One of the most interesting new characters introduced in the indie roguelike The Binding of Isaac: Repentance is Tainted Cain. Tainted Cain is unlocked just like the other Tainted character variants but may have one of the most creative new mechanics out of any Isaac character. Using his special item, Bag of Crafting, Tainted Cain can collect coins, keys, bombs and other consumables to craft items.

This is actually the only way that Tainted Cain can collect new items as any pedestals Tainted Cain interact with instantly turn into consumables. This means that players will have to craft any items they want to use instead of buying them in the shop or taking them from devil deals, adding a totally new way to play The Binding of Isaac. Bag of Crafting may seem like a difficult item to use, but there are actually a few hard-set rules that can help players understand how it works.

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Bag of Crafting works by taking the values assigned to each consumable and adding said values together. The game then computes this value and spawns whatever item has a matching ID to what's inside Bag of Crafting. There is a bit more at play here, but that's essentially how Bag of Crafting works in the simplest terms. This allows Tainted Cain to also craft items that might be added to the game through mods or future updates without having to add the recipes manually.

This also means, however, that there are multiple recipes that'll make the same item. There are a few additional factors that are also taken into consideration, including the new item quality system introduced in Repentance. Item quality is a number given to each object in the game that reflects its general usefulness or power, which in turn goes into determining how frequently it will appear in-game.

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Each consumable put into Bag of Crafting will affect the quality of the item that's crafted. While this helps limit the number of recipes one item can have, there's still a lot of room for repeats. Another way that Bag of Crafting narrows down what items are crafted is through special consumables that impact its item pool. Cracked keys, runes, black hearts, eternal hearts, gold hearts, bone hearts and rotten hearts all impact what Bag of Crafting makes.

The more of those consumables that are in Bag of Crafting's slots, the higher chance said item will be from a special item pool. Granted, those consumables are incredibly rare, so influencing the item pool can be pretty difficult. Given that, in traditional roguelike fashion, there are over 700 items in The Binding of Isaac, it's incredibly difficult to memorize every single recipe to make every item. Luckily, the community has begun documenting just that on the Isaac wiki for reference.

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There are a few more quirks with Bag of Crafting that help explain how it works. First off, if a player uses a recipe for an item they haven't unlocked, they'll instead craft Breakfast. Half-hearts of any variant count as full hearts when put in Bag of Crafting, though things like charged keys, lucky pennies and the different battery sizes all count as different consumables. Bag of Crafting can technically be unlocked, but it doesn't actually belong in any item pools, so it'll never appear during normal gameplay.

If a player drops Bag of Crafting during co-op play, another player can pick it up and use it. The only major downside to this method is that the normal crafting UI that players see as Tainted Cain doesn't appear for the other player. So, they can't see what items they'll end up making until they actually craft them. Despite its limitation to only be useable with Tainted Cain, Bag of Crafting is one of the best items introduced in Repentance, a DLC that helped make The Binding of Isaac feel like a brand new game.

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