Move over, Isaac — Fiend and his buddies have got this one.note
Fiend Folio
is a content mod for The Binding of Isaac. Based on an earlier content mod called Devil's Harvest, it was released on December 1st, 2020 and could be considered a Gaiden Game focusing on the latter mod's main character, Fiend.
Some Isaac content mods are about all the other things in Christianity that vanilla didn't cover. Some are about the real horrors Magdalene O. Moriah inflicted on Isaac. Some are just plain mean to the boy.
Our friend Fiend, on the other hand, is studying up on all those weird new monsters in the Basement, and how best to kick their ugly asses. And it smells of fresh corn in here, all of a sudden...
Fiend Folio, as you may have guessed, is a content mod that focuses a little more on just spicing up the average Isaac run. Its primary focus, besides the Glass Cannon summoner Fiend, is the addition of an entire expansion's worth of enemies, bosses, and rooms to the game, as well as revamps to the visuals of each floor.
A remaster of the mod for Repentance, subtitled Reheated, with massively-increased numbers of content in all fronts the original covered plus some secrets and incorporation of more mods was released on August 19th, 2022. Besides the huge increase to content, it also introduces a second character named Golem, who plays by manipulating special rock-themed trinkets in a base underneath each floor.
Step on up, we got some tropes for ya!
- 420, Blaze It: In Reheated, if you wait in the starting room as Isaac until the clock hits 04:20, Isaac will pull out a joint and smoke a quick one.
- The Ace: Fiend is a hyper-competent (yet hyper-fragile) summoner who knows the Basement like the back of his hand and has the kind of arrogance that could only come from knowing he really is in control of most situations he finds himself in.
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: The mod's unique rooms for the Void play this trope up even more than vanilla, as objects are randomized in addition to the background.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Dwellers can use items Isaac uses, copying their effects. One noteworthy difference is when one uses Technology; when Isaac uses Technology, the laser beams instantly fire. To prevent cheap hits from an enemy that can instantly fire a laser with unlimited range, there is a delay with a visual and audio cue just before the laser is fired. Some other laser attacks in the mod have similar delays.
- Ascended Glitch: Sort of. When Clutch was added to Repentance, the Clickety Clash enemies started to randomly turn rocks purple. This bug was dubbed Clutch's Curse and inspired one of the effects of the Clutch's Curse Item.
- Badass Biker: Pollution, a Depths boss, rides in on a motorbike that has to be shot down to defeat him.
- Bad Boss: A couple of the bosses are not kind to their mooks.
- Meltdown, a Burning Basement boss added in the remaster, loves to hit his horse as a form of attack. He'll even kill it when he gets low enough. However, since the horse was carrying a nuclear bomb, it explodes and reduces Meltdown to a skeleton. Doesn't stop him from trying to kill you, though.
- Buster and his ghostly form will outright eat their mooks they summon before launching them at Isaac.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: A Binding of Isaac mod where one of the protagonist's defining personality traits is how much he hates the kid.
- Bizarre Human Biology: Fiend is explicitly not Isaac, and is made of GMO corn. How that cob grew into everybody's favorite Lovable Rogue is anybody's guess.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Getting the Your Eternal Reward item requires you to get all of the seven boss badges by defeating seven specific bosses with specific items, something that only can be done in The Gauntlet by following a specific boss order and not being able to buy any other items until later into the run. The only thing that the item does is give you a +0.1 damage increase and an achievement.
- Break the Haughty: The most prominent feature of Tainted Fiend is that his original Lovable Rogue personality is gone, replaced only with unending rage. Although,
the devs sometimes joke that Tainted Fiend is actually a separate imp named Steve. - Brown Note: Referenced with the Brown Horn, an active item that causes enemies to fart and spawn friendly dips.
- Couch Gag: While the mod is loaded, the main menu has a faintly-visible piece of splash text above the options that changes every time the game is started or the player returns to the menu. Most of it is snark written from Fiend's perspective.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: Introduces the status effect "bruised", which lowers enemy defenses, and can also be stacked to further lower defense
- Denser and Wackier: While it still has its share of terrifying moments, Fiend Folio as whole leans more heavily on the "comedy" side of Horror Comedy.
- Developer's Foresight: If a Slim enemy punches a solid object, it injures its hand and becomes stunned for a few seconds. This also happens if they punch a player who has transformed into stone, such as by the Gnawed Leaf or Tooth and Nail items, the Reverse Chariot tarot card... Or if they're playing as Apollyon or Golem, the two Living Statue characters.
