Daily Challenges

The daily challenge (or daily runs) is a unique run generated every day. Daily Challenges were introduced in The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth. Daily challenges start the player off with a specific character, seed, end-stage, difficulty and set of starting items. The player is scored and placed on a global leaderboard after ending the run. The run can only be played once per day, but an unscored practice run is unlocked afterward, which is identical to the Daily Run but can be played multiple times. Unlike regular runs, the Daily Run cannot be continued; exiting the Daily Run will end it and disallow further progress.

Scoring
Score plays a bigger role in daily challenges, as the player is ranked in the leaderboards by their score. Having a strategy that accounts for how the score is handled is important in achieving an optimal score.

The final score is divided into several bonuses and a few penalties:


 * Stage bonus, the number of points earned for reaching a set of floors
 * Exploration bonus, points awarded for exploring and clearing rooms or events
 * Schwag bonus: points earned for collecting pickups
 * Rush bonus, awarded for clearing Boss Rush or Hush
 * ??? or Lamb bonus, awarded for killing ??? or The Lamb
 * Mega Satan bonus, awarded for killing Mega Satan
 * Damage penalty, points lost for taking damage
 * Time penalty, points lost for spending time
 * Item penalty, points lost for picking up items (actives and passives)

Below is a list of all the starting points for each character.

Curated daily runs
Currently, the game has 52 curated daily runs a year. Each curated daily run offers a different challenge, some quirks, and some restrictions. The list of the disclosed daily runs can be seen here.

Trivia

 * On December 6, every year, Isaac is reskinned as former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata as tribute. December 6 was also Iwata's birthday. He has the same stats as Isaac, but starts with and Cartridge.
 * Gaining access to and killing Delirium counts as a won daily run, but it seems that no points are directly (floor bonus) earned for killing it. However, it has effects on the item penalty, as well as giving extra exploration bonuses.