Worst Items in the Binding of Isaac

The Top Ten
1 Butter Bean

Trash. Just a little knockback and no damage. The only time it could ever be useful would be against fistula or envy, both of which are easy.

2 The Poop

This item could be used with a bomb to build a bridge across a one-tile gap to grab a few pickups or an item from a gold chest.

3 Clicker

If you are trying to go for a specific unlock, stay away from this item at ALL COSTS. Or better yet, just grab it to remove it from the rest of the run and regrab the active item you were ALREADY holding. I swear, active items always show up when the player is already holding an active. If you find the NO! trinket, grab it immediately to prevent this item from appearing altogether.

Why would you ever use this!? Normally you start a run as a particular character because you want to finish it with them and unlock something! And trying to get far as a good character and using clicker once you have good items is incredibly unreliable, since the chance of clicker even appearing is (thankfully) low, and the chance that you would even transform into the character you want to is also low. Incredibly flawed, and is a huge mistake. Even butter bean is better.

4 Abel

The worst familiar in the whole game. First of all, it flies around on the opposite side of the room, mirroring your moves, and firing towards the centre of the room. Your shots will rarely ever hit anything, plus it has very short range, damage and shot speed, with no special effects that will help in any possible way. Give it the ability to fire the exact same tears as Isaac at the same rate like Incubus does, but I guess we're stuck with this garbage for now...

Abel is just terrible. As said previously, nothing can be hit, and there's no perks to it. Plus, in greed mode, it has a chance to spawn, reducing the quality of the run by not giving a better item.

5 Breath of Life

An item that gives invincibility unlimited times sounds good, but breath of life proves that something that would sound good can actually be awful. It takes about 6 seconds to actually activate the invincibility frames, and it lasts less than a second. After that you have to wait another 6 seconds until it can even start the 6 second charge again. And if you over hold the charge button, you will take damage. And it would not be of any use in a fight, since you will need to hold the charge button, which would force you to focus on its charge time, while the enemy can shoot at you all it wants, while your shots probably won't land many hits since you won't even be focusing on the fight.

6 D10

Rerolls all enemies in the current room. Seems like it could be useful, but then you realise that it rerolls them into almost any enemy, even ones only found several chapters later. You might think it could come in handy later, but it's still too unpredictable and eventually mainly boss and midbosses spawn, which can't be rerolled. And even in thoughts situations where it could be useful, it still doesn't do too much, and will make barely any impact on the game.

7 Dataminer

Having a random tear affect for the rest of the room sounds good, and giving you a chance to permanently raise a random stat is also nice. Dataminer absolutely RUINS IT. It takes 4 rooms to recharge, so 3/4 rooms you won't even have any special effects, the enemies also have their sprites rotated, which makes them a nightmare to hit, and it gets super confusing. But the worst part is that it has a chance to LOWER your stats. And it's not even like it has a very small chance of happening. It has a 50/50 chance to raise or lower stats. And it might seem like it would help balance it out, it's not uncommon that you'll end up with a very weak damage stat, while your range is high enough that it couldn't possibly be anymore useful. It's not worth the risk. Why? Because it has practically no benefits that could be useful in the long term.

8 Portable Slot

Having a slot machine to take with you sounds OK, being able to generate hearts during a tough fight, but it is actually a pretty damn stupid idea. Whenever you lose at the portable slot (which is highly likely) will cause you to stop firing for a few seconds, which could mean the difference between loss and victory in a difficult fight. And unlike a regular slot can't just blow it up. And it will never drop a dollar either. And if that wasn't enough, it will shred through your coins, often giving you nothing more than a bomb or key.

9 The Wiz

Only take this item if you have Tiny Planet or Ludovico Technique... both of which are also bad in their own right!

10 Cursed Eye

Charge shots in general (except Brimstone ❤️) are kind of blah. But Cursed Eye is the worst of them all. When the item fully charges up, it only fires a line of tears. Monstro's Lung fires a huge burst of tears, but Cursed Eye fires far less of a volume of projectiles when fully charged up. Unlike Monstro's Lung, it cannot be stacked up with itself. And when you get hit while charging up, you teleport to a different room. If his happens in a Boss room, good luck fighting the boss all over again!