- Don't Wake the Sleeper: There's an enemy in the Depths literally called the Sleeper, appearing as a small ghost that transforms into a nightmarish figure when Isaac attempts to shoot it, or if he gets too close.
- Easter Egg: This mod has several hidden things that have a very low chance of appearing. A full list can be found on the official wiki here, but in short:
- Every time the beam from the Brimstone item is fired, there is a low chance that it will have the colors of the trans pride flag.
- Black Maws have alternate variants with eyes added, making them have what looks like goofy expressions. They have a low chance to replace regular Black Maws on spawning.
- A phone booth may appear, in a rare I AM ERROR Room or a Shop layout with a 0.1% chance of showing up. All it does is play audio from the game Talking Ben.
- The Cosplay Beggar is a highly rare beggar that is dressed as a Homestuck troll. It functions slightly differently (taking five cents at a time and dropping up to three pickups), and can drop the Perfectly Generic Object item.
- Using the Rat Poison item, which erases rooms based on which member of the mod team created them, in a room by Vermin will have Vermin's Author Avatar drop dead from the ceiling.
- Female Monster Surprise: The mod has a "Female" enemy tag that is applied to both base game and Fiend Folio enemies to be used with the Sapphic Sapphire trinket. While the mod has some enemies that are obviously female, such as Ms. Dominator, there are also several enemies that are not as obviously female by first looking at them.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: All communications through the mod's official Twitter account are written in-character as Fiend.
- Gag Censor: The voiceover for the Holy $#!& pill has the voice say "Holy Sh—" before being cut off by a fart noise. The Horse Pill version uses a louder, echoing fart noise.
- Glass Cannon: Fiend himself. He finds soul hearts more often, but is left at near-death if he takes a hit in combat as all of his health is converted to the Friends. He can turn them back into hearts for the next encounter once he finishes a room, but it's still enough to make him decently difficult to play.
- Hero of Another Story: Fiend is a separate entity from Isaac, and has his own character lore. Most tellingly, he actually has a stable relationship with the two most prominent people in his life, his friend Friend and his girlfriend China.
- High-Pressure Blood: Releasing an enemy caught by the Sanguine Hook causes them to release damaging blood shotguns all over the floor, potentially taking out other enemies that get too close.
- Hornet Hole: Some rooms in the Cellar have been turned to beehives by the mod's various bee-themed enemies.
- Interface Screw: Fortune Worm and its Fossil have this effect. The good news is you get a shot speed increase, a luck increase, and a luck-affected "Fortune Tear" that deals 105% damage. The bad news is that every single time a Fortune Tear hits, it breaks open and produces a fortune that can prove distracting in more hectic rooms.
- Irrational Hatred: Fiend has never explained why he hates Isaac besides it being a product of his inflated ego and condescending attitude.
- Joke Item: A handful of hidden items that do not appear in pools and cannot be obtained outside of situations like Death Certificate are this:
- The Eternal Clicker is a combination of the Eternal D6 (rerolls, but has a chance to delete the item instead) and the Clicker (changes the character). This just means that the item has a 50% chance to outright "delete the character" and softlock the game, with no upsides compared to the regular Clicker, which is already generally seen as a subpar item to begin with.
- Dogboard causes Isaac to automatically move forward as if skateboarding while held. It can also perform a "jump," but unlike How to Jump, this "jump" cannot clear any pits or rocks and does not grant invulnerability against enemies.
- Lily-Pad Platform: This mod features lily pads that can be walked on, but disappear for a few seconds after walking off of them.
- Lovable Rogue: Fiend's schtick as a character. He's a weird independent variable who's snarky, presumptuous, and has the bite to back up his bark, but he's also a sapient corn cob with a best friend and girlfriend. The demon is as belligerent as he is endearing.
- Luck-Based Mission: The "Dad's Home+" challenge requires you to beat Floor 2 boss with the catch that all enemies from the previous rooms you have cleared will spawn again when you enter a new room, including bosses. With the potential risk of dying from Zerg Rush if you have to visit too many rooms in one run, good floor layout RNG is almost required to have a chance of clearing the challenge.
- Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: Downplayed as the only gender-related traits are in their names and color schemes, but the "basic" familiar babies become this with the addition of Sibling Syl. Sibling Syl is both in-between Brother Bobby and Sister Maggy in terms of stats and gender, confirmed to be non-binary by the developers.
- Mighty Glacier: Golem is incredibly adaptable to any traditional playstyle due to the nature of his rock trinkets and how often they spawn, but moves at a snail's pace.
