Item Discussion #9: Rock Bottom

A conceptually simple item with a TON of potential for crazy synergies - anything that decreases some stats in exchange for others or gives temporary bonuses can give you permanent crazy stats with this item, and in my experience even if you don't get something crazy like soy milk, rock bottom is always at least quite helpful. Really cool and powerful addition!

It's quite rare because it is only in the secret room pool, but thankfully repentance added a lot of new ways to generate items from whatever pool you want, like the Stars? card and Magic Skin.

^{please somebody help me i haven't seen anybody under the age of 40 in a year}

It's very good when you find it early. It only takes 1 Soy Milk / Red Stew / The Chariot? / Huge Growth etc. to make it the best offensive item in the game.

But you don't even need to break it to have it pay for itself. Random Empress and Strength cards turn into big damage ups, Feels Like I'm Walking On Sunshine caps your speed at 2.0 and there's a TON of small synergies like these ones. As a secret room exclusive it's very rare but with how good it is it's probably for the best.

"Oh boy! I sure am glad I finally beat Bosh Rush as that nightmare of a character so I can finally use this awesome item everyone's been talking about!"

proceeds to never see it once because it's a secret room item

I have only ever had Rock Bottom in Tainted Cain runs because secret room items are just too dang rare! And it's a real shame because this item is a treat. It's probably the most synergy-dependent item in the game, in that it literally does nothing on its own but gets nutty with certain other items, meaning I feel like it's sometimes just gonna fill you with empty promises of a broken run that are never fulfilled. But then you slap soy milk and/or polyphemus on this bad boy and you're in for a world of fun.

I really love items like this - it has such a simple effect, yet it manage to open the floodgates to some of the wildest zane you've ever seen. Here's some of the crazy shit I've tried with it:

Soy Milk: duh

Polyphemus: also duh

Deadeye: no need for accuracy, spray and pray all day because that double damage is gonna stick no matter what.

Red Stew: it never fades! EVER!

Star of Bethlehem: normally this item is a pain in the ass to work with because the star has a mind of its own, but with Rock Bottom, just touch the thing once and be on your merry way with a bonkers tears up. Combine with Soy Milk to achieve a 30+ tear rate and a hefty damage up.

Bloody Lust/Gust: find a blood donation machine, hit it a bunch, bing boom bam super crazy damage and firerate that isn't lost on the next floor.

Dark Arts: all you need is one bullet-hell boss like The Stain and you can just eat all its bullets to gain a permanent huge chunk of damage, AND just using the thing once permanently caps out your speed.

I imagine this is also super great with trinkets like Broken Syringe or Liberty Cap because after going through enough rooms they'll basically just give you all the effects they can give permanently. (Right?)

I dunno what more to say man, it's such a brilliant item that just gets better and better as I learn more about it. I may never see it outside a Tainted Cain run, but as Tainted Cain, I'm never seen without it.

(tho pls add it to the item room pool at reduced weight pls pls pls pls pls)

Update 3 days later that nobody will see: just got my Tainted Lost Mega Satan kill thanks to Rock Bottom + Star of Bethlehem. My beloved.

Really cool item in concept, but do to the fact it's in the secret room pool you never see it.

The first run I played after unlocking it I got it out of a tinted rock playing as tainted Isaac, which got my hopes up that it remained in the tinted rock pool like in Antibirth. Sadly not the case. Probably for the best that it's rare in the secret room pool, it's a very strong item.

This item sounds like it's practically a won run if you find it. I mean, temporary stat ups turn into permanent stat ups? Items with stat downs for that silly thing called "balance" turning into an absolute victory? Sign me up!

I've yet to see it in action, but I'm fine with that. I think these singular run-breaking items should be relatively rare, and sticking 'em into the secret item pool ensures that you'll only be getting them every so often.

probably the single coolest item added, and thankfully it doesn't have the downside it did in Antibirth where it reset your stats to starting values before applying it's upside. As it is in Repentance, it's super fun to see (and also stupidly rare) and can lead to some incredible runs.

Coming off of a single 4 hour "Cain" run in which I got every single completion mark possible in a regular run minus Mega Stan, holy fuck Rock Bottom is an amazing item for breaking the game. Rock Bottom + Red Stew + Soy Milk and you destroy literally everything in your way.

rock bottom new SS+ tier item

Fun fact, this item has a quality of 2 for some reason.

Also...Kilburn said that it "never reset your stats" in antibirth, despite the fact that it definitely did. Maybe this was a bug, and that's why it didn't return in Repentance?

If you know how to use it, it's pretty fucking good.

Rock Bottom has single-handedly reshaped synergies in repentance.

An item I'll never get to use because there's no way I'm completing boss rush with J & E.

I don't think it'll actually do much for you a lot of the time. You need to 1. Find the item in the first place by digging through one of the rarest item pools in the game, 2. Grab it reasonably early, and 3. Find items or pills with a downside in order to get a benefit. It is definitely awesome to get this item along with something like Soy Milk, Crown of Light, or False PHD though.

Edit: Somehow forgot about temporary buffs from cards and actives. You only need 1 damage up card and it's already great.

really strong with tainted judas or money = power

My first run I got rock bottom I played normal Samson, found it early, then kidney stone, later polyphemus...just sick

On the other hand on tainted cain I failed using rock bottom,because I crafted soy milk first after rock bottom and never got over my starting damage....its not always just op ;)

Okay, where the hell do I even start?

