Tarnished Isaac

Tarnished Isaac is the first character from the Epiphany mod that was released as Wave 1, being the third iteration of Isaac. He is unlocked by bombing the first floor's Treasure Room item as Tainted Isaac, then taking the Blighted Photo that will spawn to Depths 2's Strange Door and lastly touching the Child's Drawing that will replace the usual Dad's Note.

Gameplay

Similar to Tainted Isaac, Tarnished Isaac has a limited inventory and comes with Blighted Dice as his pocket item. He spawns with 4 slots (excluding Birthright and quest items), that can increase by consuming Blight.

On use, Blighted Dice removes the currently selected inventory item and spawns two pedestal items from the same item pools the original item can be found in, from which only one can be taken. Additionally, the two items can be of higher or lower quality than the original.

After being used, Blighted Dice turns into Broken Dice. This item has 6 charges and will turn back into Blighted Dice once filled. While Tarnished Isaac has Broken Dice, any item picked up will instead be consumed by the Broken Dice to turn it back into Blighted Dice, but it can be prevented by simply charging Broken Dice back into Blighted Dice with batteries or by completing rooms. Tarnished Isaac can also recharge Broken Dice by consuming one of the items currently in his inventory.

Tarnished Isaac is unique in the way that his items passively suffer from Rot. After completing a room, the earliest item with quality 3 or 4 will have a little bit of Rot added to it, if there exists any; otherwise, the earliest item with any quality will do. Once it reaches its maximum level, the item will turn into Blight and become useless, losing all of its effects while still taking inventory space. Tarnished Isaac can use his Blighted Dice to purge the Blight, removing the item while also gaining a new passive slot in his inventory: using Blighted Dice like this does not cost any charges, but fully recharges the Dice instead. It also boosts the next use of Blighted Dice, preventing the two items spawned from it from dropping in quality in the process.

Strategy

Tarnished Isaac's gameplay revolves primarily around properly managing the Blighted Dice and its charges. Because it consumes items to recharge itself, it is important to keep it fully charged to avoid being unable to pick up important items (such as an Angel or Devil Deal). The best practice would be to pay attention to how many uncleared rooms, batteries or even unwanted items are available, to fix the dice in time.

Because of the Rot, loss of items is inevitable but it does pay off sacrificing an item in order to gain more space for other items. Tarnished Isaac is good at getting high quality items, even more so than his regular or Tainted counterparts; it is also important to be aware of how long it will take for the next item to Rot, and it might be worthwhile to skip a few rooms to delay the Rot and keep the item for a while longer, instead of gaining an inventory space which will not be immediately used. It might also be worth it to complete every room early game to get as many inventory slots as possible, maximizing the number of items one can hold at once. It is also worth noting that consuming an item to recharge Broken Dice into Blighted Dice will speed up the current Rot by adding a few levels of progress to it, which can be both good and bad depending on the situation.

As with Tainted Isaac, items giving permanent stat boosts such as Candy Heart or any HP UPs are very useful, as they allow the player to keep their bonuses even after swapping the item out for another. This does not apply to Keeper's Sack, which makes Isaac lose the gained stats if the item is lost.

Items belonging to multiple pools such as Pentagram can be valuable too, as these items can reroll into either of the item pools the item can come from, similarly to Tarnished Eden.

Rerolling into HP ups and items that drop pickups with Blighted Dice will not grant health or consumables upon collection.

Items that contribute to transformations will still count towards their respective transformation if dropped or consumed: this can make cycling certain pools with Blighted Dice for their transformations worthwhile.

Interactions

Birthright: Better options - Items created by blighted dice can have much higher jumps in quality.
Golden Items - The second copy of a golden passive item picked up will not count for the inventory limitation, like a quest item.

Unlocks

Mother's Shadow - Defeat Isaac, ???, Satan, and The Lamb as Tarnished Isaac

Dice Machine - Defeat Mega Satan as Tarnished Isaac

Essence of Isaac - Defeat Hush and Boss Rush as Tarnished Isaac

! Card - Defeat Ultra Greedier as Tarnished Isaac

D5 - Defeat Delirium as Tarnished Isaac

Dad's Wallet - Defeat Mother as Tarnished Isaac

First Page - Defeat The Beast as Tarnished Isaac

Blighted Dice - Obtain all Hard Mode Completion Marks as Tarnished Isaac

Trailer

Trivia

Tarnished Isaac was previously unlocked by defeating Delirium as Tainted Isaac. This was changed in Wave 6.
On the official Steam Workshop page for the Epiphany mod, Tarnished Isaac is referred to as 'Sacrifice'.
- This title refers to Tarnished Isaac's playstyle of removing items from his inventory to obtain better ones, or in other words, sacrificing items for more items. This also relates to how Isaac's mother planned to kill him as a sacrifice demanded by the voice, as well as a reference to the biblical story of The Binding of Isaac, where Abraham planned to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on the mountain of Moriah.