Edmund is a great designer, one of my favourites. He's great at these broad stroke concepts but less analytic when it comes to finishing every detail and thinking each decision through to its conclusion.

I don't think TBoI is his best game design. That probably belongs to either Ether (awesome concept) or Time Fcuk (awesome in every way).

TBoI has a amazingly compelling skinner box mechanic whereby you can try again and again and again, because maybe next time you'll get that awesome random combination of items and smash you way through everything. Maybe...

It's the addiction cycle that works for casinos, and he himself has described the game as a giant slot machine. 

You mean like a golden chest?

Yeah, I was in a hurry and didn't think.

The mechanic is probably meant to be 'better than a coin but worse than a brown chest'.

If that's the case then, personally at least, I'd apply these changes:

o Only replace Nickels (not normal coins)
o Cannot drop Batteries
o Can drop blue spiders / flies when collected

The first two should be self explanatory. The third is just to reinforce the blue minion mechanic and therefore make both those features more cohesive. 

https://greedbutt.com/score/02a8260bfa3280cce691f3637d17998a

Rank 11 (currently) on today's daily, baby!

Managed to reroll into The Shovel on the Depths 1 secret room... guessing not many people went from that, was kind of tricky to do since you had to kill Greed, he drops Steam Sale, leave the room and reenter before you use D6 so it rolls into the Secret Room pool, and then reroll Black Lotus into Shovel. 

I want to find one of the breaker combos in a daily.

A few people have done them already - they're the guys who have a #1 position which eclipses everyone else by several magnitudes.

First that comes to mind is blank card + jera, which basically gives infinite items as soon as you find a battery. 

It's always bothered me that there is an item penalty. For me the whole goal of the game is to get as many items as you can.

Maybe its there to stop D100 runs or something. 

The massive top scores on the ingame leaderboard are all straight up cheaters actually.The game does basically nothing for sanity checking possible score per second, and barely anything to confirm the game isn't modded when a score is submitted.

GreedButt does do some sanity checking, but doesn't clarify how so hopefully cheaters won't get wise to break it... but you are right though that some of the high scores there are breaking runs that generate tons of coins and bombs and keys, but beyond those caps the time tends to cost more than the small extra points gained, so it tends that 50-60k is the maximum possible anyone can legitimately get in a run, but even that you must beat Boss Rush, Hush, and the Chest/Dark Room.

The idea behind the item penalty would've been sound if the game was better balanced... it's intended to reward you for skipping items, but it just ends up being meaningless becuase the penalty is so low, and even the shittiest items tend to be worth the minor hit. It's basically pointless. 

Today's Daily got super OP...

Tammy's Head + Brimstone + Car Battery + Guppy + Hive Mind.

Got 47,440 which is still only 350 so-ish ranking 

The story concludes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvAuU5y_WEU