buy the dice (save your money for re-rolls on later floors).

6. Go to the 2nd floor.  You need to find a battery, if it's not there, try to use re-roll machine to get to one.  If not, keep trying on further floors.

7. If you did find a battery, go through all the waves, and be really careful not to pick up any coins.

8. You'll need at least 10-20 coins on the ground, and some money saved for the batteries.

9. After that keep re-rolling, and opening any chest that shows up as well as pick up any 5c and 10c coins. 

10.  Keep recharging your D20 dice using batteries.  And keep re-rolling items.

11.  What you want is keep getting more and more items that can be re-rolled.  This can be done by opening chests, that pop up, and hopefully they have more than 1 item. 'Mom's Key' helps here (and any other item that generates items, like 'Fuse Cutter', or any of the Penny trinkets)

13. Eventually this loop will become self-sustaining and you'll be able to keep spending extra cash on items.

14. Once you get powerful enough, you can just roll through the rest of the floors and the boss.

 

First of all I want to thank you for all the information you give in this thread. Even though I can only use 3 characters max it's already proving invaluable.

 

With this being said, I'm surprised you used such a complicated method for Greedier completion. I'm simply using Lilith on every run to carry other characters and it's working pretty well. The hardest part is to survive the first and second arenas. Once you do, it probably means your early build is decent and you should make your way to Ultra Greed without any major issue.

 

Obviously this only applies once you've unlocked Greedier mode by putting 500 coins in the machine. Before that, your best bet is just to play the game normally with a variety of good characters to reduce jam chance.

 

By the way, here's something I've found out the hard way : in coop Greed mode, the jam chance is determined by the character who physically puts the money in the machine. It has nothing to do with who is player 1 (this is something I had read online and it's completely false). So theoretically you could complete every run with Lilith and then put the money with the 2nd or 3rd character if they have lower jam chance. Problem is, those characters are typically dead by the end of the final boss fight, and the player ghosts cannot put any money... This means you mostly cannot cheat the system by only playing Lilith in Greed. That is only a reliable strategy in Greedier (where the jam chance caps at 1% for every character, not 20%)