Rock Bottom is amazing overall, because of it's ability to cockblock anything that would lower your stats, like Soy Milk, Polyphemus, pills, and Ipecac, including things that technically don't lower your stats but give you something that wears off for a bit, but will keep what it gives you permanently with rock bottom, like Wavy Cap, Lusty Blood, or Red Stew... However, all of this comes with one, singular, but major catch (make sure to write down your notes everybody); "Stat Resistance".

Y'see, while effectively and visually, it seems cut and dry with how it works, making no stat unable to go down, it's a lot more... complicated then that. Rock Bottom's "stat resistance" isn't necessarily an actual "stat resistance" per-say, however while effectively you can only get permanent positive stats, it actually still calculates everything as if you DID lower your stats behind the scenes. This makes the order you pick things up in extremely important, as despite the fact that nothing technically went down, it still behaves like it does in calculation. This makes this otherwise busted item require a lot more strategy than people tend to think, while still making the overall item itself has immense potential 100% of the time.

Honestly, on its own, it's a meh item. But it opens up so much synergy opportunities. With soy milk, polyphemus, and so on it can get insane. 10/10 item. Fun, overpowered, and a great item.

This item can be amazing and with the right items will make your run looks amazing.

Too bad I never find it.

Well, in a Eden run I started with it and I died on the second floor. It's only up from there indeed

I unlocked it weeks ago and still have never seen it. Maybe someday.

Now about the increasing stats with the temporary sources, like mentioned Book of Belial - how does it work? If I use Empress card, is next 1.5 dmg gonna not count, because it's below "actual damage"? Does it work like that with all temporary stat ups?

All I can say is this potentially ranks among the most powerful items in the game. Making trinket and card effects on stats permanent and no debilitating stat downs from items from items like Eve's Mascara and Soy Milk? Extremely powerful.

One of my favorite items in the game. An absolute powerhouse if found early on and still great if found later. It makes you think more big about some temporary buffs to get much greater use out of them. The devil tarot card, soul of judas, mega mush, wavy cap. All those things become permanent. And when you've got those stats, you can beat anything.

i swear to christ this item had a collective mandela effect on everyone who played antibirth into thinking this rock lowered all your stats back to their defaults and then applied its main effect. in fact i've seen people still recently (including myself!) think that rock bottom used to do that. some people still do apparently! i guess it makes thematic sense that it would but that would make an otherwise great item into a far more situational one.

otherwise it's pretty great where it's at, though i think it'd be fun if maybe like 10% of the time it could replace small rock spawning from tinted rocks.

Good but overbalanced by being Secret-exclusive, something Repentance loves a little too much; I think balancing an item by doing that basically makes it so that the item doesn't exist in 99.9% of runs, which is not a fun way to do it. It's especially tragic for something like this that must have some other synergies, finding it on the Womb 2 or later probably means that it will be almost irrelevant.

Rock Bottom is one of the more memorable items added to Repentance. However, it does fill the an uncomfortable space with items like Echo Chamber in that it's a little too easy to curbstomp the game with this and just one good synergy. I can easily grab a moderately common shop item like Red Stew in conjunction and get +21.6 damage up permanently. The same applies to so many Treasure Room items with built-in tradeoffs, time limits, conditions, etc.

A potentially more balanced approach would be to set your current stats as the new baseline, so that any stat downs can never lower your stats below the threshold it saves on pickup. That would would still be thematically appropriate, and it would still be fantastic with items like the D8 or Data Miner to avoid going into a stat-down death spiral. The issue there is that it has a higher risk of doing absolutely nothing for you in any given run, rendering it a wasted Secret Room item if you don't acquire anything that would have pushed your stats below its saved threshold.

I feel like... It's fine if you get it before you pick up soy milk or the item that gives you a ton of temporary damage. Otherwise... Meh?

You know, I take that back. It makes data miner actually usable.

I'll never get this, J&E can get fucked. It's fine though, I recently found Sausage in a Secret Room, that was plenty of excitement for me.

this item is just annoying. i've seen it three times and only once it actually mattered in any way other than preserving the stats from an empress card. this was just made for build showcases on youtube that are nigh impossible to ever see in a normal run and just clogs up the secret room pool. C

Am I crazy or did this item reduce your stats to their base values when picked up in Antibirth?

One of the best items in the game

Sadly it's way too rare but it's understandable

You're basically guaranteed to get good stats out of it via tarot cards or pills at bare minimum and breakage is extremely likely if you get it early.

Unfortunately, I've only seen it twice since unlocking it. Once in a doomed tainted Keeper run, once in a tainted Jacob run. It's one of a couple of new S tier secret room items that probably make secret rooms the second best to generate items in when you have the means to do so (after angel/devil rooms).

Apparently pretty good although the one time I found it I didn't find any items that synergize with it, it's a neat concept but it's a useless item by itself

Best synergy item, quite rare tho

Rock good, Unlock bad

This item is honestly up there as one of the best in the game

It has no DIRECT synergies (like Brinstone + Mom’s Knife, Dr. Fetus + Spoon Bender, etc) but the fact that it makes C, D-tier items and even already great A or S-tier items better by getting rid of the downside is amazing

Rock Bottom’s unlock is 100% worth the difficulty, too. In fact, of Jacob and Esau’s unlocks, I’d say it’s arguably one of the easier ones, which adds to how much I love this item.

Easy S-tier

I'd like to thank this item for allowing me to unlock Godhead. Lusty Blood and Epiphoria combo too OP.

Didn't unlock the item yet so I wonder, how does it work with False PHD and stat down pills? Do you srill get the dmg up?

O. P