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i decided to try out another no heart producing run and got unexpectedly really really far, all the way to loop 1 ark 3 using mostly this setup with the exception of using kidney bean on the 2nd time around in ark and monster manual in every other scenario, thought i'd make a topic tackling this unlock since it's the hardest one to get by far.

here's a few tips:

• only use / get attacking babies that are more cost effective than brother bobby (that deal more overall dps/cost) so stuff like abel, harlequin baby, lil loki, wiz baby; the only defensive and "insta" baby you'll need are cube of meat and bob's brain since they're the most cost effective.
• only use hearts if you absolutely need to; get a general feel on how much dps every baby does and figure out if it's able to deal enough damage to the enemies in it's lane and if it can't either use a poke-go card or an active item to help out; i wouldn't recommend using pills though, they should be used as a last resort or as a way to power up a baby enough to kill mom hands on it's own.
• you didn't hear this from me but if you mess up in any way or get unlucky with champions / level layout you can quit to menu mid level and continue the run, the level will reset with a new layout and different enemy rng.

i recommend doing it on the first go since ark gets incredibly difficult on loops, all of blue room and most of mines can be done with brother bobby alone, just about 80% of every other attacking baby is useless in comparison since they're too expensive and not cost effective except for: lil loki, harlequin baby, spike baby (for isaac's fork synergy) and deserter, peeping might be good now since the rework but i have yet to try him out; as for items be on the lookout for: isaac's fork, sanguine bond, frosty mint, black/brown bean, present (for the chance to get imp since it's the only way to get it) and safety blanket; as for active items try to get a run with either kidney bean, blue candle, glowing hourglass, telepathy for dummies or monster manual, sacrificial altar can be pretty powerful too but so would moving box, but if you ask me i'd say the go to actives are glowing hourglass and kidney bean, with glowing hourglass you can counter the mom hands and with kidney bean you can charm the frosties to fight on your side for basically the rest of the level.

i agree that phd needs a huge buff, as it's the worst tier 2 item by far, maybe along with only finding good pills it should get rid of full health and something is wrong as well since they have the least uses + increase the effectiveness of power pill and speed up

that would be immediately an s-tier defensive baby even better than dry baby; immune to explosions seems a bit ridiculous, maybe takes 50% of max hp from them, as for sperm whales they should still 100% be able to eat it no problem, and even with just being immune to pushback that makes him way more worth than 100 hearts, maybe 150-175 unless it's got a recharge that's as slow as an active item

yeah hidden babies are just the 3rd (4th if you have more options) baby pick, the one that's "hidden" with ???, so for the unlock you just have to beat a run while always picking the unknown baby option, i'm not sure if getting crystal ball prevents you from getting the unlock or not

and of course after i post this i get it in the next shop, finally got 100% for real

i've been trying for the longest time to find safety blanket in a run to finally get that 100% completion but it's almost like i haven't even unlocked it, i've done about 5-6 runs all the way to loop 2 just to find it and yet it hasn't showed up, getting to loop 2 lets you see 70-80% of all passive shop items so i'm not sure if it's either my usual luck in video games or something's wrong, i unlocked safety blanket using the percs pill instead of the book but i don't see why that would influence it since i still got the unlock either way

i can confirm the global slowdown on 0.1.8.2; i've also noticed that the trites no longer switch lanes, or at least try to, they jump diagonally and then snap back into the previous lane immediately

not sure if it was intended or not but i used the d6 before mines 2 in the first loop and the screen just went black, there were no picks for me to choose from and all i could see was the broken d6, thankfully it did progress after a bit; i'm assuming it happend because i encountered every baby option at least once before.

i got this type of enemy layout at the start of the 2nd loop, but during the level gapers also showed up
 

i can confirm, on 0.1.8.1 they don't steal babies anymore

you could pick him back up and place him back at each hand wave

just tried it and unfortunately both speed up and power pills cap out basically instantly, sad

i haven't been able to try it myself yet since i've been going on a pretty long loop run but the more i think about this the more i want to get a run and try it out, since moving box allows you to carry babies between levels, how insane would it be to spam speed up and power pills on a wiz baby / lil loki / brain worm, carrying him through the entire run and just see how overpowered you can make him.

