Tainted Jacob

What you start with

The mechanics that actually govern this character.

• 3 red heart containers, tears +0.277, and Anima Sola in the pocket slot: 15-second recharge, chains the nearest enemy for 5 seconds, and always prioritises Dark Esau when he is present.
• Dark Esau spawns 20 to 40 seconds after you enter each floor and hunts you for the whole floor. He cannot be damaged or killed, but he blocks enemy projectiles.
• If Dark Esau touches you, you become functionally The Lost - with no Holy Mantle - for the rest of the floor. Reaching the next floor restores your living body. An Eternal Heart in the last slot blocks one hit like a Holy Card while you are in Lost form.
• His damage output is enormous and worth knowing: the spawn ring is 12 rings of 8 flames at 6 damage each (6 to 576 total depending on how close an enemy is), contact is 30 damage per tick (60/sec), and his charge trail is an extra 10 per tick with Burning (about 300/sec) and IGNORES boss armor.

How to play them

• The gimmick in plain language: an unkillable stalker follows you all game, and your pocket item is a chain that both protects you from him and turns him into your best weapon. You manage distance, not damage.
• The most important dodging rule: Dark Esau only charges when you are inside his fixed follow distance AND on his cardinal line of sight. He will not charge if you are positioned diagonally from him, even if you stand completely still. Learn to hold a diagonal.
• His position is tracked against the floor layout, not the room, so he stays where you left him. Chain him in one room, walk two rooms away, and you have bought real time.
• Entering a room cancels a charge in progress and frees him from Anima Sola. That also means walking through a door where he is standing can drop you straight into him - check the doorway.
• Anima Sola used in a room with no enemies summons him immediately without consuming the charge, and releasing him early also does not consume a charge. That is the offensive engine, not a bug.
• Offensively, chain him, position yourself so the line from him to you passes through a boss, and release. Because the charge ignores boss armor it stays relevant into the endgame, and it one- or two-shots most early bosses outright.
• The first few seconds of every floor are Esau-free. Use them to scout, and use high speed or teleports to keep him permanently behind you.

Items to hunt for

Strong on this character specifically, not just strong.

• 9 Volt: halves Anima Sola's charge time, which is the biggest single control upgrade available. The Battery banks a second charge on top of that.
• Any shield or invulnerability blocks his touch effect entirely, not merely the damage: Holy Mantle, Book of Shadows, Gnawed Leaf, Unicorn Stump, Sigil of Baphomet, Belly Jelly and Infamy all work. Gnawed Leaf in particular lets you stand still and let Dark Esau do the killing.
• Punching Bag: when Dark Esau spawns he aggros to whichever of Punching Bag or Jacob is closer, and as long as you never use Anima Sola he never re-targets you for the rest of that floor.
• Stop Watch: slows Dark Esau, which makes outrunning and out-positioning him nearly free.
• Flight and speed above everything else. Pits and rocks are what actually get you caught - Guppy, Beelzebub, Seraphim and Leviathan transformations, or Fate, Dead Dove and Lord of the Pit.
• Glowing Hourglass: returns you to your living body if Dark Esau turned you into The Lost in the current room. Ventricle Razor also interrupts his charge instantly when you enter a portal.
• Perfection trinket is NOT lost when Dark Esau hits you, which makes +10 luck unusually safe on a character who gets touched regularly. Athame, Bone Spurs and Sigil of Baphomet all trigger off Dark Esau's kills.

Traps to refuse

Picks that are neutral or good elsewhere and bad here.

• Birthright is a genuine trap here, and it is the one item you already have unlocked. It splits Dark Esau into two, and although the recharge drops to 10 seconds and the chain lasts 6.67 seconds, the two Esaus charge simultaneously from different angles and your chance of being clipped goes up substantially.
• Book of Virtues: the wisps generated by Anima Sola target the invincible Dark Esau and throw themselves away on him.
• Vasculitis: enemies Dark Esau kills release fire tears, and since he kills things far from you at unpredictable angles, this causes accidental damage regularly.
• Dead Cat: if you die while in Lost form with it, you never get your body back for the rest of the run.
• Heartbreak, Magic Skin and the VI - The Lovers? card still add broken heart containers even while you are in Lost form, so being a ghost is not a safe window to take them.

Cheese and techniques

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

• Free Devil deals every floor: at the end of a floor that has a Devil Room, deliberately let Dark Esau touch you. In Lost form Devil items are free. Satanic Bible or the Devil's Crown trinket turns this into a per-floor routine.
• Mines and Ashpit Knife Piece 2 route: intentionally get hit before the sequence. Lost form has flight in an area that normally strips all previously gained flight, so you can outrun Mother's Shadow and Dark Esau's out-of-sync charges. Clear the rest of the floor first, since you stay Lost until you reach the next floor.
• The same Lost form also skips the health cost of opening the Mausoleum or Gehenna door.
• Greed mode: Anima Sola is always fully charged at the start of a wave. Chain Dark Esau before the wave begins, then release him into the fresh spawn or into a champion. Releasing manually does not consume the charge, so you can immediately chain him again.
• Two status effects control him: eating a Paralysis pill stops him from charging entirely, and Fear makes him charge AWAY from you instead of toward you.

Getting the marks

• 7 secrets. Isaac, ???, Satan and The Lamb collectively unlock RC Remote. Mega Satan gives Golden Trinket, Boss Rush OR Hush gives Soul of Jacob and Esau, Greedier gives the XIX - The Sun and the Moon? card, Delirium gives Anima Sola, Mother gives Found Soul, The Beast gives Esau Jr.
• The Mother mark is the one to route deliberately, because the Knife Piece 2 sequence is where the intentional Lost-form flight trick pays off most.
• Mom's Heart and normal Greed give no secret for tainted characters; both marks still have to be filled for the completed note and for Death Certificate.
• Do everything on Hard - a hard mark also fills the normal one, and tainted characters get no separate all-hard-marks reward.