Tainted Magdalene is a character added in The Binding of Isaac: Repentance. She is the alternate version of 
Magdalene. Tainted Magdalene is unlocked by reaching Template:Stage and using either the 
Red Key or the 
Cracked Key to access a special room in one of the walls while playing as Magdalene.
Tainted Magdalene starts with 2 heart containers, 2 empty heart containers, and 
Yum Heart in the consumable slot.
When Tainted Magdalene's health is above 2 red hearts, she will leave red creep on the floor and will lose health at the rate of half a heart per 10 seconds. This health loss affects all types of hearts, but prioritizes red heart health, and the affected hearts on the health bar are faded and slowly pulsating. Bone hearts are drained, but empty bone hearts will not break. She also receives double healing from all sources except heart pickups, and all enemies have a chance of dropping a half red heart upon death which will flicker and disappear in 2 seconds. Additionally, all the leaking hearts, including red ones, will protect against loss of Devil deal chances: only non-leaky red heart damage will impose a penalty.
Tainted Magdalene has a unique melee "hug" attack which is automatically performed on enemies who make contact with her, performing a swing similar to 
The Forgotten which can synergize with any held items. The melee hits deal 6x damage. Enemies killed by the melee attack will always drop a half red heart.
Strategy
Tainted Magdalene draws her power from having very expendable health early game. Her ability to regenerate hearts from slain foes allows for simply charging into groups of enemies and killing them all with her unique hug attack, whilst being able to sustain her health from the dropped hearts. This comes at the cost of her base statistics, which are significantly lower than other characters. Items that increase her stats (specifically damage) should be a priority early on, so that you can use her effectively later in the run.
It should be noted that soul hearts and black hearts will drain just like red hearts do, so they are much less useful on Tainted Magdalene. Her leaky red hearts protect against the loss of a Devil deal too, meaning soul hearts and black hearts serve even less of a use.
Whilst she excels against groups of weak enemies, Tainted Magdalene suffers against bosses that don't summon many enemies, such as Delirium. Unless she can find a way to sustain her health pool for the fight (with items such as 
4.5 Volt combined with her Yum Heart) she will slowly lose health until she is down to her permanent 2 red hearts, which can be risky to fight bosses with. Items that provide health such as 
XIX - The Sun are extremely useful for these fights.
Curse of the Unknown can cause more trouble for Tainted Magdalene than for other characters, as knowing how much health you have is important. Look out for when she stops producing red creep to know when you are low on health.
Good items
- Items that grant invulnerability or shield: Melee attack can be used without taking contact damage.
- Items that grant a damaging familiar such as
Cube of Meat or Sacrificial Dagger, as they can greatly increase your melee damage output. Keep in mind however that enemies killed by the familiars do not have the guaranteed half-heart drop. - 4.5 Volt: Greatly improves longevity in long boss fights by allowing repeated usage of Yum Heart.
- Adrenaline: Gives more damage the more empty heart containers Tainted Magdalene has. Due to them draining naturally, this is an excellent item for bosses.
- Athame: Taking damage triggers a ring around you that deals rapid tear damage to everything it touches. Good for bosses.
- Aries: Running fast enough will allow the hug attack to be used without taking damage.
- Blind Rage: Increased length of immunity frames allows you to get more melee attacks from a single hit.
- Bloody Lust / Bloody Gust: Taking damage will increase stats, allowing a massive stats upgrade for the floor.
- Birthright: Provides another non-leaky red heart, for a total of three.
- Bozo: The rainbow poop that spawns will be destroyed by the melee attack, refilling all red heart containers. With many heart containers, this effect will proc often.
- Candy Heart: Gives small stat boosts whenever you pick up red hearts. This is an excellent item to have as you will constantly gain stats whenever you collect hearts.
- Charm of the Vampire / Leech: Kills heal for double the amount.
- Dead Eye: The damage increase is guaranteed because the melee attack does not miss.
- Equality!: Doubled hearts do not vanish like the half-hearts they replace.
- Giant Cell: Magdalene's tendency to receive damage keeps the Minisaac count high.
- Gimpy: Drops a lot of extra non-disappearing half red hearts when you kill enemies, as well as soul hearts when you get hit.
- Gnawed Leaf: The hug attack can be used without losing invincibility.
- Habit: Gives a Yum Heart charge while using the melee attack, letting you sustain more easily.
- With Habit and The Wafer, Tainted Magdalene is essentially immortal, as it takes two hearts to charge Yum Heart, the same amount it heals for.
- Likewise, Habit and Car Battery also provides a measure of immortality, as it takes up to four hearts to charge Yum Heart, the same amount it heals for. This strategy does require having a high enough maximum health cap, however.
- With Habit and
- Kamikaze!: Allows you to create explosions during the melee attack at no additional health cost.
- Immaculate Conception: Gives you angelic familiars after picking up a certain amount of hearts. As Tainted Magdalene can both spawn hearts and drains them naturally it is very easy to quickly gain familiars from this item.