new challenge idea: rpg / the friends you make along the way

• location: it's all mine (no minecarts).
• enemies: gapers, fatties, mr shy, plums, flies, hardheads, mullibooms (2-3 flags).
• babies: none (disabled heart drops would be nice too).
• active item: moving box (with instant recharge).
• how the challenge plays out: you start with 1 imp that you can move freely with moving box at any time and at the very far right each lane has an extra baby stuck in amber which once freed you can move back with moving box, some of the stronger babies will be guarded by a gaper in amber right before them; the babies stuck in amber would be: brother bobby, freezer baby (guarded), spike baby, juicy sack, spider baby (guarded, maybe even with 2 gapers in amber), harlequin baby (guarded); once you get everyone unstuck from the amber it's a matter of moving the babies in the right spots for the optimal enemy match-ups, for example: spider baby or spike baby - mr shy, freezer baby - mulliboom and hardhead, juicy sack + spike baby - fatty.
• item unlock: piggy bank (tier 1 - 33 pennies), chargers that survive will reward you with 1 extra penny (they don't give you 2 nickles in act 3 but still reward you 6 pennies in total instead of 5), has a higher chance to appear early on in your runs.

going to go over the main reasons why some babies i've ranked really low and others pretty high in response to the comments. 

mongo baby: although he's a very unique baby and is only just 25 more hearts than brother bobby he's simply just not worth it in the rogue-like way, you can only get about 10-11 babies in a run + the 4 (5 with eden's blessing) starters and can carry only 4 (or 5 with schoolbag), as for his actual use you're only saving up at best 75 hearts since the most expensive shooters cost 200, even saving 75 hearts on each lane is just not worth spending a deck slot for an ability you have already chosen, just spam more chads, the ability also gets increasingly more difficult to use as minecarts, spikes and teleporters get in the way.

wiz baby: he's a good damage dealer but the attack type simply just makes him not worth it, you need to place him pretty far ahead because of his range and he can't defend himself alone, imagine a scenario where there's 2 gapers, one at the top lane and one at the bottom, 2 wiz babies in the middle kill them, but 2 brother bobbies at the far back would also kill them for 50 hearts cheaper, now what if the gapers are both on the top lanes? brother bobbies still do fine but because wiz babies can't pierce they'll only hit 1 gaper while leaving the other unharmed , i'd say only use if you have telepathy for dummies in your deck as well for more reliable dps.

lil steven and brain worm: i'm going to just put these together because they're not good for the same reasons, dps, you're spending way too many hearts for these when you could instead just get brother bobbies, resulting in more dps and cost efficiency, and even if you do get the same amount lil stevens have the same dps while brain worms have ever so slightly better dps, but not enough to justify the cost and a deck slot for the run, just about the only reason why they aren't in bottom tier is that they are quite good against bosses.

double baby: simply just not worth it, way too expensive for a heart producer and since in loops you're limited to a certain number of hearts and other babies usually don't cost too much it's not necessary to get a higher heart production than let's say 6-8 lil chads; now let's compare it to lil chad, abysmal in the early parts of levels as you need to wait for 2 heart drops before you get your first one down (1 if you have <3 and 0 if you use candy heart but even then why are you focusing so much when lil chads work better), it's not as spammable because of it's high cost so you can't just sacrifice them to sperm whales.

bbf: all i'm gonna say for this one is this, doctor's remote / kidney bean, dry baby exists, doesn't 1 shot sperm whales and stoners, can't be used against ragdoll and middle horn.

acid baby: reason why it's not lower is because of the newly added percs pill which gives a book of shadows shield, and even before that giving 8 babies power pill / speed up significantly increases dps, but it's still just situational because you need pills to have him work.

