Tainted Azazel

What you start with

The mechanics that actually govern this character.

• 3 black hearts, damage 3.5 with a x1.50 multiplier, tears x1/3, range 6.50, speed 1.00. Unlike normal Azazel his wings are clipped, so he does NOT start with flight.
• His Brimstone is a room-long but very thin beam that ticks for only 0.5x damage and has a shorter duration than the real item.
• Starting a Brimstone charge auto-fires a Hemoptysis sneeze: a short-range, high-knockback blood spray dealing 1.5x damage that also reflects projectiles. Landing the sneeze on an enemy halves the remaining Brimstone charge time.
• Sneezed enemies gain a Brimstone Curse for about 5 seconds: your beam then deals full damage plus +3 flat after multipliers instead of half, and a cursed enemy killed by the beam explodes and spreads the curse to neighbours. The curse ignores boss status-effect immunity cooldowns, so it can be reapplied to bosses infinitely.

How to play them

• The gimmick in plain language: you have two attacks that only work together. The sneeze marks; the beam kills marked things. Beaming an unmarked enemy is chip damage at half rate, so every fight is sneeze first, beam second.
• The loop: get into sneeze range, start the charge (the sneeze fires automatically), let it connect so the charge time is cut in half, then release the beam into a cursed target and let the explosion curse everything around it.
• Knockback is real damage. Enemies slammed into a wall or rock take 10 + 2 x (floor - 1) extra and deal that same damage to anything they collide with, so sneezing into a wall is often better than sneezing into open floor.
• No flight is the biggest early-run problem. Pits are walls for you, and Azazel players habitually forget this. Any flight item is worth more than usual.
• A good run feels like a rhythm: tap-in, sneeze, back off, beam, repeat. A bad run is one where you keep whiffing the sneeze and are stuck doing half damage with x1/3 tears, which is genuinely lethal on Depths.
• The curse also applies to anything a cursed enemy spawns. Curse Mom's Heart before it spawns its wave and the wave arrives pre-cursed.
• 3 black hearts is your whole health bar and there are no containers to gain. Devil deals are effectively free health for you, so take them.

Items to hunt for

Strong on this character specifically, not just strong.

• Brimstone the item: upgrades the thin beam to a real one and the sneeze bonus climbs to x2 damage plus +3 flat. Straight-up character fix.
• Chocolate Milk: a landed sneeze already halves the charge, so with Chocolate Milk you can release an effectively instant double-damage beam.
• Technology: coils electricity around the thin beam and applies a x1.5 damage multiplier to it.
• Any Brimstone-family item benefits from the curse's x2 +3 bonus: Athame, Maw Of The Void, Lil Brimstone, Lil Abaddon, Head of Krampus, Trisagion, Brimstone Bombs, Shoop da Whoop!, Mega Blast.
• Gello: it sneezes and fires brimstone on its own while you charge, so it can curse a target at range and you get to land more than one beam on the same cursed enemy.
• Ipecac: sneezes cannot hurt you, so every sneeze becomes a large explosion, and it doubles as free door and rock removal.
• Birthright doubles the size of the Hemoptysis sneeze (it does not raise its damage). You already have Birthright unlocked, so a shop copy is a real pickup here.

Traps to refuse

Picks that are neutral or good elsewhere and bad here.

• Mom's Knife, Haemolacria and Dr. Fetus each override BOTH Hemoptysis and Brimstone, deleting the entire character. You have Mom's Knife unlocked, so this trap is live in your pools.
• Spirit Sword also overrides both, though the sword swings do hit harder; it is a playstyle wipe rather than a brick.
• Tech X overrides Hemoptysis but fires thin Brimstone rings without the 0.5x penalty. Not a brick, but you lose the curse engine.
• 2Spooky: fear drives enemies out of the very short sneeze range you need them in.
• Pop!: gutted effective range and the eyeballs deal reduced damage while getting no benefit from the curse.

Cheese and techniques

Verified against 1.7.9 on console — anything patched, PC-only or Repentance+ only is called out rather than listed.

• Sneeze-first is a fire-rate doubler, not a flourish. Hitting an enemy with the sneeze cuts remaining charge in half, so a good player fires roughly twice as often as a bad one on the same character.
• Crowd control by explosion: in a pack, curse one enemy, then beam-kill the WEAKEST cursed target first. The explosion damages and curses the rest, and you get a chain rather than a queue.
• Bosses have no status-immunity cooldown against this curse. Sneeze between every single beam on Mother, Delirium and The Beast rather than treating it as a one-time debuff.
• Doctor's Remote shoots thin Brimstone beams out of the rocket explosion; Epic Fetus does not do this. If you have to choose, Doctor's Remote is the one that stacks with your kit.
• Console reality check: no debug console and no Repentogon on PS5, so there is no item-injection or restart-scumming beyond quitting to the menu and rolling a new run.

Getting the marks

• 7 secrets, not 14. One secret covers all four main-path endings together: Isaac, ???, Satan and The Lamb collectively unlock the Wicked Crown trinket, so you only need the first of them for the unlock, but all four marks still have to be filled for the note.
• The rest: Mega Satan gives Hell Game, Boss Rush OR Hush gives Soul of Azazel (one secret covers both marks), Greedier gives the XV - The Devil? card, Delirium gives Hemoptysis, Mother gives Azazel's Stump, The Beast gives Azazel's Rage.
• Mom's Heart and normal Greed mode grant no secret at all for tainted characters, and there is no per-character reward for filling every hard-mode mark. Both marks still have to be earned for the completed note and for Death Certificate.
• Earning a mark on Hard mode fills both the normal and hard version, so there is no reason to do a tainted run on Normal.