Tainted Magdalene

What you start with

The mechanics that actually govern this character.

• The gimmick in plain language: your health constantly leaks, and touching enemies is your best attack. Anything above 2 red hearts drains half a heart every 10 seconds and trails red creep. Her first two red containers, rotten hearts and eternal hearts never leak; everything else does, including soul and black hearts, which drain down to half a soul heart.
• She gets an automatic melee hug on any enemy that touches her. It deals 6x damage, counts as melee for synergy purposes like The Forgotten's bone club, and every enemy killed by the hug drops a guaranteed half red heart.
• Non-hug kills also have a chance to drop a half red heart, but those flicker and vanish after 2 seconds. She receives double healing from every source except heart pickups themselves, and one Rotten Heart pickup gives two rotten hearts.
• Stats: 2 filled plus 2 empty containers, damage x0.75 (the lowest base damage in the game), Yum Heart in the pocket slot. Birthright adds a third non-leaking red heart, which also moves the threshold for what counts as deal-chance damage. Leaking hearts of any colour protect Devil and Angel Room chance; only non-leaky red heart damage costs you a deal.

How to play them

• Charge groups of weak enemies on purpose. You take contact damage but you gain invincibility frames from it, and during those frames you can keep hugging, so a room full of fragile enemies is a net health GAIN.
• Her damage multiplier is 0.75, the worst in the game. Damage-up items are the highest priority pick in every room; a big damage number turns the hug into a one-shot.
• Do not hoard soul and black hearts. They leak like everything else, and your leaky red hearts already protect deal chance, so they are strictly worse than red for her.
• Backtrack for hearts before leaving a floor and blow up Blood Donation Machines - your health bar is a consumable and unspent heart drops are wasted.
• She is strong against swarms and weak against single big targets. Delirium, Hush and any low-add boss just drains her down to her two permanent hearts, so plan for a real ranged build by Womb.
• Curse of the Unknown is worse for her than for anyone. If it hits, watch the red creep: she stops producing it the moment her leaky hearts are gone, which is your only health readout.
• Ace cards convert the disappearing half hearts into permanent consumables. Clear a big room with the hug, then play an Ace.

Items to hunt for

Strong on this character specifically, not just strong.

• Habit plus The Wafer: Yum Heart costs two hearts of damage to charge and heals two, and The Wafer halves incoming damage, so she becomes effectively immortal. Habit plus Car Battery does the same at a four-heart charge if your max health is high enough.
• Isaac's Heart: removes contact damage from her body entirely, so she can hug forever at no cost. The best defensive item on her.
• Adrenaline: her extra containers are permanently empty by design, so she runs near-max Adrenaline damage almost all the time.
• Any shield or invulnerability - Gnawed Leaf, Taurus, Book of Shadows, Aries. Aries in particular lets her hug at speed without taking contact damage, and the Blind Rage trinket lengthens the i-frame window so you get more hugs per hit.
• Bozo: the rainbow poop it spawns is destroyed by her own melee, refilling every red container, and with many containers you can trigger it constantly.
• Spirit Sword: mechanically a strict upgrade to the hug (similar output, no damage taken) and the swings also collect the dropped red hearts for you.
• On-hit payoff items, which trigger constantly on her - Bloody Lust, Bloody Gust, Fanny Pack, Piggy Bank, Old Bandage, Shard of Glass, It Hurts, Varicose Veins, Cambion Conception, Giant Cell, Vengeful Spirit - plus the half-heart economy upgrades: Maggy's Bow (each half heals a full heart), Mom's Locket (halves become fulls), Magneto (pulls them in), Gimpy (non-hug kills drop non-vanishing halves), and Dead Eye, whose multiplier never resets because melee cannot miss.

Traps to refuse

Picks that are neutral or good elsewhere and bad here.

• Abaddon and Brittle Bones: both strip her red containers. Black hearts drain and are hard to replace; six bone hearts leave her with no permanent fallback health. Dead Cat has the same problem, cutting her to one red heart.
• E. Coli, Flush!, Mom's Heels and the Swallowed M80 trinket: all four kill or transform the enemy before the hug lands, cancelling the guaranteed half-heart drop.
• Rotten hearts in bulk are a trap - one pickup gives two, and there is a known 1.7.9 bug where holding more than 4 stops bone/soul/black drain but starts draining your permanent red hearts instead.
• Crown Of Light, Dark Prince's Crown and Paschal Candle essentially never activate, because full-health and single-heart states are both unsustainable for her.
• Lost Soul dies within seconds of the floor starting given how she plays; Lil Dumpy blocks your first melee in each room; 2Spooky fears enemies away from you, which is the opposite of what you want.

Cheese and techniques

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

• Sharp Plug infinite, works on 1.7.9 and was patched in Repentance+: Sharp Plug costs two hearts to charge and Yum Heart heals two full red hearts, so the loop is net-zero HP, the decay pauses while you do it, and the invincibility frames overlap into effectively permanent immunity. You cannot fire tears during the loop but the hug still kills. On Repentance+ bleeding hearts only give half charge and the loop needs Habit or Car Battery - that nerf does not apply to you.
• Sharp Plug plus Habit gives infinite charge for any other active; Sharp Plug plus Virgo is a free on-demand Book of Shadows; Sharp Plug plus Car Battery is infinite red health regen. All three are 1.7.9-legal.
• The Sharp Plug loop also repeatedly triggers on-damage and health-threshold items - Piggy Bank, Cracked Orb, and the half-heart triggers on The Polaroid and The Negative.
• IV Bag plus Habit: trade surplus red health for coins, refill with Yum Heart, forever. Time IV Bag uses to give yourself i-frames for a free charge into a pack of enemies.
• The Jar stores the vanishing half hearts and dumps them out later as permanent hearts; Jera also stops half hearts vanishing (the wiki notes it is unclear whether that is intended). Note the PC advice about rebinding the pill key for the Sharp Plug loop does not apply - the PS5 pocket-item button is already fine.

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.
• Her 7: any one of Isaac / ??? / Satan / The Lamb gives Holy Crown; either Boss Rush OR Hush gives Soul of Magdalene; Mega Satan gives Queen of Hearts; Ultra Greedier gives VI - The Lovers?; Delirium gives Hypercoagulation; Mother gives the Mother's Kiss trinket; The Beast gives Belly Jelly.
• Boss Rush is the friendliest timed mark for her because it is wall-to-wall enemies to hug, and Strange Key removes the Blue Womb time limit so you can take Hush slowly on the same run.
• Delirium is her hardest mark by a wide margin - it summons few adds, so she has no way to heal mid-fight. Bring Yum Heart charge items (4.5 Volt, Habit) specifically for that run.