harlequin baby: same struggles that wiz baby has but not as bad, very good dps but there's simply just better choices for when it comes to late-game, absolutely useless on the top and bottom lanes, good for bosses at least.

snowball: it's a really good effect and very cost effective but unfortunately the enemies that you would want to use it against are immune to freeze and chill (stoner, hardy, frosty, sperm whale).

paschal candle: why is it worse than multidimensional baby??? multidimensional baby synergizes with ANY ground projectile that you use, while paschal candle has multiple counter synergies with it such as pegasus extinguishing the candle, freezer babies shots turn into normal tears, parasitoid's shots turn into fireballs that don't split into flies anymore significantly reducing his optimal dps; sure, multidimensonal baby also dupicates enemy projectiles but are you gonna really let frosties and hardheads get close enough to take advantage of that? you should rethink your strategy if so.

ghost baby: shoots slower and does the same damage as brother bobby, can pierce only up to 3 enemies, can't pierce through masks, bad single targert dps, gets completely outclassed by deserter.

mystery egg: not in the highest tier simply because it's outclassed by parasitoid in just about every aspect, it's still very very powerful don't get me wrong.

abel: simply this high in the list for how incredibly high the dps is, very cost effective and can synergize with paschal candle and multidimensional baby, unfortunately it gets worse the further to the right you place, otherwise it would of been in the highest tier.

spike baby: hard to believe but this is the baby with the highest single target dps in the game so far, just a simple row of defensive babies with these in front of them can unironically carry you through most enemy layouts without a sweat, also becomes even more insane with isaac's fork and sanguine bond, it was very tempting to place on the top tier but sadly can't hit flying enemies like flies, plums, sperm whales and frosties.

fistuloid: top tier because he has a base dps that's higher than brother bobby, has quite a lot of health for a not defensive baby and the death charge attack is just ridiculous, does enough damage to kill just about any enemy that isn't considered a tank, also is a good counter to gurgle if placed at the far left, i'm unsure if mongo baby can copy the death ability but if so, that's probably the only usefull use i can see mongo baby having since it would have a faster recharge.

everybody has a different play-style so there's bound to be people that have different opinions but i don't see a world where dry baby is in the same tier or lower than bbf, dry baby costs 25 less, has the same explosion effect and damage, counts as a defensive baby so not only it's a better 3x3 explosive but it also synergizes with frosty mint, sanuine bond + isaac's fork; bbf has no synergies or upsides in comparison

yeah i have, almost cleared ark 3 on loop 2 as well on normal

new baby idea: lil brimstone

• cost: 300 / 6 hearts (would probs make him cost 350-400 but then he would be useless on loops 2 and beyond).
• recharge time: about half of what defensive babies take to recharge.
• attack type: he would slowly charge up a laser that pierces all enemies and obstacles in it's lane, however, once the laser is fully charged he will not shoot it automatically and instead will wait for the player to click on him before doing so; damage will have to vary depending on how fast the laser charges, if it's a very slow charge he should be able to kill gapers in one hit, if it's a fast charge then 2 laser blasts for gapers; also just kinda depends on the whole "clicking to release laser" feature, thought it was a cool idea but if it becomes too hard to implement or too difficult to manage as a player just have him shot the laser automatically with reduced damage but overall faster charging.
• strengths: infinite pierce, high damage, full lane range.
• weaknesses: unable to deal with single strong enemies very well, does not synergize with paschal candle or multidimensional baby, can't pierce through masks but heavily damages them, can be frozen by frosty.
• unlock method: complete every chapter without buying any passive items or charger tokens.
  

oh also another thing that would be pretty nice is having a collection for enemies too.

it's a little vague what the game counts as a "red" baby but the deck i used was this:

• lil chad
• cube of meat
• lil loki
• spike baby

make sure to not pick up a school bag during your run otherwise you need to have 5 red babies and i think the only other red baby would be double baby.

oh and you can do any level you want just as long as you have all 4 selected, so it's preferable to do it on an early floor and/or act since dps is a little limited with only red babies

order in which the babies or items show up in the tiers doesn't matter