- Isaac's Heart: Insanely powerful for Tainted Magdalene as it removes contact damage for her body, making it so she can constantly do her melee attack with no consequences.
- It Hurts: Taking damage triggers a circle of tears around you and increases your tear rate for the rest of the room.
- The Jar: Allows you to store disappearing half red hearts. Using the item changes them into normal red hearts that you can use later.
- Lost Cork: Significantly increases the size of the creep Tainted Magdalene frequently produces.
- Maggy's Bow: Dropped half hearts heal for one full heart.
- Magneto: Dropped half hearts are drawn to you, making them easier to retrieve.
- Meat Cleaver: Multiplying enemies into weaker versions of themselves makes the melee ability more viable and generates more hearts to replenish HP.
- Midas' Touch: Allows you to freeze enemies and gain a lot of coins, which will make you do a lot of extra contact damage.
- Mom's Locket: Dropped half hearts will be converted to full hearts.
- Old Bandage / Shard of Glass: Hearts have a chance to drop every time you take contact damage from doing the melee attack, and they won't disappear shortly after spawning.
- Pause: Allows you to easily kill all enemies in a room, since the lethal hug ability does not cancel the paused state unlike firing tears.
- Pyromaniac: Explosions heal for one full red heart.
- Serpent's Kiss: Coming in contact with enemies will poison them. Poisoned enemies have a chance to drop black hearts.
- Sharp Plug: Since it takes two hearts to charge and Yum Heart grants 2 full red hearts when used, it can be used infinitely without losing HP. Doing this will also prevent HP to decay while doing this infinite combo. Additionally, the Invincibility-frames from the damage taken last long enough to become permanently immune to any other damage source. Tears can't be fired while doing this, but it is still possible to kill enemies with Tainted Magdalene's melee ability, basically guaranteeing a win on the spot. Binding the "use pill" key to a more accessible key to move around easier is recommended.
- Sharp Plug + Car Battery: Allows for infinite red health regeneration.
- Spirit Sword's swings can collect the red hearts dropped by enemies you kill, making it significantly easier to heal. Additionally, it's effectively a strict upgrade to the hug attack, as it has similar damage output without requiring you to take damage to use it.
- Taurus: Takes a while to charge, but provides invulnerability and lots of melee damage.
- Unicorn Stump: Tainted Magdalene will still perform melee attacks while this is active.
- Varicose Veins: Taking damage triggers a circle of tears around you that deals very high damage. Good for bosses.
- Mom's Locket: Hearts dropped from Tainted Magdalene mechanic will be always full red hearts.
Bad Items
- Abaddon will remove all red heart containers, replacing them with black hearts. The black hearts will slowly deplete over time and are hard to replenish, essentially counting down until your death unless you can obtain more red heart containers.
- Crown Of Light is very rarely active, as your health never stays full for long.
- Dark Prince's Crown is frequently inactive, as you will rarely benefit from a soul heart build or be at low enough health to benefit.
- Dark Bum can pay out more often, but the black hearts he drops are much less useful. He will also take red hearts that may be needed for healing.
- Dead Cat is not recommended, as you will lose nearly all your red hearts. Replacing them with soul hearts to compensate is also more difficult and harder to sustain.
- Error: The given collectible ("E Coli") does not exist. will take priority over your hug attack, meaning it will make the enemy turn into a poop, without providing the half red heart.
- Mine Crafter will instantly be exploded by Tainted Magdalene's swing, doing an explosions worth of damage.
- Paschal Candle is not active very often.
- Mom's Heels will deal contact damage to enemies, occasionally killing enemies before the hug attack does, without providing the half red heart.
- Pluto is not recommended, because it will make taking hearts or any other pickup considerably more difficult. This could cause you to lose hearts because they disappear before you are able to grab them.
- Lost Soul is essentially useless as it will almost always die moments into the floor because of how Tainted Maggie plays.
Notes
- The Ace cards will transform the half red hearts, which would normally flicker and disappear, into normal consumables. Using them after killing a lot of enemies with the melee ability can be a good way to get a large amount of consumables. Consumables rerolled into by D20 will still flicker and disappear.
- Eternal hearts, Rotten Hearts, and Bone Hearts cannot be depleted.
- Having three or more Rotten Hearts in the first most set of heart containers will cause you to maintain the "drain effect"; allowing the player to have persistent creep.
Unlockable Items
Trivia
- The achievement for unlocking Tainted Magdalene is "The Dauntless", a possible title for the character.
- Tainted Magdalene is the only tainted character to have a starting item in common with their normal variant.
- In the game's files, the image file for Tainted Magdalene's hair is named maggiesnotsobeautifulgoldenlocks.png
- This is a reference to the image file for regular Magdalene's hair, "maggiesbeautifulgoldenlocks.png".
Bugs
 Bug!
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PC Battery pickups will charge both the currently held active spacebar item and Yum Heart. Charged keys however will charge the currently held active item, but not Yum Heart. |
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| Bug!
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PC Rotten hearts will not deplete when playing as Tainted Magdalene. |
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 Characters
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 The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
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