Bethany

Bethany is a character added in The Binding of Isaac: Repentance. She is unlocked by beating Mom's Heart/It Lives in hard mode with without losing a life.

Bethany starts with three Red Heart containers, four soul charges, and.

Bethany is unable to utilize Soul Hearts and Black Hearts as health. When picked up, they instead are converted to a resource unique to Bethany called "soul charges" at the rate of one charge per half heart. The number of soul charges currently owned is listed along with the pickup counters. Soul charges can be consumed to use Bethany's activated item when the item isn't fully charged, at the rate of one soul charge per empty bar of charge.

Item Interactions
Due to Bethany's special soul charge mechanic, and her inability to actually have soul/black hearts, certain items function differently.


 * Items that grant black/soul hearts gives charges instead:
 * : Brings Bethany down to half a heart of health, and removes all but one of her Heart Containers. The black hearts she would have gotten are all converted to soul charges.
 * : Takes one heart container and gives 6 soul charges.
 * ,, : Grants the corresponding amount of charges.
 * Items that do not use charges to function cannot be used via spending the soul charges:
 * : Soul Charges cannot be used to grant flies.
 * : Still requires money to be used.
 * : Activating an item using soul charges is sometimes free.
 * : Unusable, as Bethany cannot hold soul/black heart containers normally.

For the many Item Interactions concerning the, please consult that item's page.

Good Items

 * All good active items that you may use multiple times in a row without recharging to unleash their power, like or.
 * With just a few soul charges, allows to exponentially increase one's amount of flies.
 * Baby-Bender: Since wisps are treated as familiars, they are affected by the Baby-Bender effect, granting them homing shots.
 * Increases damage dealt by the wisps.
 * Using the Book of Shadows will render Bethany as well as her wisps invulnerable, making it easier to stack up on wisps, while also transforming them into a very effective source of damage, as Bethany can freely ram every enemy in a single room without the wisps dying. A secondary positive is that soul charge makes it possible to activate the invulnerability at will, making it easier to complete a whole floor without taking damage.
 * Doubles the wisps generated from activating Book of Virtues, allowing many wisps to be generated quickly.
 * Allows Bethany to easily heal from killing enemies.
 * /: Guarantees free Angel Rooms over costly Devil Rooms.
 * In addition to being used once per floor, soul charges can be used to use it.
 * Forgotten Lullaby: Increases the fire rate of wisps.
 * If broken, can be fixed instantly with soul charges. Can also be used to generate high-damage wisps while outside of combat.
 * Will produce soul hearts every room clear when Bethany has more than 5 bombs, 5 keys, a trinket, less than 6 total Red Heart containers of any kind, and full health. This allows you to stack up hundreds of soul charges.
 * As Bethany turns invincible, so do her wisps.
 * The wisps' tears are attracted to the magnetic enemy, making it much easier to connect all of the wisps' tears on an enemy.
 * Can multiply the wisp's shots, allowing for extremely high damage potential.
 * Prayer Card is immensely helpful to build up health, and can be fueled with soul charges to accomplish this even faster.
 * Allows carrying two active items, increasing the rate of wisp generation.
 * In addition to regular effects, spawn an orbital. When used again, all orbitals spawned by this item will share this effect with main character. Since the amount of this type of wisp is not limited, it will be a good damage dealer.
 * Creates a ring of Wisps every 3 seconds that provide a lot of protection and high DPS. However, Spin to Win wisps cannot be retained between uses.
 * If you are willing to wait a few minutes for it to repeatedly regenerate its single charge, it is possible to always have eight orbitals at the start of each room with no resource expenditure. Better still, spamming the detonator while firing results in a tremendous amount of carnage in exchange for a single soul charge per button press. This is especially helpful in Greed / Greedier mode, as each wave fully recharges it. Be careful, however, as spamming the detonator too aggressively may crash the game.
 * While the item is active, the wisps become invincible and continue to deal contact damage, creating an effect similar to, but with only a one-room recharge, allowing you to use it in every room, or even multiple times per room through use of soul charges allowing for near permanent invincibility.
 * A no-cost, spammable item capable of keeping the wisp count maxed out. Additionally, the wisps spawned may shoot tiny -like flames capable of blocking shots.
 * As Bethany relies on red hearts to stay alive, Yum Heart can be very valuable and can be fueled with stockpiled soul charges when necessary.

Trivia

 * In Antibirth, Bethany was unlocked by having a total number of 12 soul hearts and black hearts at once.
 * Bethany is a reference to Mary of Bethany. She was the sister of, and is sometimes identified as Mary Magdalene or as an anonymous sinful woman in the Gospel of Luke.
 * Bethany, the village Mary lived in, was a town in the West Bank of Jerusalem. Martha and Lazarus likewise lived there, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead occurred there as well.