Passive and active items
- Passive items (292) work as soon as you pick them up: stat boosts, extra or changed shots, orbiting helpers, revives and more. Your whole team shares them.
- Active items (58) sit in your active slot and are used with E or Space. You carry one at a time: picking up another swaps them and leaves the old one on the pedestal, so you can change your mind.
Active items recharge by clearing rooms. The number on an item is how many cleared rooms a full charge takes. A few, like Festival Ticket, have no charge at all.
Where items come from
| Source | How to get there | Items in pool |
|---|---|---|
| Treasure room | One per floor, needs a key | 285 |
| Shop | Pay with PokéDollars | 145 |
| Boss reward | Beat the floor boss | 109 |
| Darkrai deal | Violet rift after a boss, pay with max health | 28 |
| Celestial Room | Golden rift after a boss, free | 26 |
| Secret room | Hidden behind a wall, bomb it open | 26 |
Many items appear in more than one pool, which is why the numbers add up to more than 350.
Item tiers
Not every item can appear from the start. Stronger items unlock deeper in the run:
| Tier | Appears from | Active items in tier |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Floor 1 | 29 |
| Tier 2 | Floor 4 | 23 |
| Tier 3 | Floor 9 | 5 |
| Tier 4 | Floor 15 | 1 (Eon Ticket) |
Every point of luck brings these thresholds two floors earlier. Darkrai, Jirachi and secret room items have no floor limit, which is part of what makes rifts and secret rooms so valuable early on.
Some items are also locked until you unlock them through achievements or by beating bosses. See unlocks.
Best active items
| Item | Charge | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamax Candy | 2 rooms | Fires a giant piercing shot for ×10 damage |
| Eon Ticket | 2 rooms | Duplicates the items on the room’s pedestals, then is used up (tier 4) |
| Adventure Guide | 4 rooms | Hits every enemy in the room for ×8 your damage (minimum 25) |
| Max Repel | 4 rooms | Shields you from everything for 8 seconds |
| Clear Bell | 4 rooms | For 6 seconds, hits heal half a heart instead of hurting |
| Camping Gear | 4 rooms | Reveals the whole floor map, secret room included, and gives a soul heart |
| Galactic Key | 4 rooms | Teleports you to the secret room (or the treasure room if there is none) |
| Max Mushrooms | 5 rooms | ×1.5 damage for 8 seconds |
| Energy Root | 6 rooms | 6 seconds of invulnerability and speed; you damage what you touch |
| Full Restore | 10 rooms | Fully restores your health |
| Master Ball | 10 rooms | Captures any non-boss enemy, even at full health |
| Festival Ticket | None | A slot machine pull for 1 PokéDollar that can win pickups |
Dynamax Candy and Adventure Guide are the strongest picks for boss damage. Max Repel and Energy Root are the best panic buttons for the last phase of a hard boss.
Darkrai deals: the Distortion Room
Darkrai is PokéIsaac’s version of the devil deal. After a boss, a violet rift can open to his Distortion Room.
Price: each deal costs 1 or 2 heart containers (23 deals cost one, 5 cost two). On one-container deals he asks for 3 soul hearts instead 30% of the time. He will never sell you a deal that would kill you.
Making the rift appear:
| Condition | Effect on the chance |
|---|---|
| Base chance after a boss | 5% |
| The boss never hit you | +35% |
| No damage taken on the whole floor | Almost certain |
| You carry a deal item | +20% |
| You took a deal recently | Lower |
| Black Mane Hair | Opens after every boss |
Notable deals:
| Deal | Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Fluffy Tail | 2 containers | Leaves you at one heart, but revives you up to 9 times |
| Red Orb | 2 containers | Hits charge a meter that fires a piercing Hyper Beam (12 hits at ×2.8 damage) |
| Repeat Ball | 2 containers | A Ditto copies all your shots at 75% damage |
| Life Orb | 2 containers | +1.8 damage, −2 luck |
| Choice Band | 2 containers | +2 damage, slower fire rate |
| Soul Crystal | 1 container | Three soul hearts |
| Adventure Guide | 1 container | Active: ×8 damage to every enemy in the room |
| Crown Pass | 1 container | Fire 50% faster at one heart or less |
| Dusk Ball | 1 container | A Zubat hunts enemies and heals half a heart every 8 defeats |
Once per run there is a 10% chance Darkrai is enraged: no deals, just a fight (see bosses). Beating him drops a Charcoal.
Jirachi’s Celestial Room
A golden rift after a boss leads to Jirachi’s Celestial Room, where holy items are free. The catch: taking any Darkrai deal closes the Celestial Room for the rest of the run. Clean boss fights raise the chance of a rift either way. The Celestial Room only shows up while nobody has made a Darkrai deal: there is a 25% chance the first time a rift opens, or 50% if a Distortion Room already appeared and you made no deal. The HUD shows the current Darkrai and Jirachi rift chances (75% and 25% on arriving at floor 2 in one of our runs).
Darkrai or Jirachi? Deals are stronger and come with a price you feel for the rest of the run. Jirachi is free but you give up all future deals. A good rule: if your run is already strong and you have health to spare, deals push it further; if you are struggling, stay holy.
Weapons, companions and stacking
- Weapons replace how you shoot: Shock Drive, Chill Drive, Razor Fang, Leek, Jade Orb, Snowball, Colress Machine and Damp Rock among them. Modules such as Red Orb, Fame Checker and Casteliacone change a weapon’s behaviour.
- Companions from Balls follow you and shoot. You can have up to 3, or 5 with the Apricorn Box.
- Critical hits deal double damage.
- Damage stacks with diminishing returns: the first +3 damage counts in full, up to +8 counts half, and beyond that a quarter. Damage multipliers cap at ×2 in total.
Secret rooms
A cracked wall hides the secret room. Blow it open with a Voltorb (Q); your shots push a placed Voltorb, so you can nudge it into place. Inside you may find Kecleon’s black market, an altar with a treasure, a chest vault, a fainted Meowth, slot machines or loose loot.
Hearts, keys, bombs and PokéDollars
- Hearts: red hearts heal up to 12; soul hearts (up to 6) stack on top but cannot be healed; heart containers raise your maximum.
- Keys open the treasure room and locked chests.
- Voltorb bombs (Q) blow open cracked walls and secret rooms, and hurt enemies.
- PokéDollars drop from enemies and chests and are spent in the shop. Coin Case doubles them (up to 99), and Poké Radar makes enemies shiny so they drop coins.
How many items are in PokéIsaac?
350: 292 passive items and 58 active items, according to the developer's launch post and community data mining.
What does Darkrai do in PokéIsaac?
Darkrai is PokéIsaac's devil deal. A violet rift after a boss leads to his Distortion Room, where he sells strong items for 1 or 2 heart containers (or sometimes 3 soul hearts). Taking any deal closes Jirachi's Celestial Room for the rest of the run.
How do I make the Darkrai rift appear?
The base chance after a boss is 5%. Beating the boss without getting hit adds 35%, a whole floor without damage makes it almost certain, and carrying a deal item adds 20%. The Black Mane Hair item makes it open after every boss.
What is the Celestial Room?
Jirachi's room, reached through a golden rift after a boss. It offers holy items for free. It is closed for the rest of the run as soon as you take a Darkrai deal.