This item made the top 10 on the most recent top 10 worst items list.

The Contenders
11 Bob's Brain

Bob's brain can sometimes be helpful to destroy a bunch of enemies. However, using the item is basically SUICIDE. If you play with characters like the Lost, Azazel, The Forgotten, or others, you have limited hearts and you might fire too close to you by accident. Oh actually, it's something certain. You probably will forget about it and when it spawns, you will die or lose hearts.

Have fun blowing yourself up in the face every now and then!

12 Glass Cannon

Glass cannon takes away all your hearts except for half of one. You can then fire powerful shots every few seconds. Given that it means that a single hit will kill you (unless you have holy mantle), it would have to pretty damn powerful to make up for it. You would be wrong. It is nothing special, and even it were that powerful, it wouldn't be worth it, since it means you are forced not to take damage. And when you finally get a few soul hearts for safety, using it again will take them all away!

13 Dead Cat

This item reduces your main health to 1. This item is not much of a problem if you are playing as a character that can have red hearts, and you have a bunch of soul hearts in your health gauge. And sure, this item does contribute to the "Guppy!" transformation. But if you do not have any soul hearts in your health gauge, or play as a character that operates solely on soul hearts, then your run is compromised the moment you pick this up, especially since the 4th chapter and beyond has every enemy deal a full heart of damage (unless you have the Wafer).

14 Rules Card

Thanks for the "hints" the only use it had was to discover easter egg seeds which now are all just on the wiki.

That is not even an item, but rather, a card pickup. But that said, it does not have an actual effect upon use.

15 The Ludovico Technique

This item needs a buff. They should make it so that the player can still fire tears while controlling the floating Ludovico tear. That way, the player can alternate between actively shooting tears and targeting enemies from afar while standing behind rocks.

Ludovico Technique is just BORING to use. You control a single floating tear, and it moves soooooo slooowww. But at least the damage ticking rate depends on the Tears stat, so a high Tears stat can mean high DPS. But if your Shot Speed is abysmal, then your run is ruined.

16 Strange Attractor

Being able to bring enemies towards your tears is really good!...If you happen to have Ludovico technique, Dr or epic fetus. Otherwise it is suicide. Certain enemies will be flung towards you at rapid speeds, and overall, it will do barely anymore damage. It will kill you, and the only reason that this isn't higher up is because it has a few good synergies, and they all have much better synergies that will be lots more useful.

17 The Bean
18 Experimental Treatment

Picking up Experimental Treatment can either be good or bad. In the best case scenario, you will get a decent Damage Up and Tears Up, and only a mild Spped Down, Luck Down, or Range Down. In the worst case scenario, your Damage and Tears stats would go down like the Titanic while only your Range stat, which is only a dump stat at best, flies up to the roof. Swinging weapons in particular are crippled by a high Range stat, as it does not make the swing bigger, but instead, displaces the swing hitbox itself by a large amount, making it harder to hit anything.

19 Missing No.

It rerolls all your items. Now if you have like 20 lunches and they get rerolled into god head that will get rerolled every floor that passes

All of your passive items reroll every floor. Essentially budget Tainted Eden in a single item.

20 Epic Fetus

Epic Fetus? More like CRAPpic Fetus! This item takes too long to damage any enemies in the room! Not to mention all of the synergies it deletes, and the fact that it STILL exists in the Secret Room item pool! At Quality 4, no less! This item deserves Quality 3 at most.

1. When you release the reticle, the air strike takes forever to come down.
2. This item overrides pretty much the whole database of items in the game, other than bomb upgrades and tear multipliers, like 20/20, the Inner Eye, etc.
3. Why is this item in the Secret Room item pool?!

21 Boom!
22 Eye of Greed

This item makes you waste your money by firing a coin tear every 15 shots. This coin tear will most likely miss and be gone forever. And with Soy Milk, you fire coin tears just about every second, wasting even more money.

23 Guppy’s Hairball

At least it contributes to the "Guppy!" transformation.

24 Proptosis
25 Nancy Bombs
8Load More
PSearch List