Tainted ???

What you start with

The mechanics that actually govern this character.

• The gimmick in plain language: you have no bombs, you have poops. Bomb pickups become poop pickups and the bomb counter becomes a poop counter. Each poop is a specific type drawn in a seeded order, and you can hold 10 total - 9 in the counter plus 1 stored in the Hold active. Birthright raises the counter to 29.
• Hold stores your leftmost poop for later and cycles to the next one, which is how you save a bomb-poop or a white poop for when you need it. Poops also drop from killed enemies and from you taking damage; small poops give 1, large poops give 3, and thrown poops deal 15 damage on impact.
• The important types: Bomb poop explodes 1.5s after being produced whether you throw it or not and uses most bomb synergies except Mr. Mega, Rocket in a Jar, Ring Cap and Short Fuse. White poop is a portable Hallowed Ground whose aura you also gain while holding it. Stinky poop and Fart make explosive toxic clouds; Black poop makes slowing creep and confuses on destruction; Flaming poop leaves a shot-blocking fire; Corn poop spawns blue flies.
• Brown Creep is the real build: standing on it gives +1 damage and +1.5 fire rate and it deals 1.5x your damage per tick to enemies. Its effects change with what touches it - Black adds slowing, Stinky adds poison, Flaming adds Fire Mind, White triples fire rate and damage and adds homing, and Stone poop locks every connected effect in even after the source poops die. Stats: 3 soul hearts, 3 poops, speed 0.90, tears -0.35.

How to play them

• The thing that kills newcomers is hoarding poops. He generates them constantly by dealing damage, especially in boss fights, so spend them freely in normal rooms and only bank the good types.
• Build the creep trail and stand in it. Chaining a White poop onto Brown Creep before a boss fight is the single strongest thing he can do, and Stone poop anchors the trail so the effects survive.
• Save at least one bomb poop per floor for tinted rocks and Secret Rooms, or take a rock-breaking item so you never have to.
• Improvised bombs: drop a Stinky poop or a fart next to what you want destroyed, then throw a Flaming poop at the cloud for a 15-damage explosion. Move immediately, it is very easy to catch yourself.
• Almost anything fire-like ignites your gas clouds: Fire Places, Candlers, Fire Worms, Revenants, and your own The Candle, Ghost Pepper or Bird's Eye. Urn of Souls is the notable exception.
• His tears stat is dreadful, so tears-up items like Torn Photo are worth more than usual, and homing tears matter a lot because they let you keep the Brown Creep bonus without needing to aim while standing in it.
• In Greed Mode, finish all waves without leaving the main room. Exiting deletes every poop and every creep trail you have laid.

Items to hunt for

Strong on this character specifically, not just strong.

• Birthright: 29-poop capacity, which turns him from resource-starved to resource-rich.
• Rock Bottom: permanently locks in the stat boosts from standing in Brown Creep and inside the White poop aura. Extremely strong on him.
• Dirty Mind: breaking your own poops spawns Dip familiars, so you build an army for free out of a resource you already produce.
• Tech.5: patches his terrible fire rate with a laser roughly 2.5 times a second, without needing to aim precisely near your poops.
• The Candle or Red Candle: ignite gas on demand from a safe distance, so you stop burning bomb poops on detonation. Mom's Bracelet is the companion pick - it lets you lift an already-placed poop and reposition it, which is how you put a white poop where you actually want to fight.
• Bob's Rotten Head, Mr. Boom or Notched Axe: any of these frees you from spending bomb poops on tinted rocks and Secret Rooms. Remote Detonator turns Explosive Diarrhea from a liability into controlled damage.
• Trinkets that monetise the resource he generates constantly: Petrified Poop (note it only drops pickups from normal and corny poops), Butt Penny, Burnt Penny, Lil Larva, Gigante Bean and Lost Cork.

Traps to refuse

Picks that are neutral or good elsewhere and bad here.

• Anything that adds red hearts to the health bar - Yum Heart, Yuck Heart, full-health pills - is dead on him. Eternal hearts are still fine and become a soul heart at floor end, so Prayer Card is good.
• Mom's Eye, Marked, The Wiz and Tiny Planet: any item that makes you fire in extra directions or takes control of your aim will smash your own corny and white poops. Marked is worst because the fire rate increase almost guarantees an immediate break. Holy Water destroys poops as soon as they are thrown.
• Bird's Eye and Ghost Pepper are dangerous specifically because farting always spawns fire, so ignition is guaranteed and often unavoidable. The only reliably safe fart is one done while moving continuously in one direction.
• Finger! damages your special poops whenever it points at them, so you end up policing your own facing; Book of Virtues wisps can break them too if you are careless.
• Blood Donation Machines and Devil Beggars are a bad trade for him since soul heart health is much harder to replace. Guppy's Paw is unusable but should still be touched and swapped back for Guppy transformation credit.

Cheese and techniques

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

• Blue and purple Fire Places can be blown up by throwing a Stinky poop at them for a chance at soul hearts. Do not do this next to an Angel statue unless you want to fight the angel.
• White poop plus Brown Creep triples fire rate and damage and adds homing while you stand on it. Deliberately building that patch before a boss is his strongest single play.
• Stone poop is the anchor: as long as one poop remains on a creep trail, every effect previously connected to that trail persists, and Stone poop is very hard for enemies to destroy.
• Flaming poop can destroy a Shopkeeper by walking into him or throwing it at him, but only in the room where it is used - the flame goes out on a room change. Gnawed Leaf also lets poops held over his head keep damaging enemies while he is stone-invulnerable.
• Bombs Are Key pills behave oddly on 1.7.9 and give him actual invisible bombs he can feed to Bomb Bums (assuming he had keys first). This was changed later so it works on your version, but the count is invisible - treat it as a gimmick, not a plan.

Getting the marks

• 7 secrets, not 14. No unlock for Mom's Heart, none for normal Greed Mode, and no Hard-mode-sheet co-op baby.
• His 7: any one of Isaac / ??? / Satan / The Lamb gives the Dingle Berry trinket; either Boss Rush OR Hush gives Soul of ???; Mega Satan gives Charming Poop; Ultra Greedier gives IV - The Emperor?; Delirium gives IBS; Mother gives Ring Cap; The Beast gives The Swarm.
• Charming Poop is the only poop type in the game that has to be unlocked and it comes from his Mega Satan mark, so do that one early if you enjoy the character.
• Greed Mode is awkward because poops and creep vanish on leaving the room, so bank Ultra Greedier on a run where you have a real tears build rather than a poop build.