- Mutants: Fiend is a cob of genetically-modified corn that somehow grew into a demon with human-level intelligence. China is the same, except with an apple.
- No Fair Cheating: The new pill colors added by the mod cannot be forcefully identified by the cheat functions of the External Item Descriptions mod.
- One-Steve Limit: Four times:
- The enemies Tommy and Benny were originally from a separate mod called Morbus and were originally called Malignant and Benign. The name change is due to an already existing enemy called Benign, which is a smaller Tumor.
- One of The Sun's minions is named Venus, after the planet. Cacophobia's avatar is also named Venus, after the roman god of beauty.
- The Pillar John enemy added in the Spitshine Update spawns small rock enemies called Little Johns, not to be confused with the Giant Death's Heads called Li'l Jon.
- Fiend Folio has extensive two-way compatibility with the mod Retribution. However, an enemy from Retribution, a smaller I. Blob called Curdle, shares its name with one of Fiend Folio's enemies, being a skinless Gaper variant that appears in Scarred Womb and wears a layer of flesh on its head.
- Playing with Fire:
- Fiend has a secondary attack in the form of a fireball with slight tracking. Using it to finish off enemies is his main way of healing and being able to generate more Friends in later encounters.
- Pollution, Griddle Horn, and Buster love to do this, though Griddle Horn takes the cake. For bonus points, the latter two appear in the Burning Basement.
- Self-Deprecation: The item Rat Poison, when used in a Fiend Folio room layout, prevents all other room layouts made by the first layout's creator from generating in a run. If the room was made by Vermin, a corpse of his avatar will fall out of the ceiling and onto the floor.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Schmuck Bait:
- Attempting to use the Chaos Card on Warp Zone will have him Catch and Return it, though fortunately it turns you into The Lost instead of killing you outright.
- The Chest room layout "Don't make this mistake again" has two buttons and a confusing arrangement of obstacles. Pressing either button boxes you in with a ton of Degraded Bosses.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Fiend curses whenever he takes damage; understandable, since he's always only two shots away from certain death unless he can make good plays with his fireball attack. Using the Mime Degree will instead broadcast his agony to the HUD as if he'd eaten a pill, replacing the mostly-French lines and grunts other characters use when they get hit while carrying it.
- Spoiling Shout-Out:
- One secret room layout added by the mod features a hanging Shopkeeper. Its internal label is "I gently open the door... and I find some beans" (referring to the cans of beans also in the room), which references the first major twist in DDLC caused by Sayori hanging herself.
- There's a trinket called Lost Flower Crown, which references OMORI, specifically, Basil's ultimate fate near the end of the game. The trinket itself erases a random enemy at the start of each floor, and wandering into where the chosen enemy would be will also cause Something to appear.
- Springs, Springs Everywhere: Fiend Folio adds rubber rocks that bounce the player, enemies, and projectiles around.
- Stealth Pun: The Fireworks Battery pickup recharges the player's active item and causes it to launch Excelsior fireworks the next time it's used. In other words, it's a battery battery.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The nature of Fiend Folio consists solely of barrages of rapid-fire Black Comedy, and that's it, right? Right?
- Swiss-Army Superpower: Golem's unique gimmick is to rely on the Rock Trinkets for his neutral game, which have near-infinite applicability because of how many there are and how often they spawn. He can also freely reroll them at will for a small price and turn unneeded ones into resources. However, this comes at the cost of low starting health, low base speed, and not always having access to the vendors or trinkets he needs.
- Toilet Humor: Fiend apparently has a recurring nightmare of being shoved off the toilet by the mod's poop-themed enemies, if the purple coloration of the mod's dream sequences added to the ones that normally appear between floors is anything to go by.
- Unique Enemy: Like the base game's Henry, there are few super rare rooms which contain an unique enemy spawn that only exist as an Easter egg.
- The Crudemate is a rare spawn in Dank Depths who simply walks away from Isaac to vent away. You can encounter Crudemate in two other rooms beyond the designated one, but it has a really small chance of appearing in those two rooms.
- The Cave Spider is a reskinned Spider enemy that only appears in one rare room in Mines who can attack Isaac, but cannot actually kill him so encountering it isn't lethal.
- There are also two other enemies, Psychic Mr. Maw and Mobile Mushroom, appearing in one room in the Depths and Caves respectively.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Trying to blow up an Evil Beggar will just have it flip off the player character, throw a troll bomb at them, and leave.
